Nick Jonas opened up about a “traumatic” concert mistake he made in 2016 that caused him to seek therapy.
The Jonas Brothers singer was performing with Kelsea Ballerini at the ACM Awards when he flubbed a guitar solo.
“I looked at my manager and said, ‘I think that was bad,'” Jonas told Dax Shepard on the Armchair Expert podcast. “It was a really traumatic moment that shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on.”
Jonas said he had rehearsed the solo multiple times and felt confident that he knew it. But when he got on stage, he blanked.
“I started off fine and as I walked towards her, I just went completely blank,” he said. “I hit a wrong note and blacked out, basically. I 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,” Jonas continued. “I was rushed right into a car and right into a plane after and I looked at my manager and I was like, ‘I think that was bad.’ I was, like, in shock.”
Jonas said he was mortified and felt like he had let everyone down. He said he even considered quitting music.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore,'” he said. “I was so embarrassed.”
The televised moment made headlines which Jonas said was hard to handle.
“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 into therapy,” he said.
He said therapy helped him to understand that he was not alone and that everyone makes mistakes.
“It’s a really common thing to feel like you’re going to be judged for making a mistake,” he said. “But the reality is, everyone makes mistakes. And the more you can learn to forgive yourself for your mistakes, the more you can move on.”
Jonas said he is now grateful for the experience because it taught him a valuable lesson about himself.
“It was a really important moment for me,” he said. “It taught me that I’m not perfect and that’s okay.”
Nick Jonas says ‘tragic’ performance with Kelsea Ballerini landed him ‘in therapy’. https://t.co/XEOWWJs4Lu pic.twitter.com/xVbGBZwOxS
— Page Six (@PageSix) May 23, 2023
