On Saturday (April 13), Grimes's DJ set at Coachella was cut short following a slew of technical difficulties. People online were quick to point out — some more sympathetically than others — that most of the tracks were playing at double the BPM. The musician herself explained this to the crowd as her tracks abruptly stopped playing, saying she was having issues doing the math to be able to mix them properly. Nightmare fodder for any performer, truly.
"There has never been a Grimes show without a major technical difficulty. It will continue!" she told the crowd. "Just don't blame me, it's not my fault. Well, it's partially my fault, but it's not entirely my fault."
Now, Grimes is admitting that it's at least partially her fault. Taking to her ex-man's site Twitter X, she apologized for the botched performance, explaining her tempo issues even further: "I wanted to come back rly [sic] 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 BPMs and letting someone else organize the tracks on the SD card etc."
She said that she learned a lot and that she will "personally organize all the files" for next week's encore performance. "The big lesson for me was a mix of 1. If u want it done right, do it yourself, 2. Be a cunt even if ppl feel bad [sic]," and, "3. Probably pretend it's fine and engage [with] the crowd rather than spend a whole show slumped over the desk trying to fix software when [you're] meant to be entertaining."
To be fair, Grimes did admit that much of her performance budget went into the giant mechanical spider she rode while entering the stage. "Everyone begged me not to spend most of my Coachella budget on a giant mechanical spider but they were so wrong," she tweeted posted Friday (April 12). Considering a few Exclaim! staffers have witnessed similar tech issues at Grimes shows, it probably wasn't just the spider's fault.
Read Grimes's full apology and watch some footage from her Coachella set below.
