A series of “tragic” live-performance snafus ultimately landed Nick Jonas in therapy and shaped the pressure he puts on himself “to be perfect and to always be on.”
Opening up on Monday’s “Armchair Expert” podcast with Dax Shepard and his wife, Kristen Bell, the Jonas Brothers musician recalled several stage-fright episodes that have dogged him throughout his career.
He first mentioned a Cole Porter tribute he did as a teenager. Jonas, 30, said he had prepared to sing Porter’s standard “Let’s Misbehave” but blanked when he hit the stage, where he was performing in front of Porter’s family and “Frozen” star Bell.
“I literally start scatting … Your wife may not run remember this, but she was like the first person I saw coming offstage. She was just like ‘good job,’ like gave me a thumbs-up knowing that I just completely s— the bed,” the pop star told Shepard.
“I spent weeks thinking about how I could’ve better handled the situation and looked more like a pro. But I was 17 or 18. I was horrible. I flew right to Austin do something for South by [Southwest] the next day,” he recalled. Meanwhile, one of his brothers interjected by saying that he flew right to therapy, while Shepard joked that he would have flown right to a bar.
“I was just so in my head that it was going to come up and [that] they’re gonna ask me [about it] and nobody cared. But your wife was very sweet,” Jonas said.
The Disney Channel alum said similar incidents have happened to him “many” times and he views them as “core memories” from his early run on Broadway, where he first performed “Annie Get Your Gun” and “A Christmas Carol.”
“[I went up] and I forgot the lyrics and it was traumatizing. I know it didn’t matter as much as it felt like it did. And that’s always the case,” the “Camp Rock” star added.
But in 2016, that perspective shifted after he botched a live performance during the 51st Academy of Country Music Awards. Jonas opened up about his “really, like, tragic guitar-solo debacle that happened on live TV” when he played “Peter Pan” alongside Kelsea Ballerini during the high-stakes awards show in front of an arena full of fellow musicians.
His lackluster showing made headlines six years ago, prompting the singer to address it on Twitter by saying that he “screwed up the solo thanks to a huge brain fart.”
“In retrospect, I can kind of like 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,” Jonas said on “Armchair Expert.”
“Same deal: I’m guest performing with Kelsea Ballerini, playing guitar. So basically it was during the time that the [Jonas] Brothers were broken up. I’m doing solo stuff. Kelsea and I had a couple performances together and this is one of them. And I come out for my thing and again I’ve rehearsed it a million times. I’m feeling really confident about it, not even really thinking about it like it’s a thing that is going to be problematic,” he said. “I started off, it’s fine, and as I sort of walked towards her I just went completely blank and I hit a wrong note and like blacked out basically clocked that it was wrong. And I couldn’t stop.
“To this day and like hours of unpacking it, I can’t really figure out exactly what happened but I was rushed right into a car and right to a plane after and I looked at my manager and was like, I think that was bad. I was like, in shock kind of, and then it was like, a really traumatic moment that shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on.”
Jonas said he has healed from the incident, but he and his reunited brothers Kevin and Joe Jonas — who also appeared on the podcast to promote their sixth studio album, “The Album” — discussed their own struggles with stage fright, intrusive thoughts and “the call of the void” with Shepard and Bell.