After Pink’s human ashes fiasco, we may need helmets at concerts

All singers must don a Daft Punk and wear helmets.

Not for the robot vibes. Just to avoid head injuries. It’s getting harder this summer to differentiate between concerts and dodgeball. Ask singer Bebe Rexha.

She recently shared a gnarly photo. Her left eyelid is swollen and has a mulberry tint. A small bandage hides three stitches as if she just wrestled with Ronda Rousey.

This facial trauma did not originate in a WWE ring.

Bebe was cut, bruised and fell on stage during a performance in Manhattan when an idiotic fan turned his phone into a projectile. After the 27-year-old was arrested, he reportedly said, “I was trying to see if I could hit her with the phone at the end of the show because it would be funny.”

Funny? Can you imagine dining with this psychopath? You look at your entree and he frisbees a bread plate at your nose and then doubles over in hysterics. Unfortunately, he’s not an outlier. Bebe isn’t the only singer now singing tunes while ready to duck.

Country singer Kelsea Ballerini was nailed to the face with a bracelet while performing in Idaho last week. In Sweden, Lil Nas X did some fancy footwork last weekend to avoid the job of a sex toy. It just missed him and saved me from being forced to write a column featuring both “Lil Nas X” and “replica vagina”.

It’s not just cell phones, bracelets and sex toys that are turning into missiles and terrorizing musicians. Pink recently sang “Just Like a Pill” in London when a concertgoer threw away a plastic bag of gray powder.

It was the ashes of the fan’s mother.

“This is you mom?” asked Pink. “I don’t know what I think about this.”

I know how I feel. I am amending my will tonight and stipulating that my remains be kept in an urn or sprinkled on the mound at Rogers Center. Dead me shouldn’t be put in a Ziploc bag and catapulted onto the stage, even if the police reunite. Yes, I loved “Synchronicity” when it was released.

But not enough for my ashes to end up in Sting’s airways.

No wonder Miley Cyrus no longer feels safe performing live. At a concert in Los Angeles last month, Ava Max was attacked by a creep who presumably forgot to bring something to throw. As she later described the attack, “He hit me so hard he scratched the inside of my eye.”

Last year in Toronto, a teddy bear shot through the air and hit Lady Gaga in her lady-noggin. Stereogum later identified this plush mortar as a “Dr. Simi stuffed doll,” which is “the mascot of the Mexican pharmacy chain Farmacias Comparees.”

What generic drugs have to do with “Hold My Hand” is not clear. But Lady Gaga was lucky that this fan was animated by antibiotics and not chainsaws.

Rock concerts have always inspired a small amount of inexplicable throwing. But the objects in the sky used to not be as dangerous as flying phones or metal bracelets. Tom Jones never worried about losing an eye to crotchless panties.

No one has ever hurled a VCR at Tom Jones.

I fear we will all become agoraphobic avoiding strangers. When I was a kid, spotting a unicorn was more likely than witnessing an adult behaving badly in public. Now you can’t buy milk without running into someone about to throw a tantrum. I’m already dreading the next time I fly. Airports are meltdown hubs.

I blame social media for this spike in antisocial behavior.

The madman who threw a phone at Bebe Rexha claimed that this was a TikTok trend. Why are we not surprised? Forget about banning TikTok for fear of China spying on us. We should ban TikTok because of the crazy trends that have inspired young people to shut each other up in the “blackout challenge.” Or bake chicken in NyQuil. Or break into houses to film the petrified owners. Or gobble up candy covered in liquid nitrogen. Or super glue vampire fangs onto their teeth. Or eat Tide pods. Or on and on and on…

During her Vegas residency last weekend, Adele upped the pitching trend.

“Have you noticed how people are forgetting about show etiquette right now?” she asked fans. “People just throwing shit on stage, have you seen them?”

Then Adele fired into the crowd with a T-shirt pistol.

Awesome. Now the artists are firing back. Before summer is over, someone will slap a glittery marble at Taylor Swift and she’ll pull a bazooka out of a guitar case.

Therefore, all concert halls must install protection nets around the stage.

Baseball stadiums do this to protect fans from foul balls. Concert venues should do it to protect singers from fans who are human dirty balls. Plexiglass might be better. But it can mess with the acoustics. A net is sonically porous and will drastically reduce the chance of Drake being seriously injured by a keychain moving at Mach 3.

We have to protect our singers before someone gets killed.

Performing live is stressful enough without the threat of income.

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