Wynonna Judd chalked up her “bizarre” 2023 CMA Awards performance to nerves.
“I’m just gonna come clean with y’all. I was so freaking nervous,” the country singer admitted in a video posted to TikTok Thursday.
“I got out there, and I looked at [my duet partner] Jelly Roll. I wanted it to be so good for him. I could cry right now, but I’m not going to because I’m such a fan of his, and he asked me to sing, and I said, ‘Absolutely!'”
Judd, 59, said once she got out on stage Wednesday night, she was “so nervous” that she “held on for dear life.”
“And that’s the bottom line,” she concluded, adding that she would be traveling back to Texas to continue her Back to Wy Tour.
The “Why Not Me” singer — who lost her mother, Naomi Judd, to suicide last year — appeared unsteady at the CMAs while performing Jelly Roll’s track “Need a Favor” and held onto the up-and-coming singer throughout their collaboration.
“She’s been through so much. Someone help her,” one viewer tweeted.
“It was seriously bizarre,” another observed. “I wonder what’s going on? She barely moved once she got a death grip on him.”
Some fans speculated that Wynonna’s struggles with vertigo, which caused her to drop out of “New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash” last year, played a role.
Prior to the awards show, Wynonna shared a video of herself getting glammed up for the big event and appeared in great spirits as she walked the red carpet and posed for photos.
“I have my ups and my downs, and that’s life,” she shared with “Entertainment Tonight.”
“Like the other night, I got emotional [during a concert]. I felt Mom. And I got overcome [with emotion], and I just said, ‘I need some water, and I need somebody to hold onto me for a second while I take a deep breath and cry.’ And I just do it because that’s the way life is.”
After Naomi’s death, Wynonna said in an interview that she was “angry” over her mother’s decision to end her life. Eventually, Wynonna healed while touring again.
“I knew it would be intense, but this is literally, ‘Oh, my Lord,'” she told the Hollywood Reporter in January.
“This is me with a broken heart being as open as I’ll probably ever be, and other people are responding to that in a way that I wasn’t expecting.”
