Luke Bryan joked that his “viral” blunders only help his career after recently falling on the stage during a performance.
“Ironically, last week, I was having back trouble to the point where I had to, like, get a chiropractor to the room because I had been cycling,” the American Idol judge, 47, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published on Monday, April 22. “When I get to L.A., I like to go cycling around. I love it out here. Well, something didn’t work right, so when I hit the ground, I was like, ‘Oh.’ The first thing was, ‘Oh, God. All the work I did to get my back feeling better is out.’”
Bryan went on to tease that “viral moments” might work in his favor. “You know, my new single is ‘Love You, Miss You, Mean It,’” he said. “You know, I just gotta get the bumper sticker made for ‘I Bust My Ass and This Is My New Single.’”
While performing at the Coast City Country Festival in Canada on Saturday, April 20, Bryan fell backwards on stage in front of a large audience, joking in footage shared online, “Hold up! Did anybody get that?”
Bryan checked himself for any injuries before throwing a phone to a fan in the crowd. “It’s OK. Hey, my lawyer will be calling,” Bryan teased.
Approaching another fan who recorded the mishap, he said, “You’re Snapchatting. You can’t Snapchat this s–t.”
Bryan was later given another phone, which he held up for the audience. “Oh, yes!” he said while watching the footage of himself, joking that the clip had “viral” potential. “Alright, here we go again. There I am, there we go … there it is!”
While speaking to ET, Bryan weighed in on theories that a stray phone on stage caused his fall. “Everybody is reporting [about the] cell phone, but I was kind of hamming that up,” he said on Monday. “I don’t think it was a cell phone. I think it was just slick.”
During a separate interview with Extra, he added: “What was funny was… when my feet went out from under me, I didn’t really know what happened, and when I landed, I think it was a cell phone. Then, when I look back at the tapes… I keep my water bottles down there, and I think a water bottle may have spilled. But whatever, it was slicker than a banana peel. Thankfully, it’s a cheap way to get a viral moment going.”
When Ryan Seacreast replayed the footage on Sunday’s Idol episode, Bryan said it was “good old-fashioned foolishness,” adding, “I’m alright, baby! [It was] actually the best moment of the night.”
The next day, the country singer told TMZ, “Whether it was a phone or a slippery stage … when I landed, the first thing I hit was a phone,” adding that he had “no injuries” because he has “a lot of meat back there.”
