Grimes apologises after disastrous Coachella set that left her screaming in frustration
Grimes has apologised to Coachella festivalgoers after her set was plagued by “major technical difficulties”.
The 36-year-old was left screaming in frustration on Saturday (13 April) as her songs were playing at double speed.
“All my tracks are double tempo and I can’t do the math,” she explained on-stage. “They’re borderline un-mixable, so the rest of my set won’t be mixes but it’ll still be fun.”
On Twitter/X on Sunday, Grimes explained that she usually handles “every aspect” of her shows herself, but decided to outsource for items like “rekordbox bpms” and organising the tracklist.
“I had a bad feeling beforehand not having run everything thru the cdjs myself and tho I flagged it I wasn’t insistent,” she wrote.
She said a lesson learnt was to “pretend it’s fine and engage w the crowd rather than spend a whole show slumped over the desk trying to fix software when ur meant to be entertaining”.
“I will personally organize all the files next week. I will not let such a thing happen again,” she promised.
I want to apologize for the technical issues with the show tonight. I wanted to come back rly 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…
— 𝖦𝗋𝗂𝗆𝖾𝗌 ⏳ (@Grimezsz) April 14, 2024
“I’ve spent months on this show, making music and visuals, and admittedly am not in the best mood atm.
“But, yeh – next week will be flawless, everything will run thru my hands,” she added of her forthcoming show at Coachella’s second weekend.
On social media, critics were quick to brand the Canadian musician’s show “the worst performance in the history of Coachella”.
Grimes’ tracks are at double tempo for some reason and she’s tried to explain like 6 times now she can’t mix them on the fly 💀 pic.twitter.com/U7J8R0PddC
— Shane (@shane1409) April 14, 2024
Last month, the performer went “Instagram official” with her new boyfriend.
Although she didn’t tag her partner in the photos, it appears she was posing with EDM artist Anyma, which fans called out in the comments.
Grimes was previously in a relationship with billionaire Elon Musk. They first met in 2018 after he sent her a message on social media. In September 2021, Musk revealed to Page Six that he and Grimes had “semi-separated” due to conflicting schedules and locations.
Two months later, the pair welcomed a daughter, Exa – who was given the nickname Y – via surrogate. Along with Exa, the former couple have a three-year-old son, X AE A-XII, who is nicknamed X. The tech giant also secretly welcomed a third child with Grimes, named Techno Mechanicus, on 9 September 2023.
The former couple have since filed child custody lawsuits against each other over the three children.