The massive crowd stretched shoulder-to-shoulder from the Outdoor Theatre to more than a football field length away to see 17-year-old Billie Eilish perform her Saturday night set on the second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Many sang along to just about every word of her songs.

Girls screamed when she addressed the crowd and Eilish’s presence summoned an incredible energy that kept people dancing in the crowd after the sun went down after a long, hot and windy day at Coachella.

And Eilish seemed just as excited, and even a little shocked, to be there.

“I literally used to sit in my room and cry because I wanted this (expletive) so bad,” she told the crowd as many yelled back “I love you,” to the young musician.

Dressed in long loose black shorts and a black T-shirt, the singer performed on an almost bare stage with just a drummer on one side and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, on keyboard and bass on the other side.

Unlike last week’s technical difficulties, Eilish started on time and gave a set that was clearly one of the artistic highlights of the weekend.

She opened with “Bad Guy,” from her debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” and from there the singer took the crowd through some of her best known songs.

The Los Angeles became a rising star after uploading her song “Ocean Eyes,” which she recorded at home, on Spotify.

The song went viral and since then she has gained a passionate following for her music, which runs the gamut from dark pop, EDM and a bit goth. It’s minimal, yet rich and accompanied by a powerful voice that at times can seem like a whisper driven by the candid honesty in her lyrics.

These are qualities that have endeared her to her young fans.

“She’s different. Her beats and her songs, they just stand out,”  said 11-year Lola Champagne, of La Quinta, who waited along with her mom on the edge of the crowd to see her favorite singer.

“The fact that she’s (accomplished her goal) and she’s a great singer just makes you feel like you can do it,” she added.

The set included songs such as “When the Party’s Over,” “Wish You Were Gay,” “Bury a Friend,” “All the Good Girls Go to Hell” and “Ocean Eyes.”

And just like last week, Vince Staples joined her on stage to perform his verse on the song “&Burn.” As the song ended the Long Beach rapper hugged the singer and she smiled widely.

But it was the audience’s enthusiasm that really got to Eilish.

At one point near the end of her hour-long set, fans were cheering and yelling “we love you” so loudly that she had to stop singing for a while and even lowered her head into her hands and seemed to be wiping away tears.

“I promise you if I could stay up on this stage for the rest of my life I would. Forever,” she told the crowd.

“I feel like I’m not here. Like this isn’t real,” she added.

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That’s a wrap on the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Sunday, April 14, was capped off with Arichella and special guests, crowd-pleaser Lizzo and Pusha T‘s iceberg set.

Not only did we catch headliner Ariana Grande, who fans at home had a hard time waiting for, we also spent some time with H.E.R., Khalid, Bad Bunny, Gucci Gang, and more. You can also check out photos from Saturday sets here and Friday performances here.

Grande definitely topped off the night by bringing out ‘NSYNC, Nicki Minaj and Diddy, but some festival goers and Couchella viewers at home had a hard time picking between the pop star and the premiere of HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones.”

We didn’t see people watching “Game of Thrones” on their phones, but they were doing plenty of other things. Coachella had plenty of new tech partnerships for 2019, including Postmates delivery, Amazon lockers and more.

Two of the stages got into the tech, too. The Do Lab’s new stage has some LED columns incorporated into its design while the Sahara Tent revamped with an augmented reality experience.

Meanwhile, we kept an eye out for festival fashion all weekend, but we didn’t see any janties. However, there were plenty of bedazzled faces.

And if you really want to know about the heart of Coachella, it’s the people. At age 70, Susan Phillips attended her first Coachella, with her son Eric, who clocked his 10th this weekend. We spent time with them throughout the weekend.

We’ll be back next weekend for a second round of Coachella goodness, and to quote Sunday night’s headliner, we say, “Thank U, Next.”

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While Tame Impala technically headlined the main stage at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday – and played a strong and enjoyable set – two other acts, one old, one new, captured most of the conversation as the second day of the festival wound down.

Weezer, who play festival sets around their native Southern California so often they almost feel like the region’s house band, turned in one of its strongest sets in recent memory, thanks partly to the cross-pollination its recent album of covers brought to the band’s mix of sing-along songs.

And Billie Eilish, the 17-year-old indie pop musician from Los Angeles, was set for one of the biggest crowds and most-anticipated sets of the weekend until technical issues delayed her start for more than 30 minutes, during which a good number of fans drifted away – their loss, because once she hit the stage she was terrific.

Tame Impala opened strongly with one of its most melodic numbers, “Let It Happen,” the soaring vocals of Kevin Parker and swirling psychedelic rock of the Australian band an instantly engaging sound. Add to that trippy visuals, often in electric pinks and reds, and anyone who’d altered their consciousness before the show was surely digging the scene.

But the video screens also seldom let fans see Parker or the other musicians, who played strongly on songs such as the heavy rocking “Elephant” and catchy “Less I Know The Better,” which created a distance between fan and performer that didn’t change until the final number, “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” when Parker’s face could finally be seen on screen.

Eilish, whose career has skyrocketed over the past year, made her debut on Saturday after her team struggled through the kind of apparently serious technical difficulties that had to have created a bit of panic back stage.

Once she arrived on the Outdoor Theatre about 33 minutes after her scheduled time the teenager showed no sign it had affected her, opening with the live debuts of a pair of songs, “Bad Guy” and “My Strange Addiction,” off her debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” which arrived the last week of March.

Other highlights of her set included “Idontwannabeyouanymore” and “Watch / & Burn,” the latter which featured a guest turn by rapper Vince Staples though continuing technical problems made his vocals nonexistent to listeners on the field.

Weezer, who played before both Eilish and Tame Impala, might have been the fan favorite set of the night. They opened with a barbershop quartet rendition of “Beverly Hills,” then clicked into rock mode and blazed enthusiastically through one familiar song after another, including numbers such as “Buddy Holly,” “Hash Pipe,” and “Island In The Sun,” all of which had fans singing loudly along wherever you were on the field.

Add to that the that recent covers album, the so-called Teal Album, made for opportunities to bring in guest stars. Tears For Fears’ Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal joined singer Rivers Cuomo and the rest of Weezer to performer “Everybody Wants To Rule The World.” A little later, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas of TLC out to sing “No Scrubs” with the band.

But the final cover, “Africa” by Toto, had the biggest impact on the fans. It’s the oddball choice that started Weezer on the path to recording the covers album, and you should have heard all the Coachella-goers blessing the rains down in Africa as they sang it loudly, sincerely, and happily so.

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