When the feverishly anticipated official livestream of Frank Ocean’s headlining Coachella set was called off mere hours before he took the stage on Sunday night, the online backlash came fast and furious. (His second weekend performance was later canceled.) A number of attendees rose to the occasion, though, holding their phones aloft in the California desert so that Frank fans around the world could catch glimpses of what would turn out to be a particularly head-scratching set. And no festivalgoer seemed closer to the stage than the Instagram user known as Morgandoesntcare.
The 18-year-old musician from Charlotte, North Carolina, whose real name is Morgan Lee, has been hailed by some as the night’s savior; she was also harassed online by Frank obsessives. After flying back home to her high school classes, she talked with Pitchfork about her experience documenting Frank’s first live performance in six years for a global audience of as many as 130,000 people.
Pitchfork: How early did you have to get to Coachella to have such a great spot?
Morgandoesntcare: I got there at about 9 a.m. and waited in the sun for three hours till doors opened at noon. Then I sprinted as fast as I could to the barricade, and me and my two friends sat there for the next 11 hours.
We didn’t know that Frank wasn’t gonna be livestreaming until maybe two hours before he went on. There were rumors of it in the crowd, but when you’re at the barricade, you don’t have service most of the day. I wasn’t even expecting to have service during the set, but after waiting all day, I still had my phone fully charged. I had a portable charger on me.
When did you know you wanted to livestream?
When it was confirmed that he wasn’t gonna be on the [official] stream, I just decided to go live. And I put it on Twitter without really a second thought, I only have like 700 followers. My friends were all like, “Oh, you have to get a video for Frank, he’s not streaming,” but I thought about how impractical it would be to have to send those videos to all those people. So I went live just for my friends to see, but it ended up getting posted on Reddit immediately.
Within two minutes, there were 800 people on there. And then the hour-long wait for Frank to go on started. Throughout that, I was just trying to keep the vibes positive. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to get to see Frank live. I flew from North Carolina for that sole purpose. Frank’s music is really special to me.
Everyone was getting really impatient and kind of cranky, but I was just so excited. I was talking to the people on the live and getting a little bit anxious, because all of a sudden I was talking to a few thousand people.
This was while you were waiting?
Yeah. I was like, “Hey, they’re still setting up the stage.” People would ask me stuff, and I would be like, “Oh, I do music,” and then people got really angry with me for doing that. I don’t know if they just wanted me to sit in silence for an hour, but if you’re an up-and-coming artist and you have 20,000 people in front of you, you’re gonna wanna say something. So I did. I was just trying to keep things light, and people were like, “Shut up.” “Kill yourself.” Grown adults.
That’s awful. Could you see the crew setting up the stage when you were waiting?
Yeah, we had nothing else to do but watch them. It looked really hectic. The other set changes that they did throughout the day were really short, but when Frank’s set was being put together, it took a long time because he wanted to have that middle screen built, which is like a whole operation in and of itself.
As soon as Björk was done, it was like hundreds of people wearing black swarmed the stage and were trying to do everything they could to get this screen up. It was just insane. At first, people in the front were panicking, like, “Is he gonna just be trapped in there? We won’t see him come out at all.” But it turns out that there was a little gap at the bottom, so we were grateful for that.
What was your view like?
I had a completely unobstructed view of the stage, so when he stepped out of the little cavern of screens, I could see him perfectly. If you were not at the very front or if you were more to the side, you wouldn’t see him until he stepped all the way out. I know people were complaining about the way that the stage was set up, because they couldn’t see him a lot of the time. I definitely understand that frustration.
Frank’s setup was apparently supposed to involve an ice rink, but it was melted and nixed at the last minute. Did you see any evidence of that?
When I first walked in, towards the very furthest part away from the stage, we saw a giant circular thing covered up with a black tarp and several black things on top of it. There were rumors that people thought it was a roller rink. I can’t confirm that they melted anything, or that the thing I saw was the rink, but if there was an ice rink, it would’ve been there at the back of the stage.
There are also reports that Frank had an ankle injury. Did it look like that to you?
Honestly, no. I didn’t think that he looked injured at all. That didn’t even come to mind until I was home and saw the articles suggesting that. It just looked to me like he was chilling. And it matches his vibe, where he’s not really an artist who is going to be jumping up and down and opening up mosh pits. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to be more laid-back.
When did you realize your livestream was blowing up?
My mom was texting me, showing me every single second that I gained a few thousand more followers. It got to about 130,000-something.
Did you know if there were famous people watching it?
Somebody said Lorde was in my live. I couldn’t check the views, but I was like, “Lorde, if you’re in here, I love you.”
Was it hard to stand at the front and hold your phone up that long?
Oh, of course. Even right now I can’t feel my legs. I was prepared to not be able to really do anything at all this week. My flight landed at six this morning and I went straight to school.
Has there been any fallout over this since it happened?
It’s so crazy. I’ve received thousands of messages. That’s a little overwhelming, but I’m really grateful for all the positivity. The Frank Ocean subreddit gave me hall-of-fame status, and I have my own subreddit now, that someone made. Everyone on Reddit has been so kind. It’s really like the stars aligned for me.
What is your personal story as a Frank Ocean fan?
I remember when I was in middle school and I heard Blonde for the first time. I would sit in the bathroom during lunch and listen to music. I was blown away. I already loved “Close to You,” because my mom is a huge Stevie Wonder fan. Hearing how somebody could take something so familiar and make it sound transformative had a huge impact on me.
Then I started to figure out exactly what happened with him changing a lot about the industry with the release of Blonde. He’s such a unicorn in the industry, and I just wanna study and learn and see how to have that kind of thoughtfulness about what I make.
After everything that happened, was it worth going to Coachella to see Frank?
Absolutely. It would’ve been worth it even if I didn’t have like 45,000 people follow me. It would’ve been worth it just to be there.
