Imagine you're Jelly Roll last year. It's one of the greatest nights of your life. You take home Best New Artist of the Year at the CMA Awards, you kill the acceptance speech, and you walk away with your first major award. Now imagine dropping the award and breaking it backstage in front of everyone. The embarrassment would have to be at an all-time high.
Recently, Jelly Roll appeared on an episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon for an interview. There, the late-night TV show host asked about the brutal incident where Jelly Roll broke his first award before he even went home with it. In his typical fashion, the singer made a hell of a story out of it.
Jelly Roll Recalls Fumbling His First CMA Award and Breaks It Backstage in 2023
Jelly remembered the deafening silence when the award slipped out of his hands and broke. "First of all when it first dropped, you could've heard a mouse pee on cotton. I mean, it was dead silent. Right after you could've heard a cricket fart, you heard a bunch of people go, 'Awwww.' I was just so excited and so nervous that I had the sweatiest, shakiest palms," he explains. "And that thing is...I'm already not a physically fit man and that thing's heavy. That thing's really heavy. I was so excited, and I was going to change it from one hand to another to shake somebody's hand, and it just boom."
The terror seeps in initially. However, Jelly Roll eventually finds hilarity in how the accident coincides with his life. "This is the story of my life, though, Jimmy. I finally got my life together, I won the biggest award, best new artist, I was one of the oldest people to ever win it. I was 39 years old, I gave a passionate speech," he recalls. And then I came backstage and fumbled the ball. I dropped it right there!"
Funnily enough, Jelly Roll tried to keep the broken award in the end. Rather than send him a new one, he tried to keep his screwup as a funny story and a reminder to wipe his sweaty hands off. He grinned, "I campaigned for them to give me the broken one. I was like, 'It fits me great; I'll just duct tape it together.'"
