Green Day and the Misfits rocked Coachella (review)

“Is this anybody’s first Coachella?,” Billie Joe Armstrong asked the crowd during their set on Saturday (4/12). “Me too!” It’s true: 31 years after their infamously muddy set at Woodstock ’94, Green Day finally graced the Coachella stage for the first time, and they did it as headliners. (Though the jury’s still out if the Charli XCX set that happened right beforehand should’ve had that designation.) It was obviously a little late in both Coachella and Green Day’s careers for this moment to finally happen, but it also came in the midst of what’s been feeling like a monumental era of Green Day’s career. They’ve been everywhere lately–they’re involved with an upcoming Green Day-inspired movie, they collaborated with Billie Eilish on live television for FireAid, and they’ve only recently graduated from arenas to becoming a consistently stadium band. Their most recent stadium tour had them celebrating the respective 30th and 20th anniversaries of Dookie and American Idiot by performing them in full, and it’s been clear that the latter especially has struck a chord with new generations who weren’t even born when the album first came out. And it’s not just a nostalgia trip: they’re fresh off releasing their best album since American Idiot with 2024’s Saviors, and its song “Bobby Sox” is their biggest singalong anthem since “Know Your Enemy.” It closed out their Coachella set (before the obligatory “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” encore) and it rocked the crowd just as much as all the classics.

Because of Green Day and especially American Idiot‘s endurance with generation after generation, Coachella had their first successful legacy rock headliner in quite some time. From the minute they opened with “American Idiot,” they were explosive and the crowd gave all that energy right back. They went on to sort of play a condensed version of the American Idiot/Dookie tour, with the same (or at least similar) props and visuals making for time capsules of both eras, broken up by one other Saviors highlight (“One Eyed Bastard”). They also worked in a crowd-pleasing selection of songs from other albums (“Know Your Enemy,” “Hitchin’ A Ride,” “Brain Stew,” “Minority”), and they fired on all cylinders throughout. In classic Green Day fashion, they brought a couple fans on stage–a very excited fan named Brooke to sing with them during “Know Your Enemy” and a way-too-confident rockstar-looking guy who apparently held up a sign all night and seemed like he was looking for his 15 minutes while playing guitar on “Time of Your Life”–and moments like those were perfect for a festival set where people might be casually checking an artist out for their first time. If Coachella was your introduction to Green Day’s live show, you were treated to a feel-good, high-energy, joyous set from total pros.

Green Day was also one of a handful of bands on Saturday that helped reconnect Goldenvoice with its punk roots (following a mosh-fueled Speed set on Friday and a Circle Jerks set that’s scheduled for Sunday). Earlier in the day, Weezer and Jimmy Eat World (both of whom previously toured with Green Day) played hits-filled sets to loving crowds, and right after Green Day, the midnight crowd was treated to a set from the Misfits (who also closed out the inaugural 2024 edition of Goldenvoice’s punk festival No Values) adjacent from the main stage on the Outdoor Theatre stage. (And that’s The Original Misfits, with Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only, and Doyle backed by ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and touring guitarist Acey Slade.) Green Day is about as professional as punk gets (not a bad thing at all), but the Misfits are still as raw, gritty, and devilish as you’d hope, and the unpolished punk energy they brought on Saturday night/Sunday morning was unlike anything else at the festival that day. Fans decked out in classic punk/hardcore band tees were kicking up dust in the mosh pit as the Misfits ran through one classic after the next–“Where Eagles Dare,” “Hybrid Moments,” “Bullet,” “Some Kinda Hate,” “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?,” “Astro Zombies,” “Skulls,” the list goes on. They’re perfectly imperfect, and though their crowd was way smaller than it was when they headlined other festivals like Riot Fest, the band went just as hard and everyone in attendance was grinning, fist-raising, moving around, and yelling along. (Glenn also had the crowd in the palm of his hands with stage banter about the good old days when they’d rate their live shows on the criteria of the more bruises on their bodies, the better the show.) It can be easy for a certain type of music fan to mourn the days when Coachella was actually the place for a classic reunited band like the Misfits, but in 2025, there was something especially exciting about seeing them bring this kind of energy to the current Coachella environment.

Elsewhere on day two: Brat Summer continued with Charli XCX playing a massive set that featured surprise appearances from Lorde, Billie Eilish, and Troye Sivan. Bernie Sanders headed to the desert after his rally in LA (with AOC, Neil Young, Joan Baez, and more) to introduce Clairo‘s set with an impassioned speech about our current state of affairs. Portishead’s Beth Gibbons played one of her very select US solo shows and I very sadly missed it because she entirely conflicted with Green Day. Japanese Breakfast covered Gorillaz’s “On Melancholy Hill” with Ginger Root. Blonde Redhead brought trippy vibes to the indoor Sonora tent. And more…

And in case you missed it, the day before Green Day’s headlining set, Billie Joe joined The Go-Go’s on stage to sing guest lead vocals on their classic “Head Over Heels.”

SETLIST: GREEN DAY @ COACHELLA 2025, 4/12/2025
American Idiot
Holiday
Know Your Enemy
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
One Eyed Bastard
Longview
Welcome to Paradise
Hitchin’ a Ride
Brain Stew
St. Jimmy
21 Guns
Minority
Basket Case
When I Come Around
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Jesus of Suburbia
Bobby Sox
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

SETLIST: MISFITS @ COACHELLA 2025, 4/12/2025
Death Comes Ripping
I Turned Into a Martian
Vampira
Where Eagles Dare
Some Kinda Hate
Hybrid Moments
Bullet
Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
Hollywood Babylon
London Dungeon
Earth A.D.
Green Hell
Come Back
Horror Business
Violent World
Halloween
Skulls
Astro Zombies
Last Caress

Encore:
20 Eyes