The life of a star seems glamorous from below the stage, but not everything always goes to plan.
While we cheer and sing along to our favourite songs, the artist on the stage is usually performing a meticulously-planned set, with people behind the scenes knowing their every cue for thing such as lights, stage doors and even pyrotechnics.
But sometimes things just don’t work the way we want them to.
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Keep scrolling to read about some of the biggest on-stage technical malfunctions to ever strike our favourite stars.
Pink
Pink is known for her extravagant acrobatics on stage, flying over the crowd doing all kinds of tricks.
But when your shows are that technical, things are bound to go wrong sometimes.
During a 2010 show in Germany, Pink had reached the finale and was about to perform her hit So What as her dancers strapped her into a harness.
But, it quickly became clear to fans that something was wrong as the singer tried to signal to her team to stop.
As she tried to warn the crew, she was yanked forward by the mechanism and pulled directly into the crowd, hitting the metal barricade.
The singer later said the accident had left her “seriously sore” but there were no major injuries.
She returned to the stage to perform the next night.
Katy Perry
During her penultimate show at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Katy Perry very nearly fell from a giant metal sphere above the stage.
A video shared by a fan on X (formerly Twitter) shows the pop star inside a metallic sphere holding onto cables above her head, preparing to be lifted above the crowd.
It suddenly tilted, forcing Perry to shift her weight to stop her feet from slipping out underneath her.
As she tried to push herself up from the floor looming below her, the Firework singer kept a tight grip on the cables above her head.
The sphere began to swing as a drum beat played in the background and the stage-hands rushed back toward Perry before things could get any worse.
They managed to take a hold of the sphere, slowly turning it to the correct angle as the crowd erupted in cheers for the safety of the singer.
Beyoncé
Beyoncé’s hometown show in Houston during the Cowboy Carter tour was brought to an abrupt stop during her song 16 Carriages, which she performs in a prop car, flying above the crowd.
Mid-way through the song, the car stopped and began to tilt to the side as Beyoncé stopped singing, saying “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.”
She appeared to be wearing a harness as she gripped onto the car and waited calmly for her team to lower her to safety.
In videos of the moment shared to social media, fans could be heard saying, “Get her down, she sounds scared.”
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“Thank y’all for your patience,” she said to her fans as they cheered for her.
As the car inched closer to the ground, it stopped tilting and Beyoncé adjusted her position on top of the car before the crowd lights were turned off.
Once the car was safely on the ground, security helped Beyoncé out of the prop vehicle as she quickly left the stage, returning soon after to finish the performance.
Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter was performing at the 2024 Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco, wearing a blue mini-dress and platform boots, when she she stood a bit too close to the pyrotechnics.
A video circulating on X (formerly Twitter) at the time caught the exact moment Carpenter was dancing atop a set of steps on stage before the fireworks went off right behind her.
The singer shrieked and covered her mouth before quickly bolting down the stairs away from the pyrotechnics.
At one point the star appeared to say “oh my god” as the fireworks continued to go off.
Taylor Swift
When you’re as big of an artist as Taylor Swift, you’re bound to have a stage malfunction – or several.
The video above shows the moment during her Eras Tour in New Orleans where the platform she performed her hit Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me on stopped working.
While her show was choreographed down to the second, the malfunction meant the singer had to improvise one of the most highly anticipated songs of the evening, and of course she nailed it.
During a Cincinnati stop on the Eras Tour, the singer was forced to sprint off stage after a trap door she would usually use to exit failed to open.
Thank god she trained for years!
Throwing it back even further to her Reputation tour, Swift was mid-way through performing her song Delicate from a sparkly stage above the Philadelphia crowd when she realised the contraption had gotten stuck.
“I’m pretty sure I’m stuck up here. It’s a nice view, though,” she told the crowd, explaining she would now sit and wait to “figure out what happens next”.
So, to kill a bit of time, Swift delighted fans with a cappella renditions of Our Song and Wildest Dreams.
Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo was in the middle of performing the final of her four sold-out shows in Melbourne in 2024 when she abruptly disappeared into the stage.
Cheers quickly turned into shocked screams early into the Drivers License songstress’ set, with footage shared to TikTok showing Rodrigo running around, greeting her adoring audience – before falling into a “hole” in the middle of the stage.
Luckily, Rodrigo had managed to catch herself with her hands, securing them on the edge of the floor hatch that had seemingly accidentally been left open from when she had entered earlier.
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Almost as quickly as she had disappeared, Rodrigo emerged on stage again, popping up from the hole and reassuring her audience.
With a smile on her face, she casually told the audience, “Oh my god! That was fun, I’m OK! Sometimes there is just a hole in the stage, OK… where was I?”
Coldplay
It seems there was something in the air in Melourne around this time, because weeks after Rodrigo fell through the stage, Coldplay singer Chris Martin did the same thing.
Performing his fourth and final show in the city, Martin was walking down the stage chatting to the audience between songs when he stepped and fell into a hole.
The Fix You singer was walking backwards as he read out fans signs, then when he stepped into the hole, gasps rang out through the audience.
“That’s not planned,” he quickly reassured fans as he climbed out.
“Thank you for catching me,” he added, addressing a member of his team below the stage.
Luckily, Martin didn’t seem to be hurt, quickly getting on with the show after the incident.
Michael Jackson
In 2003, Michael Jackson performed to a crowd of just 3000 people at Shrine Auditorium in LA as part of an advertisement being filmed for Pepsi.
But, things went south when, during the song Billie Jean, a pyrotechnics malfunction resulted in Jackson’s hair being set on fire.
Despite the flames atop his head, the pop star kept dancing as a crew member extinguished the fire.
Following the performance, he was rushed to hospital with second-degree burns.
Tommy Lee
While Tommy Lee was known to get up to all kinds of shenanigans during his hay-day, this one simply wasn’t his fault.
Performing at Motley Crue’s 2015 New Year’s Eve show at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, the star performed a drum solo on a revolving platform that spun in circles.
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However, whilst spinning the platform got stuck at the top, leaving Lee suspended above the crowd upside-down.
“What the f–k?” he exclaimed, before joking that the crowd ‘looked funny’.
Crew members rushed to climb up the platform and the rocker soon had his feet planted on the stage.
Metallica
It seems fire on stage does have a tendency to go terribly wrong.
During a Metallica show at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in 1992, guitarist James Hetfield accidentally stepped into the middle of a 12-foot flame.
Later describing the incident, Hetfield said, “The pyro guy doesn’t see me, and ‘whoosh!’, a big colored flame goes right up under me.
“I’m burnt. My arm, my hand, completely down to the bone. The side of my face. Hair’s gone. Part of my back.”
While his injuries were definitely no joke, it was only about two weeks before Hetfield returned to the stage.
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