Elle King Finally Speaks On Botched Dolly Parton Moment
Seven months after Elle King took the Grand Ole Opry stage on Dolly Parton’s birthday (1/19) to pay tribute to her in song and ended up botching the performance, missing words, acting very drunk, and seemingly being a bit disrespectful, King spoke about the moment.
Elle talked on the Off The Vine podcast about where she was in her life in January 2024 when the internet turned on her after the performance. King ended up staying off social media altogether for a few months and canceling some shows for a while.
In the interview, King revealed she was going through a tough time in her life, and something like this was “bound to happen” sooner or later. She said, “I was very sad, and nobody really knows what I was what I was going through behind closed doors, And I just took that as, if it wasn’t this, it’s gonna be something else.”
Elle said she couldn’t go on “living my life or even staying in the situation that I had been going through.” She noted that she “couldn’t continue to be existing in that high level of pain” that she was going through at the time.
King underwent what she calls a “different type of therapeutic program” but did not call it rehab. She said she “had to heal” and deal and “go through things.” She said it took so long to address the drunken Dolly performance in public because she “waited to talk about everything” until she had “better footing.”
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Back in February, Parton responded to Elle King’s drunk Opry performance on January 19 when King was criticized at Dolly’s Opry birthday Bash when Elle forgot the words to Parton’s song and told the crowd she was “hammered.”
The country icon spoke with Extra T.V. and commented on the incident, which forced King to postpone upcoming shows until fans calmed down. As we all knew she would be, Dolly was kind and forgiving. She told Extra, “Elle is really a great artist. She’s a great girl, and she’s been going through a lot of hard things lately, and she just had a little too much to drink. So, let’s just forgive that and forget and move on because she felt worse than anybody ever could.”
In the same interview, Parton said she worked for most of the day on her January 19 birthday, and when asked what her husband Carl gave her, she joked that he really surprised her by “giving me nothing.” She added that he always does something special for her and gives her something he thinks she may be able to use, although she didn’t specify what it was. Dolly also revealed that every spring, her sweet husband gives her a mason jar full of yellow flowers, and now and then, he writes her a poem. She noted that she and her hubby live “pretty simple” lives behind the scenes.
