Frank Ocean will not be performing at Coachella on Sunday after his polarizing performance during the festival’s first weekend on April 16. The R&B singer will be replaced by Blink-182, who reunited for a surprise performance on April 14, announced just the day before. Ocean, 35, suffered an ankle injury before his performance last weekend, which led to him scrapping elaborate plans that included an ice-skating rink built on the stage.
“Frank Ocean will not be performing at weekend 2 of Coachella,” Ocean’s representative said in a statement to Variety on Wednesday. “After suffering an injury to his leg on festival grounds in the week leading up to weekend 1. Frank Ocean was unable to perform the intended show but was still intent on performing, and in 72 hours, the show was reworked out of necessity. On doctor’s advice, [Ocean] is not able to perform weekend 2 due to two fractures and a sprain in his left leg.”
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The statement included a message from Ocean himself. “It was chaotic. There is some beauty in chaos. It isn’t what I intended to show but I did enjoy being out there and I’ll see you soon,” the two-time Grammy winner said.
Ocean performed drastically reworked takes on his songs at Coachella last weekend, but he and his band were barely visible to the crowd. Several people walked in a circle around them, a remnant of the original plans that reportedly involved Ocean performing in the center of an ice rink with skaters encircling him. There was also a random DJ set dropped into the middle of Ocean’s performance that led fans to think he was finishing early. Ocean’s performance also started an hour late.
There have been conflicting reports over the reason for Ocean’s elaborate plans being changed at the last moment. While he and his reps blamed it on his ankle injury, others have claimed it was because he changed his mind. The ice skaters have also begun to speak out, including former hockey players Dan Powers and Chris Powers. During Tuesday’s episode of their Empty Netters podcast, the brothers said they were among about 120 performers who rehearsed for a month at a makeshift ice rink built at Paramount Studios. They said they even had a successful rehearsal on the Coachella main stage. The brothers said that if Ocean really changed his mind because of his injury, the skaters would have been sent home early.
“Those figure skaters got cut not because there was an ice issue, not because there was something wrong – there was no malfunction,” Dan said, via Entertainment Weekly. “[Ocean] just straight up was like, ‘F— this, I’m not doing this anymore.’ And [to] these 120 people [who] had bused out here, he was just like, ‘You guys aren’t doing s— now.’ So it was just a wild flip.”
Ocean’s Coachella set was highly anticipated because it was his first live performance in nearly six years. He originally signed up to perform at the California music festival in 2020, but that festival was canceled due to COVID-19. He pushed it back until this year, with fans hoping he would perform new material. He didn’t, and the show ended with a cover of “At Your Best (You Are Love)” about 20 minutes after midnight. Ocean’s set was also not live-streamed.
As for Blink-182, their performance on April 14 was only announced the day before, reports Variety. It was the first time Travis Barker, Mark Hoppus, and Tom DeLonge performed together since DeLonge left the band in 2014.
