Singer Nessa Barrett was scheduled to perform during the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas on Saturday, but she canceled her appearance moments before she was set to take the stage. Barrett, 20, apologized to fans, telling them she struggles with borderline personality disorder and “abruptly got into an episode” before her performance. Barrett released her first full-length album, Young Forever, on Oct. 14. Barrett performed her first When We Were Young set on Oct. 23.
“To all those who were at When We Were Young, I’m so sorry I had to cancel my set tonight,” Barrett wrote in a statement on Twitter. “As someone who struggles with [borderline personality disorder], I abruptly got into an episode & had to stay offstage to handle it. I’m so f-ing sorry. I appreciate everyone who came & thank [you] for the support. I’ll see [you] all soon again, I promise.”
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Before the performance, Barrett shared several tweets about how she felt that day. “Hate being insecure,” she wrote in one message, before adding, “All I wanna do [right now] is cry.” In her next tweet, she wrote, “I go on stage in 1 hour.” However, she then tweeted a sad face.
In another tweet over the weekend, Barrett wrote about an unreleased song she wrote called “Noose.” “I have a song called ‘Noose’ and I wrote it while in a split episode alone in a dark room. all of the lyrics are the type of thoughts I get in my BPD episodes,” Barrett wrote. “If it ever comes out take this tweet as my trigger warning. listen with caution.”
Barrett first gained public attention on TikTok and signed a deal with Warner Records in July 2020. Her first hit single was “La Di Die” with Jxdn. “I Hope Ur Miserable Until Ur Dead,” which was featured on her EP Pretty Poison, reached number 88 on the Billboard Hot 100 album chart. Her album Young Forever includes the singles “Die First,” “Madhouse,” and “Tired of California.”
Barrett has been open about her struggles with anxiety, borderline personality disorder, and an eating disorder with fans. “I wish that I had a person that was releasing music or openly advocating for mental health, to [help me] realize that there’s a lot of people that go through it,” she told Seventeen in January. “If I saw an artist that was successful and they still dealt with mental health, then I would have known it was okay for me as well.”
During a recent stop on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Barrett said she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at 18 and began going to therapy at 6. She said she attempted suicide at 14 and was traumatized by her experience in a mental institution as a teenager.
“As soon as I got comfortable in there and started making friends, it was fun. You start feeling like … I felt like I belonged for the first time,” Nessa recalled. “Thank God she was in there because I wouldn’t be where l am now,” she said of her 14-year-old self. “I just I just felt so like hopeless at that point because I couldn’t really see like a future after getting out of there.”
