The plague of throwing weird shit onstage at concerts continues. A few months ago, country superstar Kane Brown got nailed in the nuts with a thrown cowboy boot while performing in Wichita. Then there was Bebe Rexha taking a phone to the eye in New York, and people tossing their dead mother’s ashes and a wheel of brie onstage while Pink was playing a couple of huge London shows this past weekend. (She liked the brie, anyway.) Yesterday, the country star Kelsea Ballerini became the latest casualty when a thrown friendship bracelet hit her in the face during a Boise show.
Personalized friendship bracelets have become a bit part of Taylor Swift fan culture. People exchange bracelets with strangers at Swift’s shows, and they shower Taylor’s celebrity guests with the gifts whenever they spot them. But it appears that not every blonde pop-country singer is into the friendship-bracelet thing, at least in projectile form. Admittedly, a friendship bracelet is not going to decapitate anyone, but if you caught one in the eye when you weren’t expecting it, that could really suck.
Last night, Kelsea Ballerini played Boise’s Outlaw Field. In fan videos from the show, you can see her head suddenly jerk backward mid-song. (Fan reports claim that the thrown object was a friendship bracelet. I can’t see it for myself in the video, at least without doing Zapruder-style analysis.) Ballerini looked shaken. She stopped singing and turned her back on the audience while her fiddle player checked her eye, and then she apparently left the stage for a little while.
Later, Ballerini returned and finished the show. Talking the the crowd between songs, Ballerini said:
Can we just talk about what just happened? All I care about is keeping everyone safe. So if you ever don’t feel safe, please let someone around you know. There’s security everywhere tonight. If anyone’s pushing too much or you just have that gut feeling or anything, just always flag it. Don’t throw things. You know? I always want shows of mine — every show for every artist, but I’m in control of this one — I want it to be a safe place for everyone. We have little kids here, and can you help me do that tonight?
You can watch it all happen below.
@yeahsure0kay Just because one artist might enojy getting things thrown up onto the stage doesn’t mean they all do. What if these artsits started throwing things off the stage at you, you wouldn’t like it. Please remember they are humans too and put these shows on because they love their fans and they put a lot of trust into the crowds that they’ll be respectful to one another. This is not what concerts are all about enjoy the music and if you have something for them maybe they’ll take it after the show. Please remember to be nice to eachother and i hope you are ok Kels 🥹 #fyp #kelseaballeriniconcert #heartfirsttour #chasestokes #kelseaandchase #kelseaballerini #kelseaballerinitok #subjecttochange #rollingupthewelcomemat
We can joke all day about friendship bracelets, but the deadliest mass shooting in American history happened at a country festival in 2017. If country singers don’t want random shit flying around at their shows, there is a very real context for that.
