The desert air was humming with that specific kind of dust-and-stale-beer static you only get at the Empire Polo Club. It was April 11, and the Coachella crowd was still vibrating from the heat when Geese took the Gobi stage. They’re a band that likes to keep you on your toes, I guess—or maybe they just have a weird sense of humor? Either way, nobody really expected them to drop a cover of Justin Bieber’s 2010 anthem “Baby” right in the middle of their set.
Cameron Winter and his bandmates didn’t just play it, though. They wove it straight into their own track “2122,” which is a pretty bold move. Actually, wait—it’s not the first time they’ve messed around with that song. They had a studio version sitting on their YouTube channel since 2024, but it never really saw the light of day officially.
It felt like a strange appetizer for the main course later that night. Hours after Geese wrapped up, Bieber finally took the stage himself. The whole thing was… well, let’s just call it a lot. He spent a significant chunk of time just singing along to his own old music videos playing off YouTube.
Watching a global superstar perform karaoke to his own teenage self while the crowd collectively lost its mind—or maybe got frustrated, it was hard to tell from the back—was certainly a choice. According to reports from Misryoum, the set was described as a “trial of patience.” Bieber even brought out the Kid Laroi, but honestly, the most memorable parts were those low-fi, grainy videos from twenty years ago.
It’s funny how these things loop. You get a younger band like Geese tipping their hat to the pop canon, and then you get the original artist showing up to lean into that same nostalgia, almost as if he’s trying to reclaim it. Or maybe he’s just trolling us all a little bit. It didn’t quite feel like a standard show, more like a chaotic trip through a hard drive.
Anyway, the set ended, the dust settled, and everyone went home wondering if they’d just witnessed genius or a total disaster. I’m still not entirely sure which one it was.