Coachella’s 2024 lineup was amazing in many different ways. The headliners, Lana Del Rey, Tyler The Creator, and Doja Cat, all put on the performances of a lifetime. With screaming fans and special guests, the atmosphere was super fun when I attended the first weekend of Coachella this year.
One set that has gotten some not-so-positive media attention since the first weekend of the festival, however, is Grimes’ DJ set that she performed at the festival’s Sahara stage. While the beginning of the performance seemed to go off without a hitch, the ending of Grimes' set was punctuated by her frustration at her equipment and the technical issues she was having. While watching the performance I found myself confused about what exactly was going on and what the technical issues she was having really were. After some research, I am here to explain what happened for all of us who aren’t DJs or familiar with their equipment.
Starting with some of the basics, DJs use CDJs in order to mix songs into each other. CDJ stands for CD Jockey, and it is the disc that you usually see DJs spinning when moving songs forward or backward. Instead of having actual vinyls on the decks, modern DJs upload their songs onto USBs and use music software to be able to see the songs. In order to use the CDJs on the deck, the user must load a song into each deck. Normally, these songs have been proofed by the DJ and have been adjusted to the correct BPM readings in order for the DJ to be able to properly read them during their set. These BPMs help the DJ to seamlessly blend two tracks together. What happened to Grimes was an issue with her decks, because the software thought that the BPMs of all her songs were different than what they actually were. So instead of being able to use the sync tool on the deck, Grimes had to adjust the BPMs in her head and count out the beats. This tactic helps to ensure that the songs will successfully mix into each other. As this is what DJs had to do before there was software to help them, most DJs do still have this skill. Grimes, however, was unsuccessful in pulling off this type of mixing. My theory is that Grimes was not well prepared for her set, which is backed up by her claim that she submitted her final tracks less than two hours prior to the set, and then she became too overwhelmed when the BPMs read out wrong, causing her to panic a bit. I also think one of her biggest mistakes was continually calling attention to the issue. Her continuous shouting and screaming while putting the entire set on pause only dramatized the issue. She brought attention to something that could have been played off very smoothly, with probably only experienced DJs or extremely loyal fans taking notice of the small bumps in mixing. If she had simply taken notice of the issue and done her best to continue forward, I think it could have been a really good set. I say this also because I had no idea that anything was wrong until Grimes shouted that the mixing was off multiple times.
After this first chaotic set, I was extremely curious to see how her set would go during the second weekend of Coachella. I was surprised and impressed with Grimes’ team for what they did at the beginning of her set. They edited a video to play during the opening of her set, basically poking fun at the way Grimes reacted to the problem and making it a big joke that one of her team actually hacked into her equipment, causing it to malfunction. I thought this was an extremely funny and good-natured way to respond to criticism and humanized Grimes to the audience, too. By taking the joke and joining in, Grimes took some of the heat off of her. I think she will be able to move on from this technical issue without excessive criticism, and hopefully, she will come to her next large set a bit more prepared.
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