“This is not a concert,” Donald Glover said relatively early into his performance at Coachella on Friday night. What he was trying to give the audience, he insisted, was “an experience.”

Accurate? Well, not quite.

Headlining the first day of the annual desert festival as his alter ego Childish Gambino, Glover played approximately 90 minutes of music with help from a backing band.

So, yeah, a concert.


But you could feel the distinction he was making. One year after Beyoncé redefined what’s possible at Coachella, Glover was clearly motivated to elevate his performance — to offer “something special,” as he put it before asking folks in the crowd to put their phones away so as to be present in the moment.

1 / 49 Janelle Monae performs on the Coachella stage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 49 Fans walk past an art piece called MISMO at the end of day one at Coachella. (Luis Sinco / ) 3 / 49 Janelle Monae performs on the Coachella stage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 49 Janelle Monae performs on the Coachella stage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 49 Janelle Monae performs on the Coachella stage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 49 Janelle Monae performs on the Coachella stage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 49 Janelle Monae performs on the Coachella stage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 49 Fans take a break outside the Indio Central Market food tent at the end of day one. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 49 Fans wait for a nighttime performance by DJ Snake on day one. (Luis Sinco / ) 10 / 49 Charlotte Gainsbourg performs. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 49 Charlotte Gainsbourg performs. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 49 K-Pop girlband BLACKPINK performs at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 49 BLACKPINK on the Sahara stage at Coachella. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 49 The band BLACKPINK performs. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 49 A projection of the band BLACKPINK. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 49 Rapper/actor Jaden Smith performs on Day One. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 49 A backup singer is suspended in midair during a performance by Jaden Smith. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 49 People gather near an art piece called “Colossal Cacti” as night falls on Day One. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 49 Spanish singer Rosalia Vila Tobella performs. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 49 Spanish singer Rosalia Vila Tobella performs. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 49 Rosalia Vila Tobella on Day One. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 49 Rosalia Vila Tobella and backup dancers. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 49 A Coachella art installation called “Sarbale Ke.” (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 49 Ron Leddy, a Los Angeles resident, at Coachella. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 49 Fans enjoy the K-Pop girlband BLACKPINK. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 49 Sam Peraino, left, and Kayla Rover inside an art piece called “Spectra.” (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 49 Matty Healy of The 1975 onstage. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 49 Matty Healy of The 1975. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 49 View of the festival grounds through the art installation “Spectra.” (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 49 A visitor peers out of the artwork “Spectra” during day one at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 49 A hand of “The Astronaut” looms over the festival grounds during day one at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 49 Kacey Musgraves onstage during day one at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 49 Kacey Musgraves onstage during day one at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 49 “The Astronaut” by Poetic Kenetics roams the festival grounds during Day One. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 49 Festivalgoer Rheannia Harris, a resident of Oakland, take pictures around a Francis Kere art piece called Sarbale Ke on day one of the Coachella Music And Arts Festival. (Luis Sinco / ) 36 / 49 A security guard keeps watch over an installation at the Emopire Polo Grounds in Indio on day one of the Coachella Music And Arts Festival. (Luis Sinco / ) 37 / 49 Let’s Eat Grandma’s Jenny Hollingworth onstage during Day One. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 49 Brooklyn singer-songwriter Mikaela Straus, also known by her stage name King Princess, performs on the Mojave Stage. (Luis Sinco / ) 39 / 49 Brooklyn singer-songwriter Mikaela Straus, also known by her stage name King Princess, performs on the Mojave Stage. (Luis Sinco / ) 40 / 49 Vocalist Brendan Yates fronts Turnstile, an American hard-core punk band from Baltimore. (Luis Sinco / ) 41 / 49 Las Robertas, an indie rock band from Costa Rica, performs on the Sonora Stage. (Luis Sinco / ) 42 / 49 Las Robertas, an indie rock band from Costa Rica, performs on the Sonora Stage. (Luis Sinco / ) 43 / 49 Fans take pictures around a Poetic Kinetics art piece called “Overview Effect.” (Luis Sinco / ) 44 / 49 Let’s Eat Grandma’s Jenny Hollingworth plays saxophone. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 49 Let’s Eat Grandma’s Rosa Walton, left, and Jenny Hollingworth, on keyboard, center, on stage during Day One. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 49 Festivalgoers dance and cool off in the Do LaB. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 49 Festivalgoers at the Do LaB. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 49 Festivalgoers walk past Francis Kere’s “Sarbale ke” set of towers on Day One. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 49 An early-arriving festivalgoer checks out a piece of art called “Colossal Cacti” by Office Kovacs on Day One. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

FULL COVERAGE: Coachella 2019 »

And though he fell short of Beychella — really, who won’t this weekend? — Glover did pull off an impressive spectacle that shared some elegant visual DNA with the earlier show.


What his production didn’t have — especially compared to Beyoncé’s — was great tunes.

It’s not that Glover can’t rap. And it’s not that he can’t sing. But neither his rapping nor his singing are exceptional; they get the job done in songs that can themselves be rather workmanlike — sturdy and well arranged, but with little of the invention that defines the stuff he loves by Drake and Kanye West and Parliament-Funkadelic.

When he’s going old-school, as in “Boogieman” and “Terrified,” he suggests classic-soul karaoke; when he’s going au courant, as in “Sober” and “3005,” he sounds like an eager acolyte.

All that applied to Friday’s show, which included those songs as well as a pair of flimsy feel-good jams from last year (“Summertime Magic” and “Feels Like Summer”), an unreleased new tune with echoes of West’s “808s & Heartbreak”) and, of course, “This Is America,” his Grammy-winning viral smash about the commodification of black suffering.


But if Glover was unremarkable as a musician — perhaps this is why he was backing away from the idea of a concert — he was downright brilliant as a maker of images.

Throughout the show, cameras followed him closely, framing him in shots that felt as cleverly designed as those in Beychella (which, tellingly, is due to be re-presented in a Netflix documentary out next week).

He started his set on a raised platform in the middle of the audience, with a camera in his face feeding startlingly intimate pictures to the enormous screens on either side of the stage.

He repeatedly strolled down a long runway, each time a camera on a dolly carefully tracking his moves.


And at one point — after asking if anyone wanted to smoke with him — he jumped into the crowd, a camera right behind him, then selected a guy for the job. The resulting shot, with Glover and the dude jammed together with some hulking security guards around them, was beautifully composed and even more beautifully lit.

No wonder Glover took his time with the bit; it was a true pleasure to watch. (Unfortunately, he barred The Times and other media outlets from photographing the show, which is why you don’t see a picture of any of these wonderful scenes at the top of this post.)

Near the end of the show — which featured no mention of “Guava Island,” his new film costarring Rihanna that’s streaming on Amazon — he created another striking moment when he ducked backstage, camera behind him as always, for a quick gulp of water.

When he got back there, as we all saw, Janelle Monáe (who’d preceded him on the festival’s main stage) was waiting for him, and the two shared a lovely moment right there in front of us.


Did Glover know Monáe would be there? Did Monáe expect Glover’s film crew to be trailing him?

That they made you think no at the time means the answer to both is almost certainly yes.

mikael.wood@latimes.com

Twitter: @mikaelwood