Metallica Singer's Mic Is Accidentally Turned Off During Lady Gaga GRAMMY Performance

Philiana Ng
Updated

Technical glitches continued to plague the GRAMMYs.

Moments after Adele restarted her tribute to George Michael, things turned south for Metallica and Lady Gaga during their special GRAMMY performance on Sunday after it appeared the mic for Metallica lead singer and guitarist James Hetfield was off.

It became apparent that there were serious audio issues when Hetfield went to his mic to kick off the group's 2016 song, "Moth Into Flame." While it was clear Hetfield was singing, viewers and audience members were unable to hear anything.

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The mic problems continued for multiple verses before Hetfield moved over to Gaga's mic, which had been working.

Thankfully, the issue was fixed in time for Hetfield to finish out the rest of the song. But, it was pretty obvious after the performance ended that the 53-year-old musician was not pleased.

After the performance was over, which included Gaga crowd-surfing, Hetfield could be seen kicking down his mic stand, aggressively throwing down his guitar and his guitar pick.

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Even though Hetfield powered through a major mic snafu, he and Gaga still managed to rock their mash-up performance.

The mic mishap came after Doubt star Laverne Cox, who was presenting the performance at the GRAMMYs, failed to mention Metallica in her introduction.

"We all begin somewhere. Great bands usually begin in someone's garage or basement or some empty warehouse," Cox said. "And if they're really good, part of them always stays there. Ladies and gentlemen, and all my gender-non binary peeps watching tonight, eight-time GRAMMY Award winners and six-time GRAMMY Award winner, Lady Gaga!"

Awkward.

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