Etta James says she was only kidding when she announced at a recent Seattle concert that she “can’t stand” Beyonce and poked fun at President Obama’s ears.
“I didn’t really mean anything,” James, 71, tells New York’s Daily News. “Even as a little child, I’ve always had that comedian kind of attitude. … That’s probably what went into it.”
James admits she was irritated that Beyonce sang her classic “At Last” for Obama’s first dance on inauguration night and that she wasn’t invited to perform it.
She says she was “feeling left out of something that was basically mine, that I had done every time you look around.”
She says she liked Beyonce’s performance. But, when asked if she thought she could have done better, James says, “I think so. That’s a shame to say that.”
She says she kept spewing insults at the show because “nobody was getting mad at me in Seattle. They were all laughing, and it was funny,” adding that her jokes were “not from a vicious place.”
Although she cracked that Obama had “big ears,” James says she “always thought he was handsome and he was cool.”
“I still had my joke about him,” James says. “That might be horrible. The President might not ever like me in life.”
But she says she doesn’t think Obama will be too upset.
Says the singer, “He’s got other stuff [to worry about] besides Etta James .”
Popularity: 4% [?]
Twitter It!
Beyonce could take Etta James in more ways than one