American Idol Season 10 contestant, James Durbin, who set a piano on fire during his performance last night, told Ryan Seacrest he had so much hairspray in his hair that he was afraid of having a “Pepsi moment”.

James Durbin Performs “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” (VIDEO)

James said, “I have a lot of hairspray in my hair to keep it from jumping around — so much so, the one thing I was worried about was having a ‘Pepsi moment.’”

The “Pepsi moment” comment was a reference to Michael Jackson’s incident (his hair caught on fire) on the set of a Pepsi commercial more than 26 years ago, which ultimately led to the King of Pop’s death after years of drug abuse.

American Idol James Durbin NO Adam Lambert 2.0

Michael’s family was shocked and offended by the Idol hopeful’s little “joke”. A Jackson family rep told TMZ, “We were shocked to see this. It’s nothing to make light of and everybody should be focusing on who was responsible for Michael’s death.”

Joe Jackson was particularly upset because this unfortunate comment was not cut off from the West Coast feed. James is apparently a huge fan of MJ, so he took to his Twitter to try to explain the situation.

James tweeted, For anyone talkin..I said pepsi NOT MJ! I have no disrespect for Michael. I grew up singing his art. I guess youll take it how you want it…” and then followed that up with, “Talkin about MJs passing is too soon. Making a reference to an incident 25 years ago..not too soon. The stab was at pepsi people.”

These tweets have already been deleted. James was most likely advised to erase the tweets by the producers of the show. The truth is the comment is really unfortunate, but James sure didn’t mean to hurt or offended anyone. It’s one of those “open mouth, insert foot” moments.