Brooke White did the unthinkable on last night's American Idol — stopped her song, and started again.

"I'm sorry," she said, gesturing for the band to restart Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita ballad, "You Must Love Me."

After performing, a nearly speechless Paula Abdul sputtered: "You must never start and stop!"

Judge Simon Cowell, though, admitted he, "would have done exactly what she did if [he'd] forgotten the words.

"It was a very brave thing to do," he added, but still called her performance, "quite uncomfortable."

White, 24, told Ryan Seacrest, "I lost the lyric. It's never happened to me before on this show."

But the Arizona native has also stopped and started on the piano one other time this season.