Despite a reputation as one of the world’s best-selling artists, it seems Christina Aguilera isn’t a household name to everyone, with a US bar band turning down the singer’s request for a guest spot last week.
Since September, Christina Aguilera has been touring the US in support of her latest record, Liberation. However, during a stop in the city of New Orleans last week, the singer found herself requesting a guest spot with a local bar band, who subsequently turned her down.
According to footage shot by a patron of the Cafe Negril last Thursday, Aguilera approached the titular frontman of Claude Bryant and the All Stars, asking them whether or not she could perform with them.
“You don’t want that?” the singer was heard telling Bryant. “Oh, it’s OK. I don’t have to sing.”
My wife is in New Orleans and last night at the bar she was at, comes in @xtina!!! She asked the house band if she can sing a tune and… Nope! As if she was denied?! That would have been so cool to see her sing. More to the story Christina? pic.twitter.com/NoWTwkYfyL
— drMediaPro (@drMediaPro) November 9, 2018
As WSB-TV notes, the singer told her audience about the incident at her concert the next evening, brushing it off as something of a quirky story.
“I go to this little bar and there’s this live band playing,” she began. “I was with a couple of my dancers and I was just like, ‘Let me just get up on stage and jam with this guy. Maybe I’ll sing a song or whatever and be fun.’”
“He would not give me the mic,” she continued. “He was, like, a little older and he was just like, he was not feeling it. He was not gonna give up his mic.”
“I was like, ‘Oh, I just want to come just let me come up,’ and he just said, ‘What, are you gonna dance for me?’ I was like, ‘No, I just want to sing a song with you.'”
@xtina you slayed tonight girl pic.twitter.com/mfnKslMmLp
— Marchaund Jones (@meezy1991) November 10, 2018
Now, word of this interaction has clearly made it back to Claude Bryant, who explained to New Orleans news station WGNO that he just didn’t recognise the singer.
“I’m sorry Christina, I just didn’t recognise you!” Bryant began. “I didn’t recognise her because she had a cap over her head and over her eyes. She was in a jersey.”
“She didn’t introduce herself to me, but she had very soft hands and that got my attention,” he continued. “I asked her if she wanted to dance and she said that she wanted to sing. I started playing the beginning riff of the song, ‘No, No, No,’ by Bob Marley but then her bodyguard picked her up off the stage, and she left.”
However, Bryant also explained that if Christina Aguilera ever finds herself in New Orleans again, he’d be happy to make it up to her. “Come back Christina,” he explained. “You can sing anything you want with us.”
Check out Christina Aguilera’s ‘Accelerate’:
