From gifting cheese to yeeting human remains at their favourite stars, fans are resorting to extreme measures to create their own magic moments at gigs. This will not end well
It is important, when considering throwing a family-size wheel of brie at the singer Pink, to meditate on the logistics involved. The first is buying the brie: this alone will have taken some plotting, finding a place that had whole uncut wheels of brie, refrigeration, etc. Then there’s getting the brie there: in all the excitement of getting ready, the outfit changes and the gins-in-tins, the group photos and the sing-a-longs, there is – always – a wheel of brie, which is too big for a tote bag and grows heavier by the minute. You need to be near the front, and to get the brie to Pink, you have to choose to do it during the right song (a ballad rather than a bop). And then of course there is the decision that starts it all off: at Pink this weekend, at a gig I bought tickets to months ago and have been growing in excitement for ever since, I’m going to take a big brie and throw it to her. That is not a normal decision.
2023 has been a good year for pop stars being thrown things on stage. During her BST Hyde Park residency Pink received both the wheel of brie and a small bag of an audience member’s late mother’s ashes. (“This is your mum? I don’t know how to feel about this.”) Lil Nas X paused a Stockholm gig after a fan threw a sex toy mid-performance. (“Who threw their pussy on stage? What’s wrong with y’all?” was the frankly quite measured response.) Less amusingly Bebe Rexha was taken to hospital for stitches after she had a phone thrown at her on stage in New York last month, and country singer Kelsea Ballerini had to pause a gig in Idaho last week after being hit in the face with a bracelet thrown from the crowd. Legitimate artist safety concerns aside, it must be asked: why, in 2023, is there such a trend for yeeting things at performers?
