The ACM Awards have seen their fair share of disastrous performances over the years.
There was the Rascal Flatts lip-syncing debacle back in 2014, where the band admitted afterwards that they’re “not very good at it.” Or 2017, when for some reason the ACMs decided to feature a Backstreet Boys reunion as the 90s pop boy band joined Florida Georgia Line for “God, Your Mama and Me” before performing their own hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).”
But one of the more disastrous performances in recent memory came back in 2016, when Nick Jonas joined Kelsea Ballerini for a performance of her single “Peter Pan” – and completely botched his guitar solo in front of millions of viewers.
Jonas would later call the moment a “brain fart,” but during a recent interview he opened up more on the awkward moment, revealing that it was so embarrassing for him that it actually sent him to therapy.
During an appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, Jonas explained what was going through his mind in the moment:
“Kelsea and I had a couple performances together, and this was one of them. I come out for my thing. I’ve rehearsed it a million times. I’m feeling really confident about it, not even really thinking about it like it’s a thing that’s going to be problematic.
I started off, it’s fine and as I sort of walked towards her, I just went completely blank and I hit a wrong note and blacked out basically and clocked that it was wrong and I couldn’t stop.
To this day and hours of unpacking it, I can’t really figure out exactly what happened, but I was rushed into a car, right to a plane right after and I looked at my manager and said, ‘I think that was bad.’ I was, like, in shock kinda. It was a really traumatic moment that shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on.”
Jonas admits that it was a traumatic moment for him, at a time when the Jonas Brothers were broken up and pursuing solo careers:
“In retrospect, I can kind of laugh about how big I thought it was. But it did travel more than I wish it would have, and it did cause me to go to therapy.”
Of course it’s live TV and these things happen. But man, to have it happen in a room full of musicians and singers…that’s gotta just make it that much worse.
