On Sunday night, Nick Jonas did something every guitarist has done likely in the hundreds of times.
He flubbed a solo.
For Nick though, it didn’t happen in a garage around friends or at a bar with a dozen already buzzed patrons. It was at the 51st Annual American Country Music Awards held in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, which seats nearly 17,000 people. It was also broadcast live on national television, to an audience of millions.
Nick grabbed his Telecaster and joined singer Kelsea Ballerini to lay down a solo on her track “Peter Pan,” and as you can see in the video above, things got off to a perfectly fine start, then got bad, then kind of better, then bad again. Of course, it didn’t take long for the parodies to roll in.
In all seriousness, perhaps the most valuable lesson to learn from all this is that we’ve all made mistakes on stage or in practice, and it can happen at any time. Performers can get nervous no mater how many shows they’ve played. And with all the “rock god” mythology that people associate with guitar solos, the pressure of nailing yours can be all-consuming.
Plus, to Nick’s credit, the dude can actually play guitar pretty well. If you need proof, here’s video of a solo that went right:
I almost made this post a list of other famous guitar flubs, but I really wanted try and give this all a positive spin. So it’s a tough break for the former Jonas Bro, but he’ll get it next time. And while the ACM video is objectively funny, as musicians, it’s important to remember that we’re all human and capable of mistakes ourselves.
Well…except for this guy. Flashback to 2008: Lil Wayne (who would later release the album I Am Not a Human Being) was experimenting by adding guitar to his songs. Despite his super cool Gretsch Electromatic, the results were less than stellar.
