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Miranda Lambert made headlines when she stopped her Las Vegas show to address a group of concertgoers taking pictures in the front row, rather than paying attention to her performance. Now, one of those fans is speaking out to tell her side of the story.
Videos circulated on social media after a Saturday night (July 15) show, capturing Lambert stopping her performance of “Tin Man,” off of 2016’s The Weight Of These Wings, to call out the group. She said at that time: “These girls are worried about their selfie and not listening to the song, and it’s pissing me off a little bit. Sorry. I don’t like it at all! We’re here to hear some country music tonight. I’m singin’ some country damn music!”
Though concertgoers appeared to cheer and applaud Lambert in the videos, others could be heard saying, “let’s go. Come on. You don’t do that to fans.” The videos also prompted comments on social media expressing mixed opinions (one fan account, for example, shared a comment from someone who attended the show who said that “they were taking group selfies with a big light for several minutes. It was super distracting and rude!” Others, however, commented that it was “uncalled for,” “disrespectful” to paying fans, and that the Palomino star could have handled it differently).
Adela Calin, an influencer who was part of the group taking photos during the show, spoke with NBC News about the viral incident.
“It was 30 seconds at most,” Calin, 43, told NBC. “We took the picture quickly and were going to sit back down.”
Calin shared the two photos she and her group took before Lambert stopped the show. She suggested to the news outlet that Lambert’s reaction could stem from safety concerns as a growing number of artists have been hit by objects thrown from the crowd (Kelsea Ballerini, for example, stopped performing and walked off stage after a fan threw a bracelet on stage that hit her in the eye. Ballerini returned to the stage and restarted her performance of the song after she encouraged the audience to be safe and “not throw things”).
Still, in this instance, “it felt like I was back at school with the teacher scolding me for doing something wrong and telling me to sit down back in my place,” Calin said when speaking with NBC, also explaining that the lighting wasn’t ideal when the group tried to take photos before the show started. “I feel like she was determined to make us look like we were young, immature and vain. But we were just grown women in our 30s to 60s trying to take a picture.”
NBC also noted that a rep for Lambert declined to comment.
Lambert has not publicly commented as of publication time on Tuesday (July 18).