Nick Jonas brands his awkward Kelsea Ballerini performance ‘tragic’ and admits backlash sent him to ‘therapy’

Nick Jonas detailed the impact of his onstage blunder at the 2016 Academy of Country Music Awards had on his mental health.

At the time, the Jonas Brothers star appeared on stage alongside country-pop star Kelsea Ballerini for a live performance of her 2015 song Peter Pan when his guitar solo went off-key.

Back then his musical mishap made headlines, with several outlets calling it a “fail”, while it was poked fun at and turned into memes on social media.

The Waffle House hitmaker said what started off “fine” quickly turned “tragic” and it took him a long time to shake off, revealing it even prompted him to go to therapy.

Speaking on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, he shared: “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.

“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 to therapy.”

The 30-year-old continued: “Until this day and hours after unpacking it, I can’t really figure out exactly what happened, but 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 like in shock kinda. Like it was a really traumatic moment that shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on.”

Although he credited the event for helping overcome his perfectionism, the Wings singer branded the experience “the worst moment”.

The performer, who stars opposite his wife Priyanka Chopra in Love Again, has just released his seventh studio album with his brothers, titled The Album.