Doja Cat's Professionalism Shines Through Onstage Mishap At Coachella

Doja Cat showed she was the utmost professional when she suffered a mishap onstage during her headlining set at Coachella. The 28-year-old, whose given name is Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, was the last act to hit the stage of the two-weekend festival on Sunday. During a performance of her hit "F*** the Girls (FTG)" from her 2023 album, Scarlet, Doja Cat was waiting for one of her crew members or dancers to hand her a microphone so she could perform the song but was left empty-handed.

Despite the microphone mishap, she gestured a few times to get their attention to show she had no microphone, but continued to lip-synch the lyrics and perform choreography for the song. Doja Cat turned to face her band and raised her hands to ask where the microphone was and was eventually handed a piece, but she seemed exasperated to find it didn’t seem to be working. Eventually, she got it switched on and without missing a beat, joined right back into the song like nothing had happened.

A clip of the moment went viral after Pop Crave reposted the video from X, formerly Twitter account, Viral Thingz. The post has reached almost 269,000 views and her fans flooded the replies with messages of praise for the singer/rapper. Comments included, “I didn’t even notice she didn’t have a mic. I just thought she was emoting,” and “She’s such a true performer.”

Despite Coachella's disappointing ticket sales this year, which experts attributed to a range of factors such as the cost of living crisis, Doja Cat earned rave reviews for her set. She became the second Black woman to headline the festival after Beyoncé's performance in 2018. Alaina Demopoulos for The Guardian remarked, “For all the endless chatter this year about a lackluster lineup, Doja proved she’s worthy of a headline spot, so long as the people in charge—and, crucially, her fans—trust her to do it her own way.”