Boundary-breaking pop star Lil Nas X is no stranger to sexually explicit content, so it makes sense that he reacted with a perfect comeback when, while performing at Lollapalooza over the weekend, a fan threw a Fleshlight in his direction: “Who threw they pussy onstage?”
However, the Montero singers is just the latest prominent musician this summer to be the unwilling target of strange, sometimes harmful projectiles being tossed at them in the middle of a show.
A few weeks ago, pop singer Bebe Rexha was struck in the face with a cell phone while she was performing at Pier 17 in Manhattan—in video of the incident, Rexha can be seen crumpling to the ground in pain and shock.
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The resulting injury, which split Rexha’s eyebrow, required stitches, and in the days following, she posted pictures of her black eye and reassured fans she was in good spirits.
Assailant Nicolas Malvagna was arrested at the scene and charged with assault, and Malvanga, according to reports, admitted that striking the singer had been his goal: “I was trying to see if I could hit her with the phone at the end of the show because it would be funny.”
“It’s a TikTok trend where you throw your phone onto the stage, and a celebrity passes it and takes a selfie,’” Malvanga also reportedly told officers.
Malvanga’s disturbingly casual attitude about his intent to deliberately assault a performer, whether for viral fame or just for the hell of it, isn’t unique to him.
He seems to have kicked off an alarming trend: days after Malvanga clocked Rexha, a man rushed the stage at an Ava Max concert in Los Angeles and slapped Max across the face.
“He slapped me so hard that he scratched the inside of my eye,” Max tweeted. “He’s never coming to a show again. Thank you to the fans for being spectacular tonight in LA though!!”
Since Max and Rexha were assaulted, even odder objects have been tossed onstage by fans, who seem to be intent on deliberately unsettling the person performing.
Later in June, Pink, while headlining British Summer Time festival in London, was stunned when a fan chucked a plastic bag filled with their mother’s ashes in her direction. “Is this your mom?” Pink said, stunned, placing the bag gingerly on the ground. “I don’t know how I feel about this.”
Days later, at the same festival, Pink was far more receptive when another fan gifted her a massive wheel of brie cheese mid-performance. “What the fuck?” she mouths in another viral video, dropping to her knees with her arms outstretched. “I love you.”
There’s something very insidious about all these recent incidents, even the seemingly innocent ones.
Fans wanting to get a performer’s attention is nothing knew, but trying to derail a pop star’s focus, mid-performance, by trying to injure them or by tossing something weird onstage communicates a flagrant lack of respect for their boundaries in a way that feels endemic to this viral moment-obsessed generation.
On June 29th, singer Kelsea Ballerini was also hit in the face with a projectile while performing in Idaho, prompting her to exit the stage.
“Someone threw a bracelet,” Ballerini said on her Instagram story later, sharing that, like Rexha and Max, she’d been struck in the eye: “It more so just scared me than hurt me. We all have triggers and layers of fears way deeper than what is shown, and that’s why I walked offstage to calm down and make sure myself, band and crew, and the crowd all felt safe to continue.”
“Between throwing a phone at bebe, throwing their mother’s ASHES at pink and now this… I wouldn’t be surprised if artists straight up start refusing to do concerts for y’all,” one person tweeted alonside video of Ballerini being struck.
Male performers, like Lil Nas X and Harry Styles, who was also struck in the eye with a Skittle last November, have had to dodge flying objects too of late, but the majority of recent onstage assaults have targeted female performers.
The only word for that kind of cruel behavior is misogyny.
