The Real Sad Girls Aren’t at Coachella
Real life isn’t banned at Coachella—it’s just off-brand.
There’s a clip going around of Bernie Sanders walking out during Clairo’s Coachella set. You’ve probably seen it. He strolls onstage, says something totally reasonable about how the healthcare system is broken, how people shouldn’t go bankrupt just because they get sick—and yet some people booed. And that’s the part I don’t get.
I’m not mad, and I’m not going to launch a Notes app manifesto. I’m just… confused. I love Clairo (a lot). I love Bernie. But hearing boos directed at a man suggesting people should maybe not die due to being poor? That short-circuited something in me.
Free healthcare shouldn’t be a controversial take. But for some reason, it is for some people.
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Let me be clear—while the vast majority were cheering, there were a few boos that my brain has decided to obsess over. It wasn’t a full anti-Bernie revolt. And to be fair, I don’t think the girls who been CHARMED by Clairo were the ones booing. It was probably brand ambassadors and aspiring self-employed creatives. People who describe their politics as “fluid” and their diet as “intuitive,” but deep down they’re mostly just terrified of anything that isn’t brand-safe.
But the fact that anyone booed the concept of universal healthcare—at a Clairo show—makes no sense. Like, you don’t have to agree with Bernie, but read the room. You’re at a set full of people who cry to songs about mental health and their summer fling in Brooklyn. What did you think was going to happen? Booing him there is like showing up to a vegan potluck and being mad there’s no brisket.
And I guess that’s the thing—I have to remind myself that the real sad girls aren’t at Coachella. They’re at home. They’re journaling. They’re eating Annie’s mac and cheese in bed. They’re not wearing mesh overalls and spending $5K a night to live in a tent. The people who are actually at Coachella? They’re not sad. They’re optimized. They’re carrying electrolyte packets in their $80 tote bags and booking IV drips between sets. They’ve got sleep scores, infrared saunas, and maybe one emergency Xanax just for vibes.
They’re not wrestling with the emotional undercurrent of Clairo’s discography. They’re picking out a soundbite for their photo dump caption and hoping to get a glimpse of Dom Dolla while maintaining a vague air of political awareness. It’s vibes as performance. It’s empathy with a sponsor. It’s people who boo universal healthcare while paying off their GA wristbands in monthly Klarna installments.
It’s not like I expected a policy seminar between sets. No one came to the desert looking for a town hall. But I did think, just for a second, that a sentence like “you shouldn’t lose everything because of a hospital visit” might land. That it could slip in between the haze and the synths and resonate—if only a little.
Coachella isn’t a music festival anymore. It’s a content farm with a wristband. A brand-safe simulation where everyone pretends to be emotionally literate for three days while carefully avoiding anything that might make them feel something inconvenient. Real life isn’t banned—it’s just off-brand.
And I don’t say that with snark. Okay, maybe a little. But mostly it’s just disorientation. It’s weird to watch a person say something objectively good and yet hear groans from a crowd full of people who pay for oat milk with their parents’ AmEx. A crowd that leans into new age spirituality to try and feel “connected” but flinches at the phrase “public option.”
The set wasn’t the problem. Clairo was great. Bernie was great. I even think it was kind of sweet that he was there. He’s been saying the same five correct things for forty years. And for a second, it almost worked. The crowd listened. Some of them cheered. But the second a real-world sentence slipped through the reverb, it broke the illusion.
And that illusion is the whole thing now. These spaces aren’t built for depth. They’re built for pretend depth. We’ve created these hyper-stylized, highly curated arenas where you can perform feelings without ever engaging with anything that might make you uncomfortable. You can wear linen and cry to Nomad, but God forbid someone says “healthcare is a right” before the next lighting cue hits.
Bags still hit though. The lighting was perfect. The camera zooms were devastating. And lowkey, I wish I could have been there for it. I’m not above it. I’m just not convinced the rest of us are fully in it either. I haven’t stopped thinking about how fast we shut down when something asks us to feel for real.
Love you, Clairo. Keep doing you.
-EH