Live Performance Bloopers You Won't Be Able To Watch Without Laughing

We're starting out with Ashlee Simpson's 2004 "SNL" lip-sync disaster, because not only was it one of the worst-executed examples of a pretty standard practice — lots of artists use backing tracks for live performances — but also because of Simpson's complete inability to handle the situation. Instead of pausing and waiting for the proper track to start, Simpson did the now infamous "hoedown" jig for a few seconds before fleeing the stage and scrapping the whole live performance.

At the end of the show, Simpson blamed her band for playing the wrong song, then doubled down on that excuse to ET a few days later, as well as tossed in the old, "I have severe acid reflux and it was just acting up that day" excuse. Whatever really happened, it remains one of the all-time greatest live TV bloopers, as well as pretty much effectively killed any chance the "hoedown" ever had of becoming popular again. (Sorry, cartoon grandpas everywhere.)

During the live 2007 Miss Teen USA Pageant, contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton, representing South Carolina, was asked, "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?" Her answer can best be described as the exact opposite of what happened to Will Ferrell's character from "Old School" when he blacked out during the debate and accidentally delivered a perfect, coherent response to the question. 

But even that description pales in comparison to Upton's actual words, which we will now share unedited, courtesy of The Transcription Room. "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so that we will be able to build up our future for our children." 

In the equally immortal worlds of host Mario Lopez, who amazingly was not doubled over with laughter, "Thank you very much, South Carolina."

According to Vogue, Heidi Klum first wore the Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra in the lingerie company's televised 2001 fashion show. Two years later, she made a live appearance on "The Tonight Show" during which she was supposed to model another incarnation of the Fantasy Bra, as well as the matching panties, which were worth a ridiculous $11 million. Of course, that all makes for must-see late night TV, except Klum decided to demonstrate her yodeling ability before the striptease, and the bra broke. 

Guest Martin Short and host Jay Leno scrambled to fix it, before finally giving up, at which point Klum then told a three-minute story about swimming with sharks that probably felt like an eternity to those who tuned in for, well, not that. Eventually, they took a commercial break, got the bra fixed, and Klum quickly flashed the goods before musical guests The Barenaked Ladies took the stage. I see what you did there, Leno.

We recognize that it's not really cool to laugh at someone getting sick to their stomach, but when that someone is Justin Bieber, and his excuse turns out to be that he drank too much milk, we're sorry, but that's hilarious. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Canadian wunderkind lost his lunch on the opening night of his Believe tour during a show in Glendale, Arizona. In the video that captured the moment, the canuck crooner seems like something is amiss as he descends some stairs arm-in-arm with a few dancers, but he keeps the live performance going. Unfortunately, his stomach had other plans. 

He then doubles over and lets loose a remarkable amount of barf. Then he runs offstage. The Biebs later tweeted, "And .... Milk was a bad choice!  Lol," which is, of course, an "Anchorman" reference, and may or may not be the actual reason why he got sick. But we're choosing to believe that his pre-show ritual used to be him sitting in a chair so tall his feet didn't touch the floor and dunking cookies in a huge glass of milk.

National anthem fails are pretty common, and we've even got several more coming up after this, but in the case of everyone's mom's absolute favorite singer, Michael Bolton, he took it to another level. It's easy to forget the words to the song — what even are "ramparts" anyway? — and lots of singers have done it, but Bolton actually stops singing mid verse to look at the lyrics he apparently wrote on the palm of his hand. (The New York Times sports section even reported on his "long pause" when recapping the game.) 

The crowd instantly turns on him, but Bolton, like the golden-throated professional he is, wins them back with a powerful finish. We do, however, have to give a shout-out to the stone-faced honor guardsman behind Bolton who cracks a smile after the singer resorts to his high school exam cheating tactics. We would have also accepted an eye roll, strong side eye, jaw drop, or any combination thereof.

During a 2004 Canada v. USA exhibition game, Canadian singer Caroline Marcil gives what is probably the worst performance of her life on what is likely one of the worst days of her life. She gets exactly two lines into her live performance of the U.S. national anthem before going blank, saying, "Sorry," then doing it again. After stalling on the "What so proudly..." line a second time, Marcil apologizes again and exits the ice. But wait! She quickly returns with a piece of paper in hand, presumably the lyrics, only to step onto the ice and fall flat on her back. 

The only way it could have been a more comprehensive blooper would have been if a piece of her clothing had also fallen off, which mercifully did not happen. "Good Morning America" was nice enough to invite Marcil on the show for a shot at redemption, which she reportedly nailed, although strangely that clip did not go viral like her original performance. Go figure.

Madonna is known for staging some of the most elaborate live performances in pop music history. Remember, this is a woman who famously crucified herself on stage, so when her "cape fail" happened during the 2015 Brit Awards, the pop icon took it pretty hard. Discussing the live performance incident on "The Jonathan Ross Show," Madge said she got "a little bit of a whiplash" from smacking the back of her head, and that the unintended stair tumble was "a horrible nightmare" because she likes to be "amazing" and "create magic" for everyone. 

Hopefully, the legendary songstress has stopped beating herself up over it, because honestly, if getting yanked off a short flight of stairs by her neck then immediately getting back up and finishing her song isn't a magical enough moment for her fans, they never deserved the Material Girl in the first place.  

If awkward was a human being, it would be actress Kristen Stewart. From her years of clumsy interviews to her mousy red carpet appearances, the "Twilight" star has seemingly treated her fame as more of a curse than a blessing. Her acceptance of the Best Female Performance Award at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards provides a hilarious example of her socially awkward behavior when she goes to grab her golden popcorn trophy at the end of her acceptance speech, only to accidentally toss it to the floor. 

She then goes to grab it, apparently freaks out, returns to the podium without actually grabbing it, and declares, "This was just as awkward as you thought it was going to be. Bye!" Even then-boyfriend Robert Pattinson gives a cringeworthy laugh in the audience as Stewart scampers offstage, still not taking the trophy as one of the presenters tries to hand it to her. Yikes. Imagine if she would have lost.  

Apparently taking a page from Caroline Marcil's playbook, Canadian singer Alexis Normand delivered her own embarrassing live rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" before a 2013 Memorial Cup game in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Normand, who has a fantastic voice, starts out strong, but quickly forgets pretty much everything between "through the perilous fight" and "home of the brave," which is literally half the song. In place of the lyrics, she does a sort of hybrid mumble-humming until the crowd takes over and finishes the song for her. Probably the best part is how she then transitions directly from that trainwreck into "O Canada," effortlessly slips back and forth between English and French, and absolutely nails it.

In a later interview, Normand claims she was called "the morning of" to do the gig, and that she was originally only tapped to perform the bilingual version of Canada's national anthem, which makes total sense in hindsight. The good news is, despite offending a lot of Americans, the "silver lining" to the whole thing was that lots of people started discovering her music online. So, we guess that makes her the Celine Dion of bungled national anthem performances.

One of the hallmarks of almost every Beyoncé live performance is that, at some point in the show, she will appear to be performing in the middle of a tornado. In fact, the "Formation" singer's windblown hair game is so strong that it was one of the most talked about aspects of her 2013 Super Bowl performance, so it was only a matter of time before that which made her great  — her ever-present army of wind machines — nearly took her down.

In the above clip, Queen Bey attempts to mingle with the masses when a fan on the edge of the stage snags some of her luscious locks. But like an absolute pro, she almost doesn't miss a beat of "Halo," which she keeps singing as concertgoers and security personnel work to free her. They get her loose after a few seconds, because obviously a simple machine is no match for Beyoncé, but how did she not even freak out for like a second?

After a pretty epic live performance of her song "Me Too," which included her doing a decent amount of choreography in a pair of sky-high platform heels, Meghan Trainor somehow got tripped up on her own feet and took a spill in front of the live studio audience on "The Tonight Show." It happened just as host Jimmy Fallon was walking out to meet her, and as she was putting the mic back on the stand, so her surprised yelp and his uncontrollable laughter only amplified the moment.

Trainor returned to the show on another occasion and explained that they even reshot the entire song, but she chose to let them air the one where she fell anyway, because it was a better performance. "I'm gonna fall eventually one day, so let this be it," she said. That's spoken like a true entertainer right there.  

Ariana Grande has had her share of triumphant performance moments onstage, but her 2018 appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" was not among them. During a performance of her hit "Thank U Next," Grande hopped atop a chair and then jumped back down; in the process, the heel of one of her boots became caught on the fabric of her white dress, causing her to stumble on her dismount. "Oh my God!" Grande blurted out as she found her footing, which at least proved her performance was live and not lip-synced.

That was not the only part of Grande's appearance to go south. After completing her song, Grande and her backup singers made their exit by sashaying up a set of stairs — not realizing she was meant to have stuck around. "She's gone. She left," confused host Ellen DeGeneres told the audience, with Grande hustling back for a hasty reappearance. "We were supposed to come down? I thought we were supposed to exit?" Grande asked, admitting it was "my bad" when told otherwise. 

While that may not have been Grande's finest moment, it still serves as an important reminder of why it's important to show up for rehearsal.

Dave Grohl is beloved for his onstage spontaneity, which led to an incident both painfully embarrassing and just plain painful. It all went down during a 2019 Foo Fighters show in Sweden. As video from the concert demonstrates, Grohl bolted to the lip of the stage, where he stumbled and fell right off the edge. Ever the trouper, Grohl continued the show, not realizing the extent of his injury. He then talked to the audience as he lay in a stretcher and a team examined his injuries.

"When it happened, I didn't feel a thing. I tried to get up and walk and my ankle collapsed under my weight. I just fell back to the ground and looked up at my road crew and said, 'It's broken. It's gone,'" Grohl subsequently told Entertainment Weekly. As the band kept playing, Grohl recalled glancing at his foot, "and it was just hanging there, because it was dislocated and my leg was broken. But it still didn't hurt ... I was just laughing. I couldn't believe it happened."

Rather than cancel dates, Grohl continued the tour while sitting on a custom-made "throne that shoots lights and smoke out of it and looks like a f**king UFO with guitar necks stuck in it." To prevent a similar mishap, Grohl revealed his throne had been equipped with seatbelt "so I don't fall off, that's how hard I'm f**king rocking out!"

It's no secret that musicians have been known to work up a sweat during particularly energetic performances. While dripping with perspiration is typically seen as a badge of honor in rock star circles, getting sweaty led to one of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett's more embarrassing moments. 

During a 2013 show in Abu Dhabi, Hammett was playing the delicately intricate intro notes of the band's "Nothing Else Matters" when he riffed off several bum notes and then abruptly stopped playing. "My hands are really sweaty," he told the crowd, apologizing for messing up and promising to try it "one more time." True to his word, Hammett nailed it on his second attempt.

While no musician wants to screw up in front of a stadium full of fans, a review in the Gulf News pointed out that Hammett's "so-called glitch probably received one of the biggest applause of the night, as it demonstrated that, at the end of the day, even one of the greatest guitarists of all time is human."

One classic tried-and-true move perfected by rock stars is the stage dive, in which musicians — typically singers — will launch themselves into the crowd, where they're caught by fans, and then passed hand-over-hand until being eventually returned to the stage. While this move has been perfected by the likes of Beyoncé, Method Man trusted his audience a little more than he should have during a performance in London.

As video from the show demonstrates, the Wu-Tang Clan rapper is seen standing at the edge the stage before throwing himself into the crowd. Rather than catch him and hold him aloft, as he had clearly expected, the crowd instead parts like the Red Sea before Charlton Heston, causing the rapper to crumple to the ground. Thankfully, his fans quickly realize their error, helping him to his feet and then lifting him aloft, at least getting the second part of the stage-diving etiquette right. 

Meanwhile, Method Man took it all in stride, returning to the stage, dancing around and moving along as if nothing unexpected had taken place.