Ashley McBryde Writes an Impromptu Song About Accidentally Dating Your Cousin [Watch]

Ashley McBryde can turn just about anything into a great country song, and she proved it on a recent appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show, when an audience member needed a little help coming up with a song about sticky situation she encountered in real life.

"I had a co-worker that just knew they had the perfect person for me," the audience member, whose name is Kenya, explained during McBryde's stop on the show. "They set me up on a blind date, only for me to get to the restaurant ... and it was my cousin."

"It's already a country song," McBryde replied drily from the on-stage couch, acoustic guitar in hand.

She then began to strum the first bars of a ballad:

"Last night a friend of mine / Said I should go out with a guy she knows," McBryde riffs, coming up with the words on the spot. "My heart took off at the thought / Of falling in love with someone."

McBryde keeps a straight face through her performance, styling her song as a heartbreak ballad about the excitement — and ultimately, disappointment — of hoping to meet someone new.

But she can't keep from cracking up when she gets to the big reveal: "Turns out the guy she knew was my cousin."

McBryde dissolves into giggles on the couch, but the audience member who first requested the song isn't mad about it — she's laughing right along with McBryde from her seat in the audience.

Elsewhere on her episode of the Jennifer Hudson Show, McBryde discusses her recent win at the 2023 Grammy Awards, as well as the time she started a fire in Dolly Parton's house, thanks to a mishap with a microwave.

"Dolly's such a sweet person — when she found out about it, she gave me the microwave," McBryde says. "Because, at the time, I was broke, I didn't have a microwave. It smelled like burnt bowling shoes. I used it for, like, a year and a half."