Grimes screams on stage after having ‘major technical difficulties’ during chaotic set at Coachella

Grimes faced some major technical issues during her set during the first weekend of the 2024 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival.

Things seemed to get off to a great and dramatic start when she made her grand entrance at the Sahara Stage on a futuristic walker vehicle that crawled like a spider while she sat in the backseat, according to Variety.

Despite warning ahead of her show with a few posts on X (formerly Twitter) that she expected some trouble, her 50-minute set got off to a great start.

But about halfway through the show, the electronic singer-songwriter, 36, was forced to restart Music 4 Machines several times, which she blamed for the song being played at double the tempo it was intended.

‘This is insane. All my songs are double the tempo,” she revealed, letting out a few frustrated shouts. ‘This is difficult to explain, but we are dealing with a major technical error. Don’t judge me because I’m bad at calculating things.’

During the onstage fiasco, Grimes (born Claire Elise Boucher) tried to explain the problems to the audience and solve the math in real time and memorize the tempo of each song.

She was unable to rework them at the time, derailing her plans.

Ultimately, she decided to move on and play some previously unreleased songs, some of which were only recorded in the past few days.

She paused between each song and let out a few frustrated cries, declaring that it was “actually not my fault” that the set fell apart.

‘I’m trying to think. I’m not good enough at math for this shit,” she said.

Ultimately, she decided to dig into her 2012 song Genesis, but ultimately the set was cut short and she left the stage around the 50-minute mark.

After the disastrous set, she took to her Twitter to apologize to fans with a lengthy note.

“I would like to apologize for the technical difficulties with the show tonight,” she wrote.

‘I really wanted to come back strong and I usually always handle every aspect of my show myself – to save time this was one of the first times I outsourced essentials like rekordbox bpms and let someone else put the songs on the SD card organizing etc.’

The electronic singer-songwriter was forced to restart Music 4 Machines a number of times, which she blamed on the song playing twice as fast as intended.

She paused between each song and let out a few frustrated cries, declaring that it was “actually not my fault” that the set fell apart.

‘This is insane. All my songs are double the tempo,” she revealed. “This is difficult to explain, but we are dealing with a major technical error.”

‘I had a bad feeling beforehand because I hadn’t run everything through the CDJs myself and although I marked it, I didn’t push it. The big lesson for me was a mix of: 1 if you want it done right, do it yourself, 2 be an act even if people feel bad, 3 probably act like it’s right and involve the audience instead of spend an entire show slumped over the desk trying to fix software when it was meant to entertain.”

‘Next week I will personally organize all the files. I won’t allow something like this to happen again.’

“I’ve spent months on this show, creating music and visuals, and I’m admittedly not in the best mood. But yes, next week will go smoothly, everything will run through my hands.’

‘Some good lessons learned. Bless you all. The CDJs showed bpms of about 370 so I couldn’t even manually mix by ear and the front monitors were off so it was literally sonic chaos on my end trying to guess what things sounded like to you guys.”

She finished writing, “Please forgive me! Always love.’

Grimes also posted on Twitter a few hours before taking the stage to let fans know that she wasn’t expecting a perfect performance, which turned out to be correct.

“Okay, I’m playing a lot of new stuff tonight and we’re literally still fixing vocal mixes and stuff – a lot of this isn’t finished yet,” she explained around 3pm on Saturday. “So if there are any weird moments or bad singing, this is why!”

“I’ll be doing more work between coachellas, so next week will probably be even better,” she promised.”

A few minutes later, she returned to the social media platform to further explain why she thought there might be technical issues.

Grimes took to X (formerly Twitter) a few hours before taking the stage to let fans know she wasn’t expecting a perfect performance, which turned out to be correct

The Canadian singer-songwriter explained that the second half of her set consisted of new songs that were not properly finished and mastered

Grimes even shared a disclaimer about her intro entrance, but it turned out to go well

Grimes will have a chance to redeem himself, iron out the technical issues and deliver a more cohesive performance this Saturday, April 20, at 2024 Coachella.

‘The first half of the set is more mixes I’ve done then it’s all new stuff / nothing’s mastered yet if there’s volume drops and such – Imo the songs you’ll probably enjoy the most r Fantasia (tears r data) and sync , but my self-indulgent favorite is liberté,” she explained.

“I still need to do vocal stacks on the chorus, but my tour manager has banned me from doing any more edits,” she wrote. ‘I didn’t have time to finish the requested cybertwo, as that kind of music doesn’t come across very well live, but it’s coming too.’

Moments later, she shared another disclaimer. “For safety reasons, I couldn’t rehearse the tidings on top of the mechanical spider, so if I can’t get off the spider gracefully, please forgive me.”

Grimes will have a chance to redeem himself, iron out the technical issues and deliver a more cohesive performance at Coachella 2024 this Saturday, April 20.

The artist began her career in music after moving to Montreal in 2006, which led to her first two studio albums in 2010.

She has since released three more albums in the years leading up to 2020, when she released her most recent Miss Anthropocene just a few weeks before COVID-19 was deemed a pandemic.