Why The Hell Was Nick Jonas Playing Guitar on the ACMs Anyway?

nick-jonas-acm-awardsWarning: Language

On the 2016 ACM Awards, former boy band member and intermediate guitar player Nick Jonas may as well have come out on stage a drown a puppy. On live television, during Kelsea Ballerini’s dumb new song “Peter Pan,” Nick Jonas perfected the most aggressively shitty guitar solo ever played on any awards show or other live television event in the history of ever. It sounded like cats screwing while being electrocuted. I mean this thing was a musical abortion, which begs the question, why on Earth is this pipsqueak even on the stage of the American Country Music Awards in the first place?

All this talk about the importance of performance slots, and how females aren’t getting a fair shake, and we’re doling out face time to folks from other genres in hopes it will entice non-country viewers to watch? Well tough shit ACMs because it didn’t work. The ratings for this year’s show were down a whopping 26% year to year. Granted, last go ’round was their big 50th Anniversary shindig, so there was undoubtedly going to be a decline of some sort, but to lose over a quarter of your audience to Wrestlemania does not look good. And don’t blame the stupid iHeartMedia Awards that happened on the same night. Not even Taylor Swift could pull that show out of the dumpster. It pulled only 2.1 million viewers, or a 0.8 rating. Ouch. Oh, and there’s another awards show in less than a month—the ill-conceived American Country Countdown Awards on May 1st. So look alive.

Though there are some happy faces over Chris Stapleton doing so well at the 2016 ACM Awards, the presentation sucked. In an era when consumers have more choice than ever, these awards shows are going to have to step up their game to entice viewers, and stupid cross-genre collaborations aren’t going to get it done. If folks aren’t going to tune into TNT to watch Taylor Swift, they’re certainly not going to watch Nick Jonas getting his penis stuck in his zipper, trip all over himself, and vomit out a discordant audio mess. Aces in their places. We talk about how their music may suck, but Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, and Hunter Hays are at least proficient guitar players. We’re not even sure if Hunter Hays was on the premises Sunday night, and Brad Paisley was the lone country representative at that iHeart Awards bullshit. You need a high falsetto? Sure, dial up a Jonas Brother. Otherwise, they can take this weak shit back to “Disney On Tour.”


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