Eric Church Defends His Controversial Stagecoach Performance After Backlash, Explains He Wanted to 'Challenge' Himself

Eric Church's Friday, April 26, set at Stagecoach divided concertgoers.

The country crooner shocked the crowd when instead of performing his usual hits and crowd-pleasers, he took on a more serious tone by sitting on stage alongside just one backup singer and a livestream of a choir.

According to reports, the 46-year-old tried to blend genres by singing snippets of everything from Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah" to Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice."

He finished his 75-minute show by bringing his band out to play some of his more popular tracks, however, attendees claimed the crowd had thinned out by then.

While the singer's diehard fans likely didn't mind the change of pace, many dragged him on social media.

"I’ve never seen a headliner clear a fest out quicker than Eric Church and whatever the f--- he’s doing tonight," one person tweeted, while another wrote, "#ericchurch boring everyone to death with gospel. Waste of a main stage at #Stagecoach. Crowd leaving, roll on #nickelback."

"@Stagecoach we paid $600 to see a headline where people are mass leaving… @ericchurch is a legend, but he hasn’t gotten off the stool and most songs are covers with the choir. This isn’t what we came for," a third individual complained.

Aware of the backlash, the Grammy nominee released a public statement explaining his artistic choices.

"This was the most difficult set I have ever attempted. I’ve always found that taking it back to where it started, back to chasing who Bob Seger loves, who [Bruce] Springsteen loves, who Willie Nelson loves, you chase it back to the origin," he spilled. "The origin of all that is still the purest form of it. And we don’t do that as much anymore. It felt good at this moment to go back, take a choir and do that."

"For me, it’s always been something with records, with performances, I’ve always been the one that’s like, ‘let’s do something really, really strange and weird and take a chance.’ Sometimes it doesn’t work, but it’s okay if you’re living on that edge, because that edge, that cutting edge, is where all the new guys are going to gravitate to anyway. So if you can always challenge yourself that way, it always cuts sharper than any other edge," Church concluded.

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Variety reported on his performance.