“I’m terrified,” says Post Malone while kicking back in an Indio, Calif., villa. He’s at an intimate but rowdy party hosted by Poppi, the fast-growing prebiotic soda he was an early investor in, and is speaking about his upcoming Coachella 2025 headlining gig that will close out both weekends of the festival on Sunday night April 13 and 20).
“They want me to do something crazy, and I’m terrified to do it,” he teases, not saying much more. Even so, Posty says he gets nervous before every show. Except for, maybe, the first time he played Coachella in 2018 at the Sahara tent. “I wasn’t as nervous back then… I’m just old now. Everything hurts.”
Getting older is, in part, why Post was so eager to support Poppi from the jump. “I remember kicking soda was a hard thing,” he says, speaking of a few years back when he decided to swap in some healthier day-to-day choices. He says his manager, Austin Rosen, told him about the then-new option, which Post tried and declared, “This is f—ing banging.”
Other than stopping by to hang and support Poppi (which in March celebrated a nearly $2 billion acquisition by Pepsi Co), Post has stayed tucked away for most of Coachella weekend one. And the day after his set, he reveals, he’s right back to work cutting vocals for his upcoming album.
And yes, he’s cooking up another country set.
While speaking about how kind the Nashville community has been since he had started working on his chart-topping 2024 album, F-1 Trillion, he says that every time he gets together with his crew out there — which includes buddies and fellow artists like Ernest, Hardy, Thomas Rhett and many more — “we just have fun. We just sit and f—ing talk and make songs. And so I’m pretty excited for the new record already.”
Posty says he’s already done two trips to Nashville for the project and has “made probably 35 songs; it’s just a matter of which one’s rock, and which one’s sock,” he says. (As for whether or not he’ll perform any new music during his headlining set, he says with a laugh: “Absolutely not.”)
Malone is currently working with scratch vocals, but shares that the band has already cut a bunch of songs “and they’re f—ing killing it… I sit there and listen to these songs, and I usually hate listening to my music, but listening to the band play, I get so excited.”
That excitement Post feels for the country music genre is evident — plus it works. F-1 Trillion spawned the Hot 100 No. 1 hit “I Had Some Help,” featuring Morgan Wallen, while a total of 18 songs off the album charted on the tally. F-1 also debuted atop the Top Country Albums chart. And in May, Post will compete for album of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
While country music has been the vehicle to help launch Post into this stratosphere of success, his hits-filled catalog that spans hip-hop, pop and even rock will be on full display during his headlining set, he assures.
“You put a twist on the instrumentation and the musicianship of it,” he says of crafting a cohesive show. “We have Lillie [Mae] playing the fiddle and Cheese [Chandler Walters] playing the steel [guitar] and incorporating that into the old songs and then transitioning into the new s—… that’s always been the thing about me, is it’s all just f—ing music.”
And thanks to F-1, not only is Post headlining Coachella, but right after will head out on his first stadium tour, the Big Ass World Tour, alongside new pal Jelly Roll. While the correlation between Post’s foray into country music and his global superstardom is clear, he sees his current path as the only one that felt right.
Post has released an album every year since 2022 — “some better than others,” he says softly — starting with Twelve Carat Toothache, then his pop-country-stepping-stone project Austin, and then last year’s F-1.
“[They weren’t] really, I don’t want to say not well received, but, you know, it was something that I had to do,” he says of Toothache and Austin. “We just slowed everything down and that’s kind of what I was going through at that point. And [F-1] was just f—ing bitching. It was so fun to make. And I said in an interview a while ago, ‘When I’m 30 years old, I’m gonna make a country record.’ And I made it at 29, so I wasn’t too far off. But you know, it just happened naturally. I was like, ‘F— it, let’s go to Nashville. Let’s give it a go.’ I think finally bringing the fun back into what I was doing really showed on the record. And I think a lot of folks had fun listening to it. And we’re going to attempt to do it again. I’m excited to keep going.”
So does that mean he will continue his trend of releasing an album a year? “Hopefully,” he says, “we’ll have some music releasing very, very soon.”
