Chrisette Michele: "I regret everything" about playing Trump inauguration ball

You may remember that R&B/soul singer Chrisette Michele controversially canceled her NJ show so she could sing at one of Donald Trump’s inauguration balls. At the time she defended it saying, “I hope that Great Moments begin in peaceful & progressive conversation. I am willing to be a bridge. I don’t mind ‘These Stones,’ if they allow me to be a voice for the voiceless.” The decision lost her some fans (Questlove offered to pay her NOT to play it), and Spike Lee pulled her songs from his She’s Gotta Have It Netflix series.

As the one year anniversary of the 2016 election looms, Michele has done a couple interviews where she’s singing a different tune. As Pitchfork points out she appeared on Power 105.1’s morning show “The Breakfast Club” today (11/2) where, when asked if she regretted anything about playing the inauguration ball, she said “I regret everything that happened. I think that was a bad choice”:

A lot of times when you have a message of hope, a lot of times when you have a message of healing, you think—you know, maybe it’s a self-righteous thing, maybe it’s a mistake to feel that way—but you think, “Man, if I just tell people everything is gonna be OK, they’ll hear me.”

Because I’ve been doing that for years, so I just thought the amount of times I’ve done it—when I sing my own music, right, and then I sing a gospel song at my concerts, those are usually the songs that get the most response. So, I just thought that bringing that to that moment where everybody was hurting, including myself, would be helpful. And I was wrong, and I offended a lot of people.

When host Charlamagne Tha God said “We told you,” Michele replied “There’s always gotta be some sense of hope. Again, that stage, that message on that stage was the wrong time and the wrong place. And I apologize deeply for the people that I hurt.” Listen to that interview below.

Michele also appeared on News One Now on Tuesday (10/31) where she said her manager told her not to do it, but thought “this was a way for me to tell us that we’ll be okay,” but then admitting she “offended millions of people and it was detrimental to so many peoples’ hearts.” You can watch that below as well.

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