Coachella 2024: Grimes apologizes after glitch-filled Saturday set, promises to fix issues

While lots of artists shined Saturday night, Grimes — by her own admission — was not one of them.

After a set that appeared to involve several equipment malfunctions that, at points, saw Grimes screaming in frustration into the mic, the Canadian musician published a lengthy apology for the technical issues on her X page (formerly Twitter) late Saturday night.

In an apology filled with technical terms and producing jargon, Grimes explained that she had chosen not to handle certain aspects of her production and now regrets that decision after several glitches occurred.

“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 someone else organize the tracks on the card etc.,” she wrote.

She further explained that she’d had a bad feeling before the show because she had not run through the show beforehand and though she said she'd "flagged" her concern, she had not insisted on any changes.

Grimes described her experience during the show as “sonic chaos,” saying her equipment was playing her beats at 370 bpm per minute, too fast for her to fix manually. The front monitors were also off, so “it was literally sonic chaos on my end trying to guess how stuff was sounding for you guys.”

The artist wrote she had learned several lessons, including that if you want things to be done right, do it yourself; it's probably better to pretend things are working fine even when they are not; and still 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.”

She pledged to personally organize all the files for her Weekend 2 set.

“I will not let such a thing happen again. 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 wrote.

The replies to the post were filled with comments of support from fans, including some who praised the set despite the issues. When one wrote that they were sure Grimes would crush the next performance, the artist tweeted a response saying “I have no choice at this point haha.”

Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and email him at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Coachella 2024: Grimes apologizes after glitch-filled Saturday set