Lil Nas X stopped by The Tonight Show on Monday night to chat with Jimmy Fallon (and also Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl for some reason), and you’ll never guess what topic dominated the conversation. Fallon dove right into the hubbub surrounding the singer’s recent “wardrobe malfunction” on this weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live.
“It was perfect timing,” Lil Nas X said of the moment when his leather pants split during his performance of hit single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name). “If that would have ripped any other time during the performance…”
As the singer indicated, the mishap, which forced him to finish the song with one hand covering his crotch, could have been a lot worse! Fallon shared a clip of the dress rehearsal of the performance, in which Lil Nas X was able to do the full P-Valley caliber pole stunt as originally intended. And, yeah, if those pants had given way at that particular moment, SNL’s live audience would have seen a whole lot more than they’d bargained for.
“I want everybody who thought it was a publicity stunt to see that,” Lil Nas X said of the rehearsal clip. “I would never rip my pants in public…on purpose!”
But that wasn’t the only snafu surrounding the SNL appearance. On Monday, choreographer Sean Bankhead revealed that after two weeks of rehearsals, one of the backup dancers tested positive for COVID-19, forcing him to recast the entire ensemble and teach the new dancers the routine over Zoom in just 24 hours.
“They’re still in their hotel right now!” Lil Nas X said of the quarantined original dancers. “It was really scary. We made it through the week though.”
He also described what fans can expect of his new album. “It’s 100-percent me,” he explained. “I’m exploring my sexuality, my self. It’s like a coming-of-age story. My heartbreaks — there’s been a lot of those in the past couple years. It’s something everybody can vibe along to, yeah.”
