Grimes screams on stage after having ‘major technical difficulties’ during chaotic set at Coachella: ‘Don’t judge me for being bad at calculating things’

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

Things seemed to get off to a stunning and dramatic start as she made her grand entrance onto the Sahara stage on a futuristic walking vehicle that crawled like a spider as she sat in the back seat, according to Variety.

Despite warning ahead of her show with a few posts on X (formerly Twitter) that she was expecting 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 a number of times, which she blamed on the song being played at twice the intended tempo.

‘This is insane. All my tracks are double tempo,’ she revealed, letting out a few frustrated screams. ‘It’s a difficult thing to explain, but we have a big technical error. Don’t judge me for being bad at calculating things’.

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

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

In the end, she decided to go ahead and play several unreleased songs, some of which were only just recorded in the last few days.

Pausing between each number, she let out a few screams of frustration, stating that it wasn’t ‘actually my fault’ that the set fell apart, as per TMZ.

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

She eventually decided to go into her 2012 song Genesis, but ultimately the set was cut short and she left the stage around 50 minutes.

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.

“Ok, I’m playing a bunch of new stuff tonight, and we’re literally still working on the vocal mix and stuff — a lot of this stuff isn’t finished,” she explained around 3 p.m. Saturday. ‘So if there are weird moments or bad vocals, that’s why!’

Things seemed to get off to a stunning and dramatic start when she made her grand entrance onto the Sahara stage on a futuristic walking vehicle that crawled like a spider as she sat in the back seat, according to Variety

The electronic singer-songwriter was forced to restart Music 4 Machines a number of times, which she blamed for the song playing at double the tempo it was intended for.

Pausing between each number, she let out a few frustrated screams, saying it wasn’t ‘actually my fault’ the set fell apart

“I’ll be working more between Coachellas, so next week will probably be even better,” she promised.

A few minutes later, she took to the social media platform to elaborate on why she felt there would be technical issues.

‘The first half of the set is more mixes I made, then the end is all new stuff / nothing mastered yet if there are volume drops and whatnot – Imo the songs you’ll probably enjoy the most r Fantasia ( tears r data) and synchronize , but my indulgent favorite is liberté,’ she explained.

“I still need to do the vocal stack on the chorus, but my tour manager has forbidden me from doing any more edits,” she wrote.

“I didn’t have time to finish the requested cyber-twe, as that type of music doesn’t go over well, but it’s coming too.”

Moments later, she shared another disclaimer.

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 how the second half of her set was new songs that weren’t properly finished and mastered

Grimes even shared a disclaimer about her intro entry, but it turned out to be fine

Grimes will have the opportunity to redeem herself, fix the technical issues and deliver a more coherent performance at the 2024 Coachella next Saturday, April 20

“For safety reasons, I was unable to practice timekeeping on top of the mechanical spider, so if I am unable to get off the spider, please forgive me.”

Grimes will have the opportunity to redeem herself, fix the technical issues and deliver a more coherent performance at the 2024 Coachella next Saturday, April 20.

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

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