The official lineup announcement is still a little ways off, but the Coachella rumour mill is already firing on all cylinders, and thanks to a usually-reliable source, the not-so-quiet word is that Childish Gambino will be headlining one of the days of the 2019 festival before he hangs up the microphone for good.
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Music industry trade rag HITS Daily Double reports the wild rumour that Gambino will serve as the Friday headliner for Coachella 2019, while Justin Timberlake will close out the Saturday night, and Kanye West heads up the Sunday lineup.
The rumour cites “informed sources” but stops short of naming them, however the publication is generally on-the-money in terms of its published whispers.
The logic, at least as far as recent output is concerned, seems to check out. Gambino is coming off a wild US summer which saw the release of the genre-defining This Is America, Timberlake is on the tail-end of promoting his deeply weird country-pop comeback album Man of the Woods, and West is set to drop Yandhi in late November.
If the rumours prove true, it’ll be the first Coachella for West since headlining in 2011, while it’ll be Gambino’s first since 2012. Timberlake has yet to perform at the iconic Californian festival.
Whether fans see this as a step up or down from last year’s raft of headliners – which included The Weeknd, Beyoncé, and Eminem – remains to be seen. And for the moment this is all rank speculation, so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it’s true or not at this stage.
However, even on the off chance there’s fire attached to this smoke, it might be time to put in that annual leave request and start looking for a cheap flight to LA. Could be a big one in Indio next year.
The 2019 Coachella festival runs over two consecutive weekends in April, beginning on Friday, April 12th.
