Yesterday (14 April), Grimes took to Twitter/ X to apologise to Coachella goers for the technical issues that disrupted her highly anticipated set at the music and arts festival on Saturday. During her performance at the Sahara stage, she was forced to restart songs several times and even experienced speed issues with her music while she was DJing.
Frustrated by her problems on stage, Grimes shouted and cursed throughout her 50-minute performance, especially during one of her many failed attempts to perform “Music 4 Machines”. On social media, her critics argued that if she had spent more time preparing for her set and less time “talking about how much she loves AI and white culture,” she wouldn’t have had “one of the worst Coachella performances of all time.”
In response to critics, she apologised: “I want to apologise for the technical issues with the show tonight. I wanted to come back really strong and usually I always handle every aspect of my show myself – to save time, this was one of the first times I’ve outsourced essential things like rekordbox bpm’s and letting someone else organise the tracks on the SD card etc.” She went on to promise that her performance next week “will be flawless” as “everything will run through my hands”.
To be fair to Grimes (a sentence I never thought I’d say), she was not the only artist to experience technical difficulties during the first weekend of Coachella. Lana Del Rey and The Japanese House also experienced multiple technical problems while they performed, reminding those online of Frank Ocean’s problematic set from last year.
And if we’re being honest, Coachella wouldn’t be Coachella without a few flop performances.