What Happens When a Singer Needs to Use the Bathroom During a Concert?
Concerts are exciting experiences for everyone involved. But they can take up a large portion of time, sometimes for hours on end, which leads one to wonder: what happens when a singer needs to use the bathroom during a concert?
Singers plan their bathroom trips for breaks or costume changes when performing in a concert. They can hydrate well, plan their trips before start time, or wait for a band member’s solo number. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always go according to plan, which can be embarrassing.
Most performers manage to schedule bathroom breaks during a concert without trouble. However, there are more stories than most people are aware of when things went wrong for singers who needed to use the bathroom and couldn’t make it off stage in time.
Tips for Planning Bathroom Breaks During Concerts
Plan Well Beforehand
Celebrities generally have strict schedules to follow, especially on concert days. Even on a full day, there are moments when the singer has time to hydrate and take care of other personal affairs. Well, singers generally keep their stage time organized and to a set amount of time so that they know what to expect and can plan accordingly.
Nearly every singer and band member will use the bathroom before the opening of the concert, just to keep the possibility of an accident from coming anywhere close. No one ever plans on having an accident. That’s why it is an accident in the first place!
Use Natural Breaks in the Program
Well-organized plans are made for every singer and celebrity that performs in concert, especially in larger performances and for the more famous performers. The people who plan these schedules for stars are incredibly qualified and practiced in their work, and most importantly, they know their clients well.
With this in mind, they can strategically place costume changes, guest performances, set changes, and brief intermissions to allow the singer to use the restroom promptly. Many performance locations have bathrooms immediately off to the side of the stage to help performers use the bathroom and return to the show as quickly as possible.
Best Known Unfortunate Accidents
Even though these singers are grown adults, we all have accidents sometimes. No one ever plans on not making it, and yet nearly everyone has at least a couple of embarrassing stories where they couldn’t enter a restroom on time. Celebrities are people too, and this is shown through stories some of them have of when these ordinary human accidents occurred on very public stages and concerts.
Fergie Running Late on Stage
Early in her career, Stacy Ann “Fergie” Ferguson had her most embarrassing moment on stage while performing with her group at the time: the Black Eyed Peas. The band ran late to the concert and had to run straight out of the car and onto the stage without time to set things down, prepare themselves, or even use the bathroom. Fergie ran onto the stage and started into the first number of the night, and that’s when it happened. She recalled the story later in a radio interview:
“We were late for stage, driving down the freeway, it’s Friday traffic…get to the stage, we have to start righ tinto the show. I’m running on and we jump into “Let’s Get It Started”, and I get crazy and jump and I runa cross the stage and my adrenaline was going and gosh, I wish it didn’t happen. It was so embarrassing!”
Stacy ANn “Fergie” Ferguson
She refers to this as her most embarrassing on-stage moment and is one that she hopes never to repeat or beat out. However, this is not the only concert where a performer couldn’t use the restroom as planned.
Kelly Clarkson’s Quick Change
Famous American Idol contest winner Kelly Clarkson is well known for her openness in sharing all kinds of information, sometimes information that she even admits is likely a little too personal for some audiences. In one particular interview, Clarkson spoke on camera with Clint Black on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” one evening broadcast. She shared a revealing story about a quick bathroom trip during a concert she once had.
Kelly admitted eating food that had “kind of wrecked [her] up” right before the show. She ran backstage for her quick change into another costume and recalled, “I grabbed this poor trash can, and boy, I destroyed it. It was bad….I’ll tell you right now…. it wasn’t pee, my friend”. This is a much more candid rendition than most celebrities are willing to provide on public television. Still, she is not alone in having this bathroom emergency experience during a live performance.
Ed Sheeran Admits to More than Breaking Wind
At least Kelly Clarkson could find a garbage can because Ed Sheeran recalls when he was not so lucky. In an interview on Nova FM, an Australian radio station, the British pop star admitted to passing gas on stage rather regularly. He went on to say,
“I actually once misjudged a fart on stage, which ended up being a shart…It was midway through a performance and I was kind of like, rally lively, and then halfway through I was like, ‘All right, I’m just going to stand for the rest of the performance, and hope it’s over soon, and then go home and throw these trousers out”.
Ed Sheeran
Chris Brown Waits for New Trousers
As if to help Ed Sheeran look more normal, singer Chris Brown has also shared a similar story. When he was 17, Chris was on tour and got food poisoning right before a show, but he still performed.
He recalled the experience: “So I just remember dancing and on-stage in the midst of all that, [and] I … sharted? The crowd didn’t know it, and I had like an outfit change coming up, so I said, ‘Yeah, I can hold it out one more song,’ and this is really disgusting and too descriptive. It was just … I just remember it running down my leg,”.
So while it may seem that singers are completely enthused and comfortable every time they are on stage, this is not always the case.
