Alex Warren Says His Grammy Performance Went So Wrong He Wanted to Leave the Ceremony
Singer-songwriter Alex Warren has opened up about the technical malfunction that disrupted his live performance at the 68th Grammy Awards, describing the moment as “horrifying.”
Warren, who was nominated for Best New Artist, was set to perform his hit single Ordinary in a medley when his in-ear monitors suddenly stopped working about 30 seconds before he was due on stage. The issue happened just after Katseye finished their performance.
Speaking on the Call Her Daddy with host Alex Cooper, Warren explained that the performance had run flawlessly during rehearsals earlier in the week. “We had rehearsed it all week. It was perfect. To this day, I don’t know exactly what happened,” he said.
With the show about to go live, Warren told crew members he couldn’t hear anything in his monitors but ultimately had no choice except to continue. As he walked through the crowd at Crypto.com Arena toward the stage platform, he briefly removed one of the monitors in an attempt to fix the issue, only for the sound to become more distorted before briefly returning near the end of the performance.
Viewers watching the broadcast noticed something seemed off, with Warren appearing slightly behind his backup singers and sounding pitchy in parts of the performance.
The singer later shared a video on Instagram showing himself reacting to the distorted audio he had been hearing in his earpiece. In the clip, he smiles awkwardly before covering his face and silently screaming in frustration. He captioned the post: “This would only happen to me.”
Backstage, Warren said he felt devastated after the performance and nearly didn’t return to his seat in time for the Best New Artist announcement.
“I’m so destroyed,” he recalled thinking. “There’s no shot I’m winning this. I just messed that up so bad.” The award ultimately went to Olivia Dean, though Warren said he was happy for her win. He also received encouragement from Chappell Roan, who approached him backstage and reassured him after the performance.
Warren’s nomination capped a breakout year driven by the success of “Ordinary,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Recording Academy has not issued further comment about the technical malfunction.
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