Sunday likely wasn’t the best night of singer Bebe Rexha’s life as her Best F*n Night of My Life tour stop, at New York’s Pier 17, was cut short after an audience member hurled a cellphone at the performer’s face.
Video captured the moment the device whipped through the air and struck Rexha in the head causing her to crumple to her knees before being helped off stage.
Absolutely great show ruined by a fan throwing their phone at @BebeRexha hopefully she is ok after that pic.twitter.com/4eBScgurv5
The I’m Good (Blue) and Meant to Be singer assured fans Monday she was OK in an Instagram post revealing a blackened left eye with a bandage over her eyebrow.
The 33-year-old’s mother, Bukurije Rexha, reportedly told media outlets her daughter required three stitches.
This is just one of several recent incidents involving projectiles being thrown at stars during their performances, either to grab attention or even to intimidate an artist, with sometimes serious consequences.
A 27-year-old New Jersey man was awaiting arraignment Monday after being arrested on an assault charge in connection with the incident at Rexha’s show. There was no immediate information on whether he had a lawyer who could comment on the allegation.
Separate video shared from the concert appears to show security pulling a man from the crowd. CBC News cannot independently verify the footage or that the man arrested is the one seen in the video.
Stars struck
Rexha is by no means the only entertainer who has had to deal with concertgoers disrupting their performances by whipping projectiles on stage.
Singer Harry Styles was lighthearted about having phones thrown at him at 2018 concerts, making phone calls and taking selfies before tossing the devices back to their owners.
The Watermelon Sugar singer kept his cool in 2022, as well, when he had a water bottle thrown at his groin. He was also hit in the eye with a handful of candy during a performance in Los Angeles that same year, clearly wincing but carrying on.
Styles has even slipped on stage after a fan threw a kiwi fruit on stage, in an apparent nod to his song Kiwi, during his 2017 tour.
Fans of Lady Gaga speculated she was protected by an invisible screen of some sort when an audience member threw an object toward the superstar, during her 2022 Chromatic Ball tour, but it appeared to have been blocked mid-flight and fell to the ground.
During that same tour, what looked like a stuffed toy grazed the Grammy- and Oscar-winner’s head as she was in the middle of a song, but Gaga didn’t miss a beat.
British singer Cher Lloyd put an abrupt end to a 2012 performance in Chelmsford, England when bottles were pelted on stage. Lloyd, who was 19 years old at the time, walked off the stage just songs into her set.
She later came back on stage to carry on with the performance but expressed her anger at what happened, claiming the bottles contained urine.
“It was very difficult to get up here as it is and when you’re having bottles chucked at you, with piss in them, it’s not nice,” she said.
