What do you think of when you hear the phrase “Justin Bieber concert”? Do you imagine royal purple confetti and a mop of hair swooshing to and fro? Perhaps an army of exuberant dancers, commanded by a teenager in harem pants? Do you imagine, rather than a completed concert, the spectre of a canceled one, as was the case with many of Bieber’s Justice Tour shows back in 2022? Push these images to the back of your memory closet, and replace them with Justin Bieber’s 2026 Coachella set: a gently swirling light show, a laptop on a stand, and a be-hoodied singer in a pair of sturdy galoshes doing delicate laps of the stage.

The Canadian singer-songwriter dispensed with the teenybopper-stimulating pomp of his earlier days on last year’s SWAG and SWAG II, largely stripped-down ventures into lo-fi bedroom pop and warm, retro R&B; his Grammy performance in February saw him looping the simple guitar part to his hit song “YUKON” in just shorts and socks, his voice as elastic and angelic as it’s ever been. And Bieber’s Coachella performance was similarly austere—34 songs, very little embellishment, and a very strong confidence in the bond between the singer and his true Beliebers to pull everything off.

At a time when Coachella virality often begins with elaborate stage production—just look at Friday headliner Sabrina Carpenter, who staged a complex Old Hollywood-themed drama complete with Fosse choreography and backup dancers dressed like toy poodles—going minimal was a bold choice for Bieber. Performing atop a curvaceously molded stage set to what sounded like a pre-recorded backing track, with no stage band visible, he opened his set with “ALL I CAN TAKE,” the first of many SWAG songs on deck. Unique camera angles abounded: one on the floor that Bieber leaned over to sing into, as if pondering his reflection in a well; another on the laptop he occasionally visited, where he encouraged the stream’s live chat to make requests.

When collaborators Carter Lang and Dylan Wiggins came out with acoustic guitars to accompany Bieber, he was popping SWAG songs out—”THINGS YOU DO”, “GLORY VOICE MEMO”, “ZUMA HOUSE”—like t-shirts fired from a cannon. But these were chill ballads, and it did not seem to be shaping up to be a hype Saturday night set. The energy briefly spiked when The Kid LAROI stepped up on the stage monolith to sing “Stay,” but by the time Bieber shouted out his wife Hailey Bieber in the crowd on “EVERYTHING HALLELUJAH” (“Hailey, baby, hallelujah”), the mood was almost punishingly mellow.

Then something weird and sublime happened to shake things up—Bieber started pulling up his old YouTube videos on the laptop and singing along. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an artist channel the late-night behavior of nostalgic digital natives (or maybe the behavior exhibited at Gay Guy Music Video Night) into concert format, and watching it live was a real trip. Bieber sang along to the ancient Usher and Chris Brown covers that first garnered the attention of Scooter Braun, pitching his voice an octave lower than that of his cherubic former self. Along with the audiences in Indio and at home, he watched the video for “Baby,” looking perhaps a tad wistful as clips of 14-year-old Baby Bieber cavorting adorably at a bowling alley were projected on the screen behind him. The audience, thirsty for the biggest hits in the catalog, lost it when he cued up “Sorry” and “Where Are U Now.”