After Kanye West dropped out of Coachella less than two weeks ahead of his scheduled performance, the festival has confirmed The Weeknd will join Swedish House Mafia to fill the headliner slot.
The Swedish three-piece and The Weeknd—who collaborated last year on “Moth to a Flame”—will close out the festival on Sunday. Swedish House Mafia were already set to play the festival, as the lineup announcement in January showed, but they had no specific date listed for their performance. Some suggested, as Variety did, that their position on the poster was in case Ye decided to drop out.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Kanye had decided to pull out of the festival for undisclosed reasons. He has yet to publicly comment on the decision, but he had hyped his performance on Instagram earlier this year. The rapper has since gone silent on social media after being suspended for 24 hours on IG in mid-March for hate speech, harassment, and bullying following comments about Trevor Noah, Kim Kardashian, and Pete Davidson.
Reports that surfaced on Tuesday and Wednesday showed that The Weeknd was in consideration to headline, as were Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Silk Sonic, fresh off their Grammy win, were asked but Bruno Mars reportedly declined because they wouldn’t have enough time to put on a show to their liking.
The first leg of The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn Tour with Doja Cat is set to kick off in July, and run until September. In the meantime, he’s been busy working on his six-episode HBO series The Idol, which he co-created and will star in.
