Grimes Apologises For “Sonic Chaos” At Coachella Set

After a set full of technical nightmares at Coachella, Grimes has taken to social media to apologise to her fans.

Halfway through her 50-minute set on the Sahara Stage at Coachella on Saturday night (April 13), the Oblivion musician had to stop and start a number of songs, citing issues with the programming of the tracks on her mixing desk. 

“This shit always fucking happens... There has never been a Grimes show without a major technical difficulty,” she said to the crowd.

Letting out a few screams of frustration, she explained that the songs were playing at double the tempo they should. “I’m trying to think. I’m not good enough at math for this shit,” she said.

Each track was prefaced with a statement of “it wasn’t my fault” as Grimes switched up the set on the fly, choosing instead to play unreleased songs instead of the ones she originally queued. Though she closed out the set with fan-favourite Genesis, Grimes obviously wasn’t happy with how her performance went.

Taking to X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday morning (April 14), the 36-year-old posted a lengthy apology to her fans, promising to “not let such a thing happen again”. She explained that while she usually handles “every aspect of the show” herself, to save time she “outsourced essential things like rekordbox bpm's [sic] and letting someone else organize the tracks on the sd card etc.”

Grimes noted that she “had a bad feeling beforehand” because she hadn’t “run everything thru the cdjs myself”, admitting to fans that she “wasn't insistent” on the process. She said the experience did teach her a few “good lessons”, though: namely that “if u want it done right, do it yrself”, to “be a cunt even if ppl feel bad” and that you should “probably 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”.

Finishing her post with a promise to “personally organize all the files next week”, Grimes reiterated that her next set “will be flawless”, adding: “I've spent months on this show, making music and visuals”.

The apology has been met with an outpouring of support, with replies like, “I'm sure you will crush the next performance”, “I thought you were great”, and “honestly your set was still incredible even with the issues, and the new music sounds insane.”

Now we’ll just have to wait to see what weekend two of Coachella brings.

Earlier this year, Grimes sparked controversy when commenters branded her as a “Nazi” on social media, following a series of potentially problematic posts. She hit back at her critics, excusing her beliefs as merely being “proud of white culture”.