Nick Jonas Went to Therapy After Flubbed 2016 ACMs Performance With Kelsea Ballerini
Not every guitar solo can knock it out of the park, and Nick Jonas — one third of pop rock group the Jonas Brothers, as well as a solo artist — is revisiting a 2016 ACM Awards performance that he describes as "really tragic."
Jonas was planning to join Kelsea Ballerini for a guitar solo during her song, "Peter Pan," and he was feeling pretty good leading up to the big moment, he recounts in an episode of the Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard podcast.
"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 gonna be problematic," he remembers. "I started off, it was fine and as I 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."
Looking back on that performance now, it's probably not quite as bad as Jonas remembers — but it is clear that he froze up onstage, and the solo is a far cry from his usual high standards.
"In retrospect, I can kinda laugh about how big I thought it was. But it did travel more than I wish it would have," he continues. "And it did cause me to go to therapy."
Jonas goes on to say that those kinds of blunders increase the anxiety he feels before his next performances, too. "'Til this day and hours after unpacking it, I can't really figure out what happened," he says.
"I was rushed to a car and rushed to a plane right after it and I looked at my manager and said, 'I think that was bad.' I was in shock, kinda," he admits. "It was a really traumatic moment that shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on."
Jonas would go on to share a stage with Ballerini many more times: She was the Jonas Brothers' opening act on a 2021 tour.