does frank ocean tour

Frank Ocean

Similar artists on tour, frank ocean merch.

Live Photos of Frank Ocean

Concerts and tour dates, fan reviews.

About Frank Ocean

• Most popular artists worldwide
• Trending artists worldwide

• Tourbox for artists

Search for events or artists

• Sign up Log in

• Get the app
• Moscow concerts
• Change location
• Popular Artists
• Live streams
• Deutsch Português
• Popular artists

Frank Ocean  

• On tour: no
• Upcoming 2024 concerts: none

2,822,815 fans get concert alerts for this artist.

Join Songkick to track Frank Ocean and get concert alerts when they play near you.

Find your next concert

Join 2,822,815 fans getting concert alerts for this artist

Similar artists with upcoming concerts

Tours most with, past concerts.

Coachella (Weekend One)

Flow Festival

Way Out West Festival

View all past concerts

Frank Ocean (born October 27, 1987) is the stage name of extolled American R&B singer-songwriter Christopher Breaux, born in Long Beach, California, but raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.

Raised on a healthy diet of local jazz and his mother’s CD collection which included Celine Dion and Anita Baker, during his teenage years Ocean would wash cars and mow lawns to pay for studio time. The singer later enrolled at the University of New Orleans before hurricane Katrina hit, which offered Frank Ocean some perspective and the singer subsequently moved to Los Angeles, California. Having recorded a number of demos at a friend’s studio, the alt-R&B singer earned a songwriting deal and began penning songs for the likes of Justin Bieber, John Legend, and Beyoncé.

Reluctant to remain in the limelight’s shadow, Ocean joined the hype-inspiring hip-hop collective Odd Future in 2009. During his time with the group the singer’s songwriting found a new lease of life thanks to band member Tyler, the Creator, and Ocean subsequently inked a solo deal with Def Jam Recordings. In 2011 Ocean released his debut mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra”, which was extolled by critics and fans alike. Endowed with natural R&B tones and a willingness to take experimental risks, the record introduced the singer to a new host of listeners and future collaborators. Later in 2011 the singer appeared on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s collaborative album “Watch the Throne” raising the anticipation for his debut full-length.

Frank Ocean’s released his first full-length album “Channel Orange” in July 2012, universally receiving widespread and absolute critical acclaim. Featuring hip-hop, soul and R&B influences, the record is one of powerful imagery and Ocean’s enviably confessional songwriting. Propelling the singer to the heights of musical success the record debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and produced the singles “Thinkin Bout You”, “Pyramids”, “Sweet Life”, and “Lost”. The record went on to earn Ocean six Grammy Award nominations and was supported by an extensive U.S and European tour.

Live reviews

Out of all the artists I have had the opportunity to see live to date, Frank Ocean comes out top. In 2013, headlining the second stage at Wireless Festival, I made great attempt to get I good spot in the crowd, anticipating that this performance wouldn't disappoint. And it didn't. There were no gimmicks, just Frank Ocean and his piano. It was a breathtaking, solo live performance. He performed most of the Channel Orange album, which the crowd reacted eagerly to each and every track intro. He also performed the full version of "Pyramids," which got the crowd really going. The highlight of his set has to be "Thinkin' bout you." I think this is the most memorable live musical moment I am proud to say I was present for. In the tent, every single person in the crowd was singing along with Frank Ocean for this one, so much so that it drowned Frank out. Regardless, it was a beautiful moment, for such a soulful song. Of my Wireless experience that year, Frank Ocean was by far my favourite act, beating likes of Justin Timberlake, Jay Z, Miguel and Kendrick Lamar. Frank Ocean is someone who I would thoroughly recommend to anyone familiar with his material. For a live musical act, he is one of the best out there.

Report as inappropriate

Frank Ocean is an American R&B singer and songwriter who hails all the way from the States. Ocean, real name Christopher Breaux, has made quite a name for himself in the States and is now making himself a household name worldwide. Ocean has an amazing voice and his vocals suit a live performance, where he really gets to show off his raw, natural talent. I’ve heard Ocean reach notes that most female artists would be unable to reach. His concert was amazing, displaying his whole array of hits as well as his lesser known songs. Ocean mixed ballads, such as the brilliant ‘Thinking Bout You’ which really showed off his vocal skills, to more upbeat tracks such as ‘Swim Good’. Ocean tends to close his eyes when he sings ballads, and really concentrate on evoking real, raw emotions. During the more upbeat tempos, he gets the crowd going, swaying their arms and dancing to the chilled beats. His music is perfect for a festival crowd, as it is chilled and easy to listen to. Frank Ocean is a soulful singer who needs no gimmicks to be brilliant on stage.

Many people would argue that Californian singer/songwriter Frank Ocean has changed the face of R & B with the release of his first two albums 'nostalgia,ULTRA' and 'Channel ORANGE'. The intelligent lyricist breathed a much needed breath of fresh air into a highly recycled genre and demonstrated what could be achieved when manipulating the key conventions.

The former member of Odd Future has had great experience onstage yet he seems to adopt a whole new confident persona during his solo headline tours. Perhaps it is the fact he has a great backing band supporting him or the fact every person in the room has brought tickets to his show. Whatever the reason, he conducts the show with a bold pace able to really stretch out moments and bask in the instrumentals or lyrical bridges. The crowd goes absolutely wild throughout as he is something of a cult hero on both the UK and US circuit, he thanks them and concludes with an endearing 'Sierra Leone'.

Posters (31)

Find out more about Frank Ocean tour dates & tickets 2024-2025

Want to see Frank Ocean in concert? Find information on all of Frank Ocean’s upcoming concerts, tour dates and ticket information for 2024-2025.

Unfortunately there are no concert dates for Frank Ocean scheduled in 2024.

Songkick is the first to know of new tour announcements and concert information, so if your favorite artists are not currently on tour, join Songkick to track Frank Ocean and get concert alerts when they play near you, like 2822815 other Frank Ocean fans.

Last concert:

Popularity ranking:

• Travis Scott (45)
• Frank Ocean (46)
• Kings of Leon (47)

Concerts played in 2024:

Touring history

Most played:

• Los Angeles (LA) (7)
• New York (NYC) (6)
• San Diego (3)

Appears most with:

• Porter Robinson (12)
• Calvin Harris (7)
• Flying Lotus (7)
• Tyler, The Creator (6)
• The Rapture (6)

Distance travelled:

Similar artists

• Most popular charts
• Campaigns for promoters
• API information
• Brand guidelines
• Community guidelines
• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Cookies settings
• Cookies policy

Get your tour dates seen everywhere.

• But we really hope you love us.

Exclusive: Frank Ocean to headline Coachella in 2023

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival co-founder Paul Tollett loves to drive, spending a typical work week crisscrossing Southern California, from Malibu to the desert, Pomona to downtown Los Angeles. And yet his most satisfying trip of late was a short drive to the Sunset Strip to see his first live concert in more than a year.

It was a surprise set at the intimate Roxy Theatre by hip-hop star Tyler, the Creator , who performed songs from his new album, “Call Me If You Get Lost.”

“That’s the only thing I’ve been to and, man, it felt great,” Tollett, 55, says of the June 29 performance. “Just being in there, and the energy... I missed it.”

Forty years ago, MTV changed music forever. These four rock icons remember all too well

Billy Idol, Huey Lewis, REO Speedwagon’s Kevin Cronin and the Go-Go’s Kathy Valentine look back on the music video revolution, as MTV (remember MTV?) turns 40.

July 28, 2021

After a long 2020-21 derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tollett is hoping to get that feeling a lot more often as the live music industry slowly reopens. In his role as president of Goldenvoice Productions, a subsidiary of AEG Presents, he typically oversees more than 2,000 shows a year across California and stretching to Las Vegas.

Most of his attention now is on finalizing details for the return of the hugely influential Coachella festival in 2022 — after an excruciating delay of three years since its 20th anniversary in 2019. He co-founded the festival with his late partner, Rick Van Santen, and retains half-ownership with AEG.

Looking even further ahead, he was ready to confirm something else: reclusive R&B visionary Frank Ocean will return as a headliner, but not until the 2023 festival.

Normally, Tollett would never reveal the name of any act so far in advance, but he says fans deserve some reassurance after the chaos and uncertainty of the last year and a half.

“Right now, it’s the Wild West,” he says. “I’m just trying to be as fair as I can to artists and to the fans to make sure that eventually they get to see everyone that we talked about.”

Originally booked for 2020 along with fellow headliners Rage Against the Machine and Travis Scott, Ocean was not available for the latest rescheduled Coachella , set to be held over the weekends of April 15-17 and April 22-24, 2022, at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. (Rage Against the Machine and Scott will be back, with a third headliner to be announced.)

Even with the wait, a Frank Ocean performance remains a rare commodity. He performed at Coachella once before, in 2012, and delivered an especially memorable set in 2017 at the FYF Festival that Times critic Mikael Wood described as “a one-of-a-kind piece of performance art devised by a musician uninterested in the ordinary.”

Tollett agrees: “His FYF performance was phenomenal.”

There are other challenges in bringing back Coachella, which is recognized as the most profitable music festival in the U.S., grossing more than $100 million annually, and where acts ranging from Beyoncé to Radiohead to Billie Eilish have delivered career-defining performances.

When the 2020 show was originally booked, rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat were listed lower on the bill as compelling newer acts, but they have since become major hit-makers. That will have to be reflected in their placement on the bill.

“It’s a whole different conversation,” Tollett says, “different stage, different timing.”

Tollett, who doesn’t often give interviews, agreed to talk in part to announce the Ocean commitment but also to discuss the devastating limbo the live music industry has been in since March 2020 and the arrival of COVID-19. He spoke where he’s often most comfortable, behind the wheel of his car, at the moment parked in Atwater Village. He was dressed in his usual jeans and a black baseball cap.

At Goldenvoice, which shares an office building with parent company AEG within walking distance of Staples Center downtown, the freezing of all live events for more than a year was a staggering blow. Some of its approximately 200 employees were furloughed during that period, though virtually all have since returned.

Last March, Coachella was preparing for its opening weekend when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an emergency stay-at-home order across the state. Few realized how long it would last.

Moving trucks were already on-site in Indio, with workers beginning construction on tents and stages. Then, ominous warnings about the virus began to reach Tollett.

“I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if it’s going to affect Coachella just for a day or two? Wow, this could be weird. Could we really postpone a show?’”

The large commissioned art pieces that are a mainstay of the festival were also going up — their installation was about 80% completed when all work abruptly shut down. That artwork remains in place, but not all of it was built to survive until April.

“Some of that stuff is not going to last two years. We lost a lot of money on things like that,” Tollett says.

Los Lobos nearly called it quits last year. Lucky for L.A., they made a covers album instead

The pandemic forced Los Lobos off the road for the first time in 40 years. The downtime led to questions about the future, then an all-L.A. covers album.

July 29, 2021

The festival was initially postponed until October 2020, and Goldenvoice staff quickly organized a new plan for its 180 acts in less than two days of calls and emails. Artists and their representatives didn’t object, and the process went surprisingly smoothly, but that relief was short-lived as it became clear that the pandemic was not fading.

“Then it got harder: ‘Oh, it’s going to happen again,’” says Tollett, recalling the second rescheduling to April 2021. “We started getting a feeling fairly soon like, ‘Oh, man, this is not getting any better.’ And you can always count on everyone not to work together. It’s a complicated country, a complicated world, with different beliefs and what they want to do.”

More than half of Coachella’s ticket-buyers requested refunds during the early months of the pandemic.

“I joked that we did too good of a job on refunds,” Tollett says with a smile. “I understand you want your refund. You’ve got your hotel, your airfare, all your stuff. Tickets are the smallest of it all, actually.

“I’d rather the ticket buyers be happy with us than hold onto their money and later be mad.”

During the worst months of the pandemic, some prominent voices quoted in publications, including Billboard and Vice, began declaring that live music events might never return to normal. Tollett says he kept his cool, neither panicking nor rushing back into operation this year as vaccinations began to push back the threat. Being connected to AEG, he adds, helped Goldenvoice remain cautious. There was no pressure to restart the cash flow.

“I told AEG, ‘We’re going to wait on Coachella.’ It wasn’t a fight at all,” he said.

One influence on his decision was seeing a photograph from an earlier Coachella that captured five young friends enjoying the festival without restriction: hair blowing in the breeze, holding hands, no shoes. Tollett decided he didn’t want to bring the festival back until he could re-create moments like that.

“I don’t want to force it too soon. I’d rather wait,” he says. “You’ll never remember that you had to wait, but you’ll remember if you went to a really bad event.”

When tickets went on sale in June for the 2022 festival, without even a single artist being named, all 125,000 for each weekend sold within hours, as usual.

As shows have begun returning across the country, the Delta variant of COVID-19 has presented an alarming setback. A planned Foo Fighters concert to reopen the Forum in Inglewood was postponed when someone affiliated with the rock band was diagnosed with the coronavirus.

Over this past weekend, the annual Lollapalooza festival in Chicago returned with crowds at full capacity of about 100,000 fans each day. Attendees were required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test within the previous three days.

Goldenvoice is only just beginning to promote shows again and is taking a wait-and-see attitude. The company isn’t requiring vaccinations or tests.

“We’re monitoring everything,” Tollett adds. “I don’t want to put anything in cement right now, because I just don’t know.”

About five years ago, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates attended Coachella, and Tollett gave him a personal tour. It turned out that Gates had given the festival some thought.

“He goes, ‘I’ve been following the show for a while. I think it can last forever.’ I think, ‘Oh, that’s so great. I’m so happy,’” recalls Tollett. “And he says, ‘Except for...’ and he names a whole bunch of things, and ‘pandemic’ was one of them. And I’m like, ‘Wow, you’re a buzzkill.’ But he was right.”

Not that Tollett hadn’t considered the possibilities himself. He is someone who likes to make lists, compiling ideas, problems, solutions.

“I think about those things nonstop,” he says, adding, “We didn’t have insurance. So what we lost, we lost.”

Tollett notes that Goldenvoice has done well over the years and that the company did not request government assistance. Larger companies that have enjoyed success with festivals, he argued, should not be dipping into that funding.

“You all started festivals to make a bunch of money and you did, and then you hit a whammy,” Tollett says of promoters facing challenges during the pandemic year. “That’s a part of business — hitting whammies.”

ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill dies at 72

Dusty Hill, ZZ Top’s bearded bassist, has died at his Houston home at 72, the Texas blues-rock trio announced.

Now, he sees a coming traffic jam in the concert business as all the acts that had to cancel their 2020 touring plans rush out, alongside acts that were already set to launch in 2021 and 2022.

“Ticket prices concern me. Everyone is trying to make up for lost time,” Tollett says. “I’ve seen a bump in everything out there, not [just] music, but food prices, gas, everything. Everyone’s put a little something [extra] on, and that can’t last.”

Things at Goldenvoice are going well so far, although sales for country music concerts are lagging. Tollett notes that all the Goldenvoice festivals that have gone on sale this year are already sold out, including Coachella, the country-themed Stagecoach and the Just Like Heaven show in Pasadena.

“It’s a good market right now, but we don’t want to push it,” he says cautiously. “We just had to wait a couple of years.”

More to Read

Coachella and Stagecoach sound guy Dave Rat reveals the secrets to keeping the music crystal clear

April 22, 2024

L.A. artist Blxst on his Coachella debut and where he’s eating Weekend 2

April 18, 2024

The 15 best things we saw at Coachella 2024

April 15, 2024

The biggest entertainment stories

Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Steve Appleford was a features editor for Times Community News and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Calendar section.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Despite apology, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs faces peril after video shows him attacking Cassie Ventura

May 19, 2024

All of Billie Eilish’s senses are alive on the ravishing ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’

May 17, 2024

Entertainment & Arts

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seen on video chasing, kicking, dragging then-girlfriend Cassie at L.A. hotel

Dua Lipa called up Chris Stapleton to collaborate on that surprise ACM Awards duet

Frank Ocean

Latest setlist, frank ocean on april 16, 2023.

Empire Polo Club, Indio, California

Note: First show since August 13th, 2017. Moon River, Ivy, Pretty Sweet, Thinkin Bout You & Dear April were on set but were cut due to Coachella curfew. CRYSTALLMESS set was almost 12 minutes

More From Forbes

Frank ocean hits a new career high–despite not releasing new music for years.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

MANCHESTER, TN - JUNE 14: Artist Frank Ocean performs during the 2014 Bonnaroo Music & Arts ... [+] Festival on June 14, 2014 in Manchester, Tennessee. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

Frank Ocean fans have been waiting quite a long time to hear something new from the R&B powerhouse. The singer-songwriter hasn’t released a song in years, and it’s been well over half a decade since his last album(s) dropped. Despite his relative quiet, the Grammy winner is still rising on the Billboard charts.

This week, Ocean hits a new career high point on one ranking in the U.S. His full-length Blonde lifts to a new peak of No. 33 on the Top Streaming Albums chart– Billboard’s ranking of the most-streamed projects in the country.

Blonde is up from No. 39 on the Top Streaming Albums chart this week. It’s now spent 14 weeks on the tally, and even though it’s been out for many years, it’s performing better on streaming platforms than it has in quite some time.

Ocean’s Blonde isn’t only climbing on the Top Streaming Albums chart this time around, though its step forward on that list is perhaps the most impressive. The set appears on four Billboard tallies, and it’s up on all of them.

On the Billboard 200, the all-genre ranking of the most-consumed albums in America, Blonde jumps back into the uppermost quarter of the roster. Ocean’s bestseller leaps from No. 51 to No. 43 on the tally. According to Luminate, the set moved 17,863 equivalent units, which is up more than 4% from last period.

Ghost Of Tsushima Is Already Flooded With Negative Reviews On Steam

Wwe smackdown results, winners and grades with stratton vs. belair, biden trump debates what to know as trump pushes for 2 more faceoffs.

Blonde is also on the rise on two genre-specific charts. Ocean’s latest full-length improves to No. 13 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums tally and No. 4 on the Top R&B Albums list.

Channel Orange , the album that propelled Ocean from underground favorite to superstar, is also present on a number of charts, but its performance doesn’t mirror that of Blonde . The early set climbs on the Billboard 200, lifting to No. 73 thanks to a 3.5% increase in consumption.

While it may be soaring on that list, Channel Orange is not a grower on every Billboard tally it appears on. The studio LP is steady at No. 31 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and it actually falls one space on the Top R&B Albums roster, declining to No. 9.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories

Frank Ocean's new album is all but confirmed

By Ruchira Sharma

Ever since he invited us into his genius production and intimate lyrics, Frank Ocean has become a vital voice in music and among the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation. Fans, with great pains, and no official confirmation from the musician, decided over the past two years that Ocean's decision to venture into radio and jewellery design likely meant new music was unlikely to be his priority for a while, if ever. But finally, those days are coming to an end.

Ocean hasn't dropped an album since 2016's Blonde, a record that bolstered his position as one of this century's best artists. In 2020, he called off the release of a vinyl with an unnamed new song that was available to preorder due to Covid. But with a headline slot at Coachella and an all-but-definitive announcement that new music is on the way, 2023 might just be a year for the books for Frank Ocean fans. 

Here are the 6 compelling pieces of evidence that suggest a new Frank Ocean record is coming:

1.) He basically told us it is

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

The fact that Ocean headlined Coachella this year would probably have been a safe bet that new music was on the way as rarely do artists get that top spot without something having just come out or something on the horizon. Still, Frank Ocean isn't most artists, so although he did take the opportunity to tell fans in the California desert and online via janky Instagram livestreams (because the festival didn't stream his set), it came with a bit of a caveat. 

In between songs, he said, “I wanna talk about why we’re here because it’s not about the new album… not that there’s not a new album.” And that's as far as the details go. No date, no title and no new songs to satiate us in the meantime. But if Frank Ocean fans know how to do one thing, it's riding the wave of mystery.  

2.) A poster of his has some interesting messaging

Instagram content.

But even before his first live set in six years at Coachella, Ocean was dropping hints through his merch. In his most recent drop, he released a poster which tells the story of a “fictitious Recording Artist” who attempted to tell the story of his experiences in the industry through a 2019 photo series that was shelved. 

The images appear to show Succession's Jeremy Strong as a record label’s Chairman, arguing in an unproductive meeting with said Recording Artist about “the single's distribution model”. In the block of text, the scene concludes with a note that the Recording Artist “is again interested in more durational bodies of work". 

If you've not guessed: fans are reading fictitious Recording Artist as Frank Ocean, and that final bit to the new music set to come our way. 

3.) He's released new music for his radio show

Despite remaining elusive on the album front, Ocean hasn't taken a complete break from music. Over the past few years, the artist has produced music to accompany his Apple Music 1 radio show, Blonded Radio. In the most recent episode, he spoke to a microdosing expert on top of an electronic instrumental production he'd created.  

4.) He cleared his Instagram

In September last year, Ocean cleared his Instagram leading to fans speculating a new era (new music?) was on the way. 

5.) Reports he was ‘shopping’ his new record

In September 2021, NME reported that Ocean was “shopping” his new record after releasing Blonde independently. Many took the news to mean new music was incoming, even if an album wasn't signed, sealed and ready to drop exactly. 

6.) Ocean has been dropping by the studio

Reports confirm Ocean hasn't been ghosting the recording studio these last few years. Rosalía told i-D last year she'd spent time with him in the studio and even took on some of his advice to "open the world like a nut”.

Similarly, Ocean made reference to being on hallucinogens while “in the studio” during an episode of Blonded Radio. 

Convinced yet? Fans ride the waves of rumours and hope of upcoming Ocean music because it's all they have. At least for now our optimism, revived by these updates, is far from dead in the water.

More from GQ

You don’t know Rita Ora  

Rob Pattinson, in a skirt , gives absolutely zero fucks

Nims Purja, the 14 Peaks mountaineer and hype man of the Himalayas

Joel’s watch is The Last Of Us’s greatest and most confounding mystery 

Lando Norris is coming in hot

By Jack King

By Daisy Jones

By Robert Leedham

By Adam Cheung

By Lucy Ford

By Siobhan Grogan

By Thor Svaboe

• Consequence

Frank Ocean

Upcoming frank ocean festivals appearances, upcoming frank ocean concerts near me.

Frank Ocean Drops Out of Coachella Weekend 2, Replaced by Blink-182

Ocean reportedly suffered two fractures and a sprain in his left leg.

April 19, 2023

Frank Ocean Injured His Ankle Before Polarizing Coachella Set: Report

The injury was supposedly the reason for a last-minute change in production.

April 17, 2023

Coachella 2023: What You Didn't See on the Livestream

Bad Bunny and BLACKPINK dazzled, Frank Ocean polarized fans, and Blink-182 made their long-awaited return.

Frank Ocean at Coachella: A Reserved Superstar Makes His Long-Awaited Return

The elusive R&B crooner hit to the stage for the first time in six years, with a few surprises in hand

Coachella's 2023 Lineup One Day Later: Highlights, Lowlights, Surprises, and Omissions

Before you decide whether to head to the desert, check out our breakdown of Coachella 2023's historic lineup.

January 11, 2023

Coachella Reveals Historic 2023 Lineup

Frank Ocean, BLACKPINK, Bad Bunny, Gorillaz, Björk, and Rosalía are all heading to Indio this April.

January 10, 2023

Frank Ocean Selling $25,000 Luxury Cock Ring

Part of the latest capsule from Ocean's luxury goods company Homer.

August 7, 2022

Westworld Composer Reveals the Frank Ocean Cover You Might Have Missed in Season 4, Episode 4: Exclusive

Ramin Djawadi also explains why sometimes the music will hint at story twists to come — and sometimes it won't.

July 17, 2022

Frank Ocean Premieres New Nine-Minute Song: Stream

As premiered during a special Christmas episode of blonded RADIO.

December 25, 2021

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• Manage Account
• Share this article on Facebook
• Share this article on Twitter
• Share this article on Flipboard
• Share this article on Pinit
• + additional share options added
• Share this article on Reddit
• Share this article on Linkedin
• Share this article on Whatsapp
• Share this article on Email
• Print this article
• Share this article on Comment
• Share this article on Tumblr

Where Does Frank Ocean Go From Here?

A prominent agent calls his Coachella set "one public blemish in an otherwise brilliant career," while a source says Ocean isn't interested in touring or playing another festival anytime soon. 

By Dave Brooks

Dave Brooks

On April 16 at Coachella, finally, after years of postponements, and an hour late that night, Frank Ocean performed his first concert in six years, closing the country’s most watched music festival with a set that left many fans confused and even disgruntled. Transforming the event’s main stage with a giant screen spanning nearly the full width, Ocean and his band gave the impression they were bringing fans into the recording studio — the kind in which he has presumably been working on his much-anticipated third studio album. Tinkering with remixed versions of his beloved songs, creative camera shots often directed fans’ attention away from the reclusive singer on stage and towards his image on screen.

Frank Ocean Dropping Out of Coachella Cost the Festival Millions

Trending on billboard.

Since the 2011 release of his debut mixtape, Nostalgia Ultra , Ocean has spent more time out of the industry than in it, releasing only two albums and performing live just 25 to 30 times in the last decade, almost exclusively at festivals. So far, that has worked out pretty well for him, creating pent-up demand that led to his booking atop last month’s Coachella, the world’s largest multigenre festival. The last time Ocean performed in the United States was in 2017 at the Panorama festival in New York — produced by Goldenvoice, the Los Angeles-based company behind Coachella — about a year after releasing his last album, Blonde . There, Ocean ended on a high note, with New York Times reporter Jon Caramanica calling it a “a grand-scale meditation on feelings and politics” that “proved you can translate intimacy on a giant scale.”

Ahead of Ocean’s Coachella set last month, anticipation was at fever pitch. The singer had originally been booked to headline the 2020 festival before the coronavirus pandemic postponed the event for two years. Then, in 2022, it was announced that Ocean would hold off on his festival performance until 2023. All the while, fans have been waiting for a new album that still has not come, satiated only slightly by occasional features, new songs shared on his Blonded Radio show on Apple Music, miscellaneous creative and fashion projects and appearances at the Met Gala. By withholding from fans in an era where so much revolves around the “attention economy,” Ocean’s passionate fans have only become hungrier for new material from the enigmatic superstar whose long absences are viewed as a product of the singer’s meticulous pursuit of perfection.

“He’d rather do nothing than do something that’s not quite right,” Caramanica wrote in his review of Ocean’s Panorama performance. “And doing nothing has also become, in this era of blithe ubiquity, a daring and quite perversely loud kind of performance.”

If being quiet made Ocean’s stock rise, might his widely panned, self-admittedly “chaotic” comeback performance at Coachella — and his decision to pull out of the second weekend — have pushed his stock back down?

“He flopped,” said one prominent booking agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Is that a career-ender — being a fallible, over-confident 35-year-old young man with one public blemish in an otherwise brilliant career? Of course not…. After more than a decade of brilliant songwriting and performance, he is entitled to make a mistake or two.”

Whether Ocean’s Coachella set was bad or misunderstood is a point of debate, but the widely negative reception was seemingly enough to make him back out of the festival’s second weekend. For many acts, a show like this would be a major reputational hit, causing fans to second-guess attending a future festival he’s booked on — or promoters to think twice about booking him at all.

“When he releases [new] music, am I gonna give it a listen? Yes. [But] if he announces a tour date, am I going to be hesitant to go see him? … It’s a risk,” says Adrian Romo, 29, who traveled from Houston to see Ocean perform at Coachella’s second weekend. “Your fans have been waiting for however many years, you have the biggest stage in the world, and then you do that? It’s like, what can I expect from you in the future? It makes you look at it a little bit differently.”

“I’m not excited [about him] anymore. He lost a fan,” adds Romo’s boyfriend, Oren Rosenbaum, 27.

“If I am a promoter, who is considering him or a comparable artist for my festival, I’m probably going to go with the comparable artist because my trust has been shaken,” says booking agent Malachai Johns with the Allive talent agency.

Ocean’s profile has thrived out of the limelight, however, and it’s not a stretch to imagine his Coachella set driving further fan interest in what he does next, or to even witness another performance of this supposedly bad set — which was not livestreamed on the festival’s YouTube feed, as originally planned — for themselves. Streams for the singer’s music increased 94% in the days following the festival, and much to fans’ excitement he teased a brief mention of a “new album” during his performance.

“[Ocean] wasn’t planning to replicate Coachella at other festivals this summer and cash in — he doesn’t have any other concerts on his calendar for the entire year,” says a source close to the artist. As for the $4 million per set Ocean was to receive, much of that money was spent on the production of an elaborate set that was not used due to Ocean’s ankle injury. While Ocean is interested in making money, the source tells Billboard , he is not interested in going on tour and or being a festival headliner right now, noting that the Coachella performance was an effort to fulfill a commitment he made to Goldenvoice president and CEO Paul Tollett in 2020 and was never meant to serve as a launching point for a tour.

In the United States, Ocean exclusively works with Tollett and Goldenvoice for festival bookings — a relationship he’s developed in part through his friendship with rapper Tyler, the Creator . Sources say that even after all the negative attention Ocean’s Coachella set received, and the hassle of reorganizing the second weekend when he pulled out, there’s no bad blood between Ocean, his agent Brent Smith and Tollett, and they’re all open to working together again in the future.

If or when Ocean decides he wants to tour, however, he’ll assume far more liability for his shows. Unlike festivals, where fans are buying tickets to a larger event and scheduling is subject to change, canceling touring concerts usually requires refunding fans unless the show is rescheduled. The cost of trying to reschedule a tour can eat into profits and make the entire effort unsustainable if not carefully managed.

It’s also hard to determine Ocean’s drawing power, since he’s basically only performed at festivals for the last decade. His career skyrocketed soon after the release of Nostalgia Ultra , just as the U.S. festival business was taking off and many artists at the time opted to forgo the traditional touring model for the less risky festival circuit where artists are guaranteed a performance fee no matter how well tickets sold.

The downside is that artists who spent the early part of their careers performing at festivals have a challenging time building a live fan base as headliners later in their career. Ocean would certainly attract ticket buyers for a traditional venue tour, but it’s totally untested whether he could draw the kind of regular audience that would earn him $4 million a night, like his Coachella billing. Whether he wants it at all is a different question altogether.

A representative for Ocean did not respond to request for comment at time of publishing.

Daily newsletters straight to your inbox

More From Pro

Tencent music shares gain 16% on earnings, analyst upgrades as music stocks surge to new high.

• By Glenn Peoples

In Canada: Musicians Pay Tribute to Steve Albini, Feist & More Shortlisted for 2024 Prism Prize

• By Kerry Doole

Falling in Reverse, Tech N9ne & Alex Terrible’s ‘Ronald’ Rules Hot Hard Rock Songs

• By Kevin Rutherford

How Tommy Richman’s ‘Million Dollar Baby’ Became an Unexpected Smash

• By Lyndsey Havens

Inside the Revival of a Historic Mississippi Juke Joint That Once Hosted Ray Charles & Etta James

• By Steve Knopper
• May 15, 2024 2:35 pm

Billboard is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Billboard Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

optional screen reader

Charts expand charts menu.

• Billboard Hot 100™
• Billboard 200™
• Hits Of The World™
• TikTok Billboard Top 50
• Song Breaker
• Year-End Charts
• Decade-End Charts

Music Expand music menu

• R&B/Hip-Hop

Videos Expand videos menu

Culture expand culture menu, media expand media menu, business expand business menu.

• Business News
• Record Labels
• View All Pro

Pro Tools Expand pro-tools menu

• Songwriters & Producers
• Artist Index
• Royalty Calculator
• Market Watch
• Industry Events Calendar

Billboard Español Expand billboard-espanol menu

• Cultura y Entretenimiento

Get Up Anthems by Tres Expand get-up-anthems-by-tres menu

Honda music expand honda-music menu.

Frank Ocean tour dates

• On tour: No
• Concertful ranking: #857
• Category: Soul / R&B

Similar artists on tour

Frank ocean past concerts.

Top Tours · Just Announced · USA · Europe · 2025 Tours

Terms of Service · Privacy and Cookie Policy · Contact © Concertful

OK, Seriously, What Was Frank Ocean’s Deal at Coachella?

By Brian Hiatt

Brian Hiatt

Frank Ocean ‘s Coachella performance last Sunday (April 16) was so bizarre, beginning with the fact that much of it took place backstage, that some critics assumed it had to be a deliberate, brilliant deconstruction of expectations for festival headliners. Or something. Then Ocean himself said it “wasn’t what I intended to show,” and canceled his performance for Coachella’s second weekend, a move his reps claimed was made on a doctor’s orders due to a leg injury. All in all, it wasn’t what anyone expected from his first performance since 2017, with the world still waiting for a follow-up to 2016’s instant-classic Blonde.

Stefanik Loses It When Fox News Host Reminds Her She Called Trump a 'Whack Job'

'snl' weekend update tackles trump-biden debates, mtg getting roasted by colleague, 'snl' cold open: trump wheels out hannibal lecter, his 'favorite' vp pick, travis kelce declares ‘the tortured poets department’ favorite album of the year.

We also discuss new details that have emerged, including Rolling Stone’ s report that 100 ice skaters were set to join the performance before Ocean abruptly changed his mind (again, his reps blamed a leg injury for any changes).

Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’ s weekly podcast Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). Check out six years’ worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth, career-spanning interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Halsey, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Rick Ross, Alicia Keys, the National, Ice Cube, Taylor Hawkins, Willow, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Dua Lipa, Questlove, Killer Mike, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Liam Gallagher, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Donald Fagen, Charlie Puth, Phil Collins, Justin Townes Earle, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Eddie Van Halen, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, Gary Clark Jr., and many others. Plus, there are dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone’ s critics and reporters.

Taylor Swift Debuts ‘How Did It End?’ at Final 2024 Eras Tour Date in Sweden

• Swift in Sweden
• By Althea Legaspi

Sean Combs Claims 'Full Responsibility' for Cassie Assault in Video Apology: 'I Make No Excuses'

• 'i'm truly sorry'
• By Nancy Dillon and Cheyenne Roundtree

Cate Blanchett's Cannes Film 'Rumours' Named After Fleetwood Mac Album, Directors Confirm

• second hand news
• By Daniel Kreps

Charli XCX Isn't Holding Back

• By Hannah Ewens
• By Charisma Madarang

Most Popular

'mad max' director says 'there's no excuse' for tom hardy and charlize theron's 'fury road' set feud: tom 'had to be coaxed out of his trailer', bill maher says he doesn't understand harrison butker's graduation speech criticism, dj akademiks says he'll take entire industry down if convicted in rape lawsuit, jennifer lopez & ben affleck's reported marital troubles stem from this difficult-to-navigate issue, you might also like, nicolas cage’s sun-bleached, rat-munching mind-bender ‘the surfer’ makes waves at cannes with 6-minute standing ovation, bruce nordstrom, retail titan, ultimate ‘shoe dog,’ dead at 90, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, richard linklater on upcoming movie ‘nouvelle vague’: ‘it reminded me a lot about making my first film’, no a’s in attendance: oakland trails a whopping 553 u.s. teams.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

• Share full article

For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand

The porn star testified for eight hours at donald trump’s hush-money trial. this is how it went..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

It’s 6:41 AM. I’m feeling a little stressed because I’m running late. It’s the fourth week of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial. It’s a white collar trial. Most of the witnesses we’ve heard from have been, I think, typical white collar witnesses in terms of their professions.

We’ve got a former publisher, a lawyer, accountants. The witness today, a little less typical, Stormy Daniels, porn star in a New York criminal courtroom in front of a jury more accustomed to the types of witnesses they’ve already seen. There’s a lot that could go wrong.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today, what happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of Donald J. Trump. As before, my colleague Jonah Bromwich was inside the courtroom.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s Friday, May 10th.

So it’s now day 14 of this trial. And I think it’s worth having you briefly, and in broad strokes, catch listeners up on the biggest developments that have occurred since you were last on, which was the day that opening arguments were made by both the defense and the prosecution. So just give us that brief recap.

Sure. It’s all been the prosecution’s case so far. And prosecutors have a saying, which is that the evidence is coming in great. And I think for this prosecution, which is trying to show that Trump falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal, to ease his way into the White House in 2016, the evidence has been coming in pretty well. It’s come in well through David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer, who testified that he entered into a secret plot with Trump and Michael Cohen, his fixer at the time, to suppress negative stories about Trump, the candidate.

It came in pretty well through Keith Davidson, who was a lawyer to Stormy Daniels in 2016 and negotiated the hush money payment. And we’ve seen all these little bits and pieces of evidence that tell the story that prosecutors want to tell. And the case makes sense so far. We can’t tell what the jury is thinking, as we always say.

But we can tell that there’s a narrative that’s coherent and that matches up with the prosecution’s opening statement. Then we come to Tuesday. And that day really marks the first time that the prosecution’s strategy seems a little bit risky because that’s the day that Stormy Daniels gets called to the witness stand.

OK, well, just explain why the prosecution putting Stormy Daniels on the stand would be so risky. And I guess it makes sense to answer that in the context of why the prosecution is calling her as a witness at all.

Well, you can see why it makes sense to have her. The hush money payment was to her. The cover-up of the hush money payment, in some ways, concerns her. And so she’s this character who’s very much at the center of this story. But according to prosecutors, she’s not at the center of the crime. The prosecution is telling a story, and they hope a compelling one. And arguably, that story starts with Stormy Daniels. It starts in 2006, when Stormy Daniels says that she and Trump had sex, which is something that Trump has always denied.

So if prosecutors were to not call Stormy Daniels to the stand, you would have this big hole in the case. It would be like, effect, effect, effect. But where is the cause? Where is the person who set off this chain reaction? But Stormy Daniels is a porn star. She’s there to testify about sex. Sex and pornography are things that the jurors were not asked about during jury selection. And those are subjects that bring up all kinds of different complex reactions in people.

And so, when the prosecutors bring Stormy Daniels to the courtroom, it’s very difficult to know how the jurors will take it, particularly given that she’s about to describe a sexual episode that she says she had with the former president. Will the jurors think that makes sense, as they sit here and try to decide a falsifying business records case, or will they ask themselves, why are we hearing this?

So the reason why this is the first time that the prosecution’s strategy is, for journalists like you, a little bit confusing, is because it’s the first time that the prosecution seems to be taking a genuine risk in what they’re putting before these jurors. Everything else has been kind of cut and dry and a little bit more mechanical. This is just a wild card.

This is like live ammunition, to some extent. Everything else is settled and controlled. And they know what’s going to happen. With Stormy Daniels, that’s not the case.

OK, so walk us through the testimony. When the prosecution brings her to the stand, what actually happens?

It starts, as every witness does, with what’s called direct examination, which is a fancy word for saying prosecutors question Stormy Daniels. And they have her tell her story. First, they have her tell the jury about her education and where she grew up and her professional experience. And because of Stormy Daniels’s biography, that quickly goes into stripping, and then goes into making adult films.

And I thought the prosecutor who questioned her, Susan Hoffinger, had this nice touch in talking about that, because not only did she ask Daniels about acting in adult films. But she asked her about writing and directing them, too, emphasizing the more professional aspects of that work and giving a little more credit to the witness, as if to say, well, you may think this or you may think that. But this is a person with dignity who took what she did seriously. Got it.

What’s your first impression of Daniels as a witness?

It’s very clear that she’s nervous. She’s speaking fast. She’s laughing to herself and making small jokes. But the tension in the room is so serious from the beginning, from the moment she enters, that those jokes aren’t landing. So it just feels, like, really heavy and still and almost oppressive in there. So Daniels talking quickly, seeming nervous, giving more answers than are being asked of her by the prosecution, even before we get to the sexual encounter that she’s about to describe, all of that presents a really discomfiting impression, I would say.

And how does this move towards the encounter that Daniels ultimately has?

It starts at a golf tournament in 2006, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Daniels meets Trump there. There are other celebrities there, too. They chatted very briefly. And then she received a dinner invitation from him. She thought it over, she says. And she goes to have dinner with Trump, not at a restaurant, by the way. But she’s invited to join him in the hotel suite.

So she gets to the hotel suite. And his bodyguard is there. And the hotel door is cracked open. And the bodyguard greets her and says she looks nice, this and that. And she goes in. And there’s Donald Trump, just as expected. But what’s not expected, she says, is that he’s not wearing what you would wear to a dinner with a stranger, but instead, she says, silk or satin pajamas. She asked him to change, she says. And he obliges.

He goes, and he puts on a dress shirt and dress pants. And they sit down at the hotel suite’s dining room table. And they have a kind of bizarre dinner. Trump is asking her very personal questions about pornography and safe sex. And she testifies that she teased him about vain and pompous he is. And then at some point, she goes to the bathroom. And she sees that he has got his toiletries in there, his Old Spice, his gold tweezers.

Very specific details.

Yeah, we’re getting a ton of detail in this scene. And the reason we’re getting those is because prosecutors are trying to elicit those details to establish that this is a credible person, that this thing did happen, despite what Donald Trump and his lawyers say. And the reason you can know it happened, prosecutors seem to be saying, is because, look at all these details she can still summon up.

She comes out of the bathroom. And she says that Donald Trump is on the hotel bed. And what stands out to me there is what she describes as a very intense physical reaction. She says that she blacked out. And she quickly clarifies, she doesn’t mean from drugs or alcohol. She means that, she says, that the intensity of this experience was such that, suddenly, she can’t remember every detail. The prosecution asks a question that cuts directly to the sex. Essentially, did you start having sex with him? And Daniels says that she did. And she continues to provide more details than even, I think, the prosecution wanted.

And I think we don’t want to go chapter and verse through this claimed sexual encounter. But I wonder what details stand out and which details feel important, given the prosecution’s strategy here.

All the details stand out because it’s a story about having had sex with a former president. And the more salacious and more private the details feel, the more you’re going to remember them. So we’ll remember that Stormy Daniels said what position they had sex in. We’ll remember that she said he didn’t use a condom. Whether that’s important to the prosecution’s case, now, that’s a much harder question to answer, as we’ve been saying.

But what I can tell you is, as she’s describing having had sex with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is sitting right there, and Eric Trump, his son, is sitting behind him, seeming to turn a different color as he hears this embarrassment of his father being described to a courtroom full of reporters at this trial, it’s hard to even describe the energy in that room. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And it was just Daniels’s testimony and, seemingly, the former President’s emotions. And you almost felt like you were trapped in there with both of them as this description was happening.

Well, I think it’s important to try to understand why the prosecution is getting these details, these salacious, carnal, pick your word, graphic details about sex with Donald Trump. What is the value, if other details are clearly making the point that she’s recollecting something?

Well, I think, at this point, we can only speculate. But one thing we can say is, this was uncomfortable. This felt bad. And remember, prosecutor’s story is not about the sex. It’s about trying to hide the sex. So if you’re trying to show a jury why it might be worthwhile to hide a story, it might be worth —

Providing lots of salacious details that a person would want to hide.

— exposing them to how bad that story feels and reminding them that if they had been voters and they had heard that story, and, in fact, they asked Daniels this very question, if you hadn’t accepted hush money, if you hadn’t signed that NDA, is this the story you would have told? And she said, yes. And so where I think they’re going with this, but we can’t really be sure yet, is that they’re going to tell the jurors, hey, that story, you can see why he wanted to cover that up, can’t you?

You mentioned the hush money payments. What testimony does Daniels offer about that? And how does it advance the prosecution’s case of business fraud related to the hush money payments?

So little evidence that it’s almost laughable. She says that she received the hush money. But we actually already heard another witness, her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, testify that he had received the hush money payment on her behalf. And she testified about feeling as if she had to sell this story because the election was fast approaching, almost as if her leverage was slipping away because she knew this would be bad for Trump.

That feels important. But just help me understand why it’s important.

Well, what the prosecution has been arguing is that Trump covered up this hush money payment in order to conceal a different crime. And that crime, they say, was to promote his election to the presidency by illegal means.

Right, we’ve talked about this in the past.

So when Daniels ties her side of the payment into the election, it just reminds the jurors maybe, oh, right, this is what they’re arguing.

So how does the prosecution end this very dramatic, and from everything you’re saying, very tense questioning of Stormy Daniels about this encounter?

Well, before they can even end, the defense lawyers go and they consult among themselves. And then, with the jury out of the room, one of them stands up. And he says that the defense is moving for a mistrial.

On what terms?

He says that the testimony offered by Daniels that morning is so prejudicial, so damning to Trump in the eyes of the jury, that the trial can no longer be fair. Like, how could these jurors have heard these details and still be fair when they render their verdict? And he says a memorable expression. He says, you can’t un-ring that bell, meaning they heard it. They can’t un-hear it. It’s over. Throw out this trial. It should be done.

Wow. And what is the response from the judge?

So the judge, Juan Merchan, he hears them out. And he really hears them out. But at the end of their arguments, he says, I do think she went a little too far. He says that. He said, there were things that were better left unsaid.

By Stormy Daniels?

By Stormy Daniels. And he acknowledges that she is a difficult witness. But, he says, the remedy for that is not a mistrial, is not stopping the whole thing right now. The remedy for that is cross-examination. If the defense feels that there are issues with her story, issues with her credibility, they can ask her whatever they want. They can try to win the jury back over. If they think this jury has been poisoned by this witness, well, this is their time to provide the antidote. The antidote is cross-examination. And soon enough, cross-examination starts. And it is exactly as intense and combative as we expected.

We’ll be right back.

So, Jonah, how would you characterize the defense’s overall strategy in this intense cross-examination of Stormy Daniels?

People know the word impeach from presidential impeachments. But it has a meaning in law, too. You impeach a witness, and, specifically, their credibility. And that’s what the defense is going for here. They are going to try to make Stormy Daniels look like a liar, a fraud, an extortionist, a money-grubbing opportunist who wanted to take advantage of Trump and sought to do so by any means necessary.

And what did that impeachment strategy look like in the courtroom?

The defense lawyer who questions Stormy Daniels is a woman named Susan Necheles. She’s defended Trump before. And she’s a bit of a cross-examination specialist. We even saw her during jury selection bring up these past details to confront jurors who had said nasty things about Trump on social media with. And she wants to do the same thing with Daniels. She wants to bring up old interviews and old tweets and things that Daniels has said in the past that don’t match what Daniels is saying from the stand.

What’s a specific example? And do they land?

Some of them land. And some of them don’t. One specific example is that Necheles confronts Daniels with this old tweet, where Daniels says that she’s going to dance down the street if Trump goes to jail. And what she’s trying to show there is that Daniels is out for revenge, that she hates Trump, and that she wants to see him go to jail. And that’s why she’s testifying against him.

And Daniels is very interesting during the cross-examination. It’s almost as if she’s a different person. She kind of squares her shoulders. And she sits up a little straighter. And she leans forward. Daniels is ready to fight. But it doesn’t quite land. The tweet actually says, I’ll dance down the street when he’s selected to go to jail.

And Daniels goes off on this digression about how she knows that people don’t get selected to go to jail. That’s not how it works. But she can’t really unseat this argument, that she’s a political enemy of Donald Trump. So that one kind of sticks, I would say. But there are other moves that Necheles tries to pull that don’t stick.

So unlike the prosecution, which typically used words like adult, adult film, Necheles seems to be taking every chance she can get to say porn, or pornography, or porn star, to make it sound base or dirty. And so when she starts to ask Daniels about actually being in pornography, writing, acting, and directing sex films, she tries to land a punch line, Necheles does. She says, so you have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?

As if to say, perhaps this story you have told about entering Trump’s suite in Lake Tahoe and having sex with him was made up.

Just another one of your fictional stories about sex. But Daniels comes back and says, the sex in the films, it’s very much real, just like what happened to me in that room. And so, when you have this kind of combat of a lawyer cross-examining very aggressively and the witness fighting back, you can feel the energy in the room shift as one lands a blow or the other does. But here, Daniels lands one back. And the other issue that I think Susan Necheles runs into is, she tries to draw out disparities from interviews that Daniels gave, particularly to N-TOUCH, very early on once the story was out.

It’s kind of like a tabloid magazine?

But some of the disparities don’t seem to be landing quite like Necheles would want. So she tries to do this complicated thing about where the bodyguard was in the room when Daniels walked into the room, as described in an interview in a magazine. But in that magazine interview, as it turns out, Daniels mentioned that Trump was wearing pajamas. And so, if I’m a juror, I don’t care where the bodyguard is. I’m thinking about, oh, yeah, I remember that Stormy Daniels said now in 2024 that Trump was wearing pajamas.

I’m curious if, as somebody in the room, you felt that the defense was effective in undermining Stormy Daniels’s credibility? Because what I took from the earlier part of our conversation was that Stormy Daniels is in this courtroom on behalf of the prosecution to tell a story that’s uncomfortable and has the kind of details that Donald Trump would be motivated to try to hide. And therefore, this defense strategy is to say, those details about what Trump might want to hide, you can’t trust them. So does this back and forth effectively hurt Stormy Daniels’s credibility, in your estimation?

I don’t think that Stormy Daniels came off as perfectly credible about everything she testified about. There are incidents that were unclear or confusing. There were things she talked about that I found hard to believe, when she, for instance, denied that she had attacked Trump in a tweet or talked about her motivations. But about what prosecutors need, that central story, the story of having had sex with him, we can’t know whether it happened.

But there weren’t that many disparities in these accounts over the years. In terms of things that would make me doubt the story that Daniels was telling, details that don’t add up, those weren’t present. And you don’t have to take my word for that, nor should you. But the judge is in the room. And he says something very, very similar.

What does he say? And why does he say it?

Well, he does it when the defense, again, at the end of the day on Thursday, calls for a mistrial.

With a similar argument as before?

Not only with a similar argument as before, but, like, almost the exact same argument. And I would say that I was astonished to see them do this. But I wasn’t because I’ve covered other trials where Trump is the client. And in those trials, the lawyers, again and again, called for a mistrial.

And what does Judge Marchan say in response to this second effort to seek a mistrial?

Let me say, to this one, he seems a little less patient. He says that after the first mistrial ruling, two days before, he went into his chambers. And he read every decision he had made about the case. He took this moment to reflect on the first decision. And he found that he had, in his own estimation, which is all he has, been fair and not allowed evidence that was prejudicial to Trump into this trial. It could continue. And so he said that again. And then he really almost turned on the defense. And he said that the things that the defense was objecting to were things that the defense had made happen.

He says that in their opening statement, the defense could have taken issue with many elements of the case, about whether there were falsified business records, about any of the other things that prosecutors are saying happened. But instead, he says, they focused their energy on denying that Trump ever had sex with Daniels.

And so that was essentially an invitation to the prosecution to call Stormy Daniels as a witness and have her say from the stand, yes, I had this sexual encounter. The upshot of it is that the judge not only takes the defense to task. But he also just says that he finds Stormy Daniels’s narrative credible. He doesn’t see it as having changed so much from year to year.

Interesting. So in thinking back to our original question here, Jonah, about the idea that putting Stormy Daniels on the stand was risky, I wonder if, by the end of this entire journey, you’re reevaluating that idea because it doesn’t sound like it ended up being super risky. It sounded like it ended up working reasonably well for the prosecution.

Well, let me just assert that it doesn’t really matter what I think. The jury is going to decide this. There’s 12 people. And we can’t know what they’re thinking. But my impression was that, while she was being questioned by the prosecution for the prosecution’s case, Stormy Daniels was a real liability. She was a difficult witness for them.

And the judge said as much. But when the defense cross-examined her, Stormy Daniels became a better witness, in part because their struggles to discredit her may have actually ended up making her story look more credible and stronger. And the reason that matters is because, remember, we said that prosecutors are trying to fill this hole in their case. Well, now, they have. The jury has met Stormy Daniels. They’ve heard her account. They’ve made of it what they will. And now, the sequence of events that prosecutors are trying to line up as they seek prison time for the former President really makes a lot of sense.

It starts with what Stormy Daniels says with sex in a hotel suite in 2006. It picks up years later, as Donald Trump is trying to win an election and, prosecutors say, suppressing negative stories, including Stormy Daniels’s very negative story. And the story that prosecutors are telling ends with Donald Trump orchestrating the falsification of business records to keep that story concealed.

Well, Jonah, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Of course, thanks for having me.

The prosecution’s next major witness will be Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer who arranged for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen is expected to take the stand on Monday.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a defiant response to warnings from the United States that it would stop supplying weapons to Israel if Israel invades the Southern Gaza City of Rafah. So far, Israel has carried out a limited incursion into the city where a million civilians are sheltering, but has threatened a full invasion. In a statement, Netanyahu said, quote, “if we need to stand alone, we will stand alone.”

Meanwhile, high level ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been put on hold in part because of anger over Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

A reminder, tomorrow, we’ll be sharing the latest episode of our colleague’s new show, “The Interview” This week on “The Interview,” Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with radio host Charlamagne Tha God about his frustrations with how Americans talk about politics.

If me as a Black man, if I criticize Democrats, then I’m supporting MAGA. But if I criticize, you know, Donald Trump and Republicans, then I’m a Democratic shill. Why can’t I just be a person who deals in nuance?

Today’s episode was produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Lexie Diao, with help from Paige Cowett, contains original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

• May 19, 2024 The Sunday Read: ‘Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?’
• May 17, 2024   •   51:10 The Campus Protesters Explain Themselves
• May 16, 2024   •   30:47 The Make-or-Break Testimony of Michael Cohen
• May 15, 2024   •   27:03 The Possible Collapse of the U.S. Home Insurance System
• May 14, 2024   •   35:20 Voters Want Change. In Our Poll, They See It in Trump.
• May 13, 2024   •   27:46 How Biden Adopted Trump’s Trade War With China
• May 10, 2024   •   27:42 Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand
• May 9, 2024   •   34:42 One Strongman, One Billion Voters, and the Future of India
• May 8, 2024   •   28:28 A Plan to Remake the Middle East
• May 7, 2024   •   27:43 How Changing Ocean Temperatures Could Upend Life on Earth
• May 6, 2024   •   29:23 R.F.K. Jr.’s Battle to Get on the Ballot
• May 3, 2024   •   25:33 The Protesters and the President

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jonah E. Bromwich

Produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Lexie Diao

With Paige Cowett

Original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

This episode contains descriptions of an alleged sexual liaison.

What happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump?

Jonah Bromwich, one of the lead reporters covering the trial for The Times, was in the room.

On today’s episode

Jonah E. Bromwich , who covers criminal justice in New York for The New York Times.

Background reading

In a second day of cross-examination, Stormy Daniels resisted the implication she had tried to shake down Donald J. Trump by selling her story of a sexual liaison.

Here are six takeaways from Ms. Daniels’s earlier testimony.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state criminal courts in Manhattan. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

Advertisement