Ariana Grande temporarily halted her Coachella performance on Sunday night after an audience member threw a lemon at her.
The 25-year-old singer was performing her headline set at the second weekend of the music festival in Indio, California, and strutted down a runway on the stage during a medley of tunes when the piece of fruit came hurtling at her from the crowd.
Luckily, the offending missile missed Ariana’s face but hit her squarely in the chest – causing the star to glance at it before continuing with the performance. She later paused the set, apparently an unscheduled halt – and told the audience: “That’s ’cause one of y’all threw a lemon at me. Shit.”
It has since been speculated that rumours of a pay row surrounding previous Coachella headliner Beyonce may have been responsible for the lemon-throwing incident. It was claimed that Beyonce, who released her groundbreaking visual album Lemonade back in 2016, earned $4 million (£3 million) for her performance at the 2018 festival, while Ariana earned $8 million (£6 million).
However, an insider later clarified to The Blast that Beyonce actually took home $4 million (£3.1 million) per weekend – meaning they both earned $8 million for two weekends of performances.
“We’re told the contracts for Grande and Beyonce were structured exactly the same way – $4 million for the first weekend and another $4 million for the second,” the source said.
Others put the lemon throwing down to a drunk and/or unruly fan in the crowd, with the nature of the piece of fruit hurled just a coincidence.
Whatever the reasons for the pelt, thousands of fans took to social media to slam the culprit, with one writing: “Someone threw a lemon at our baby!!! Who the fuck throws lemons at a concert??Wtf shit… this ain’t no one direction concert right @ArianaGrande?”
Another wrote: “Y’all I wake up to find out someone threw a LEMON at Ariana Grande last night a Coachella… y’all really out here being CHILDISH.”
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