When Justin Bieber stepped onto the Grammys stage in February, for his first solo live performance in years, he laid himself bare. The Canadian pop star emerged shirtless, dressed only in glittery silk boxers and dark socks from his own clothing brand Skylrk, with an electric guitar slung across his tattooed torso. His stark, triumphant performance of “Yukon,” a single from his seventh studio album Swag, was understood to be something of a teaser for his highly anticipated Coachella headlining sets, the first of which took place in Indio, California last night. But for his “Bieberchella” return, a mostly still-lone Bieber instead cocooned himself—in a slouchy zippered red hoodie and black “Speed Racer” shades, also from Skylrk—as he climbed and padded his way around a sparse, abstractly futuristic, Ye-like set in lug-soled Loewe cutout boots.
The 32-year-old primarily performed songs off of Swag and its little brother, Swag II, save for a portion midway through his set, when he shed his sweatshirt shroud to do some scrolling on his laptop. Manually typing into YouTube’s search bar projected onto the massive screen behind him, Bieber pulled up his old music videos and footage of his earliest live performances, which he fleetingly sang along to, as well as a few of his past on-stage fails (whoopsie, ouch!) and unrelated meme clips (deez nuts!). Beneath the hoodie, he wore a raw-hemmed Skylrk fleece tee and below-the-knee waxy black denim shorts by Lu’u Dan. “Alright I’m getting pulled into the deep, dark web,” Bieber said when he finally stepped away from the MacBook. “We gotta keep this show going, man.” He launched into the final section with “Yukon,” segueing into a slew of duets featuring Dijon, Tems, Wizkid, and Mk.gee.
In his boxers at the Grammys, Bieber dug himself into an oddly confident groove; his shirtlessless read as both a canny show of vulnerability and a bit of an on-brand shrug. (“I don’t think he decided what the outfit would be until he walked on stage,” Grammys executive producer Ben Winston told Rolling Stone.) Either way, the surprising nerve of his getup, combined with the less-surprising verve of his still-excellent vocals, seemed to move the room full of his industry peers as much as it did the viewers tuned in at home.
