Etta James has said that those comments she made about Barack Obama and Beyonce Knowles at a recent gig in Seattle were just a joke.
As previously reported, Knowles performed a cover of James' 1961 track 'At Last' at Obama's presidential inauguration (she portraying James in the soon-to-be-released-here film 'Cadillac Records'), and Etta said at the gig last week that the fact Beyonce had been chosen pissed her off, adding "I can't stand Beyonce". She also mocked Obama's physical appearance.
Anyway, she wasn't being horrid, she now says, rather she was just having a joke. She told The New York Daily News: "I didn't really mean anything. Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude. … That's probably what went into it. Nobody was getting mad at me in Seattle. They were all laughing, and it was funny".
She did, however, cough to having felt disappointed about the fact that she was not asked to perform her own track for the president, saying that she was "feeling left out of something that was basically mine, that I had done every time you look around". And I think that's fair enough, actually.