By VIVIAN BRAGA

The famous two-weekend music festival Coachella, known for its reckless spirit and hippie vibe, reunited big name music stars like Pharrell, Skrillex and Lana Del Ray and other indie artists into a massive music fest that brought approximately thousands of people together.

Coachella, held in the desert of Southern California, is now one of the largest music festivals in the world and has revolutionized the music festival industry, emerging new musical stars, celebrating a generation but also challenging preconceptions.

While the reviews for this year’s edition for Coachella have been positive, not all of it had to do with the music. The festival became a place to see and be seen and it’s not just a mere collection of concerts, but an actual event that broke the rules of technological innovation.

It’s a completely different world these days. Once upon a time music festivals led change and promoted art. Now, Coachella visitors don’t just go to discover new music and emerge in the experience, but rather to take “selfies” and upload them and to share as much information in their social networks as possible.

No surprise, Coachella is the most blogged, Facebooked and tweeted about event in the whole social networking universe. The event has no commercials, billboards or any evident form of advertising; instead, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter do all the work.

The festival has now evolved into becoming another platform for a celebrity fashion week, and for people to post about their “festival style.” The focus of Coachella shifting from purely music to now also fashion is further confirmed through H&M’s sponsorship.

Although they’ve been sponsoring Coachella for now five years, this year they’ve designed a new line with Alexander Wang’s partnership and Coachella was “Ideal venue to launch a new product” said CSMonitor.com.

As social media continues to gain influence, music festivals beginning with Coachella are now focusing less on music but more on opportunities for social networking, fashion displays and indirect marketing. Similarly to Coachella, other music events are now also threated by fashion imagery domination.

By VIVIAN BRAGA

In recent interviews, the super-star of the moment Miley Cyrus has said her wild behavior and changes in attitude are completely healthy and are just part of her process of maturing into a young woman. But is doing drugs, dressing provocatively, twerking and stripping really a part of growing up?

Born as Destiny Hope, nicknamed Smiley and now Miley Cyrus, began her career as the secret pop-star Hannah Montana 7 years ago. The hit series turned her into a phenomenon and she’s been in the spot light ever since.

Despite a couple of scandals, Miley has had during her career and teenager years involving leaked private pictures and drugs, in September 2012 jaws were dropped at her new pixie haircut and revealing wardrobe that unchained a whole new behavior and completely buried Hannah Montana and Miley as we know it.

Miley’s recent scandals, which includes her controversial performance at MTV’s Music Video Awards has been a cause of concern and criticism by many and not considered normal. Her sudden hyper-sexuality, lack of impulse and control, admitted drug use and obsession for animals are not typical adolescent behavior.

There is definitely no denial that former Disney star Miley Cyrus has burst out of her sweet, good-girl shell and suddenly grew up overnight… in a shocking way. The “We Can’t Stop” singer has continued to show a track of wild behavior that most recently included nudity, something she is now well known for. Photos from her Adore You remix cover show the star topless riding a horse, topless in her own twitter photos, covers of magazines and completely nude in her controversial Wrecking Ball video.

Continuing to add to her pattern of outrageous behaviors is her current weed addiction. In November 2013 Miley publicly lights up marijuana joint at MTV’s EMA stage in Amsterdam that had millions of views. Her love for smoking has never been a big secret but even other celebrities like Whiz Khalifa worry at the amount she consumes.

While Miley credits growing up as the main reason for her wild ways, this sort of behavior isn’t common for an average twenty-one-year-old. Although she is now an adult and able to behave as she wishes, she has a fan base of millions of girls who look up to her and that will impact on their behavior too.

But the real question is, has Miley really grown up or gone crazy or is this all a part of a master plan? It’s become evident from pop-starts like Britney Spears, Madonna and Lady Gaga that becoming controversial is the formula to being in the public’s eye and mouth. But despite the overwhelming success of her singles “Wrecking Ball,” “We Can’t Stop” and “Adore You,” Miley wasn’t nominated neither by the Grammy’s or the American Music Award for her music, which leads me personally to believe this wasn’t all part of a marketing strategy, but an addiction to attention and thirst for fame.

Although I am in no position at all to judge Miley’s choices, I believe artists don’t need to seek for attention and behave controversially to be recognized for their music and talent. Can Miley really call this change as part of growing up or is the pressure of being famous making her slowly loose her mind?