Inside Grimes' doomed Coachella show branded 'worst set of all time' after 'sonic chaos'

Grimes’ set on the first weekend of Coachella is being talked about a lot – but for all the wrong reasons.

The 36-year-old began the set strongly, arriving onstage on the back of a robotic spider-like vehicle, but before long technological disarray had descended to the point she couldn’t recover from.

Her performance was riddled with technical difficulties, most noticeably when her tracks were sped up too fast. But instead of bouncing back and remixing on the fly, she went into meltdown.

Watched by thousands of fans at the California festival and millions on live streams around the world, the electronic star failed to mask her frustration and constantly screamed in annoyance.

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Such was the failure of her DJ set, Grimes felt moved to issue an apology on X, the social media platform owned by her ex-husband Elon Musk. “I want to apologize for the technical issues with the show tonight,” she wrote.

The Canadian musician explained the root of her equipment failure was that she “usually…always handles every aspect of my show myself. To save time this was one of the first times I’ve outsourced essential things…and let someone else organise the tracks.”

Grimes explained ‘Rekordbox’ (an artificial intelligence DJ) had been sent her tracks and generated its own BPM (beats per minute) for her performance. Something had gone awry, leading to the electronic star’s backing tracks being played comically fast.

“All my tracks are double tempo and I can’t do the math,” she explained on-stage. “They’re borderline un-mixable, so the rest of my set won’t be mixes but it’ll still be fun.

"It will continue. Just don't blame me because it's not my fault. Well, it's partially my fault, but it's not entirely my fault."

Grimes later added in her apology on X: “I had a bad feeling beforehand not having run everything thru the cdjs myself and tho [sic] I flagged it I wasn't insistent…I will personally organise all the files next week. I will not let such a thing happen again.

“It was literally sonic chaos on my end trying to guess how stuff was sounding.”

Clips of Grimes, real name Claire Boucher, have been circulating on social media – not of her singing, but rather a compilation video that rates each one of her screams as the nightmare set continues.

While the musical horror-show goes on, behind the artist visuals showing AI-generated art matching her ‘alien aesthetic’ can be seen.

“Something about the spectacle crumbling into itself while the dumb AI art mirror cubes fractalize and a brain dead mechanical spider trollops about made me feel a special joy,” someone wrote below one of the compilation clips.

“This could be the worst performance in the history of Coachella,” said another.

However, some fans were quick to defend Grimes, with one person writing on X underneath her apology: “I can't imagine how stressful that must have been for you, but the screams of frustration in the midst of songs were kinda a vibe. Can't wait to hear next week's set.”

Although Grimes was quick to pin her failure on outside forces like the AI she outsourced her tracks to, some have slammed the singer for not running through her set beforehand.

“If you have a big gig coming up, put your USB stick into a laptop to have a run-through and make sure everything looks right,” said YouTuber DJ Phil Harris. “This could have been avoided.”

Thankfully, the artist has a chance at redemption when she returns to Coachella this weekend.

Grimes has promised to be more engaging with the crowd should malfunctions happen in the future – and did her best to reassure fans nothing would go wrong when she plays tonight (Saturday, April 20).