Miranda Lambert inadvertently waded into the ongoing discourse surrounding live performance etiquette when she halted a recent concert to reprimand a group of audience members for taking selfies.
Video footage taken at Lambert’s Las Vegas residency concert Saturday and shared on TikTok shows the country singer-songwriter beginning a rendition of her 2017 hit, “Tin Man,” before instructing her band to stop playing after she notices the group.
“I’m gonna stop right here for a second, sorry,” Lambert explains to the crowd, as seen in the clip. “These girls are worried about their selfie and not listening to the songs, [and] it’s pissing me off a little bit. I don’t like it ― at all. We’re here to hear some country music tonight. I’m singing some country dang music!”
After taking a second to compose herself, she added, “Shall we start again?”
Vegas resident Adela Barnes, who was one of five women in the group singled out by Lambert, told HuffPost that she felt like she “was back at school where a teacher calls me out and tells me to sit down because I did something bad.”
She estimated that the whole ordeal lasted about 20 seconds and noted that she didn’t think she and her friends were being distracting while taking the photo.
Immediately following the incident, Barnes said she and one of the four friends decided to stay behind and try to enjoy the rest of the concert.
However, she no longer considers herself a fan of Lambert.
“It would kind of be awkward to go to another concert of hers,” she said, adding that she paid a few thousand dollars for her seat in the VIP section of Planet Hollywood’s Bakkt Theater.
A representative of Lambert didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment but told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that the three-time Grammy winner had “nothing further to share at this time” about the incident.
Not surprisingly, reaction to the video on social media was sharply divided.
“I mean if they are having a good time, taking pictures (to look back on) and they aren’t bothering anyone ― why is she worried about it?” one person wrote.
Added another: “Yeah I would’ve left, fuck that. They paid to be there. If you don’t want pictures then don’t allow phones. That’s ridiculous!”
Others came to Lambert’s defense.
“I was there so for all you acting like she was being an ass, those girls weren’t simply taking peaceful selfies but disrupting everyone’s experience,” one person wrote on TikTok.