Band breakups are never easy — even when the members aren’t related.
So although it’s been more than a decade since the Jonas Brothers temporarily parted ways in 2013, Joe, Nick and Kevin still have some complicated feelings regarding their split.
In a clip from an upcoming episode of Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals series that Billboard is exclusively debuting below, the trio addresses whether they still harbor any “guilt” over the way they left things when the band broke up 12 years ago. Nick Jonas — whose idea it initially was for the brothers to fly solo after making music together for years — begins by saying that he doesn’t feel “guilt so much as, in reflection, I can definitely see how I could have more lovingly communicated something that needed to be said.”
“It’s often how we say things that matters more than what we’re saying,” Nick continues as his older brothers nod in agreement. “I think we all knew … it had run its course. I just didn’t know how to maturely articulate that and lovingly do that.”
Though the breakup was a hard call, Joe says that “it needed to happen.”
“We were having such a difficult time just being real with each other back then,” the DNCE frontman adds in the interview. “Now it’s like we can communicate way better, because we don’t need to be scared to have tough conversations.”
Following the Disney Channel-backed success of their first four albums, the JoBros decided to pull the plug on group activities after being unable to resolve internal disagreements over the direction of the band in 2013. Joe’s remarks on Last Meals echo what he previously told Billboard of the split in 2019.
“We all wanted to create something on our own and were just trying to force it into what was going on,” he said at the time. “We were going through the motions, without the heart of it … The way we communicated to each other wasn’t healthy anymore.”
Fast-forward to 2025, and the brothers are now gearing up to release their third album post-reunion. After coming back together in 2019 on Happiness Begins — which earned the band its first-ever No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Sucker” — the Jonas Brothers are set to follow up 2023’s The Album with Greetings From Your Hometown on Aug. 8.
And in repairing their relationship as a band, Kevin says that their connections as family members are also stronger than ever now. “When there’s a true need, we always band together,” he shares on the podcast. “We’re brothers first.”
The full episode of Last Meals featuring the Jonas Brothers will drop Thursday (July 31). Watch the exclusive clip below.