What a man gotta do … to get this scrubbed from the internet?
Nick Jonas recently revealed that his infamous duet with Kelsea Ballerini at the 2016 Academy of Country Music Awards was so “traumatic,” it sent him to therapy.
But Kelly Clarkson once said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” so let’s relive the viral moment.
At the time, the youngest Jonas Brothers member — who was in his buzz cut, leather jacket era — had joined the country star onstage for a rendition of her 2015 song “Peter Pan.”
“I come out for my thing. I 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,” Jonas, 30, explained during Monday’s episode of the “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” podcast.
“I started off; it was fine,” he went on. “And as I walked towards her, I just went completely blank, and I hit a wrong note and blacked out.”
The Grammy winner said he “clocked that it was wrong” but “couldn’t stop,” so he proceeded to play off-key for 12 very long and admittedly “tragic” seconds.
After the fact, the “Sucker” hitmaker chose to poke fun at himself and laugh along with fans online, admitting that he “screwed up the solo thanks to a huge brain fart.”
But behind the scenes, he was mortified by what felt like “the worst moment” of his career.
“I was rushed to a car and rushed to a plane right after it,” the musician told host Shepard, 48. “And I looked at my manager and said, ‘I think that was bad.'”
The incident, Jonas lamented, “shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on.”
“In retrospect, I can kind of laugh about how big I thought it was,” the singer added. “But it did travel more than I wish it would have, and it did cause me to go to therapy.”
Seemingly, the performance was not as scarring for Ballerini, who went on to join the Jonas Brothers on their “Remember This Tour” five years later.
