Elle King Says Drunken Dolly Parton Tribute Was Her Rock Bottom: “If It Wasn’t That, It Was Going To Be Something Else”

The truth about the Dolly Parton tribute incident.

If we all think back to last year, I’m sure we all remember the viral story about Elle King. Just days after King appeared to be inebriated as she hosted Nashville’s 2024 New Year’s Eve Bash, the “Ex’s and Oh’s” singer angered a lot of country fans when she disrespected the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman, and Dolly Parton during an Opry Goes Dolly tribute.

King barely got through a performance of Dolly Parton’s “Marry Me,” slurring many of the words. If that wasn’t bad enough, she shouted a very tasteful, “I don’t give a s***,” right in the middle of the song, which, just in case you weren’t familiar with the tune, is not a part of the chorus:

@traveler_bex #Elleking ruins #dollyparton birthday bash in #nashville ♬ original sound – Bex

After the incident, she canceled all the shows on her calendar at the time. She laid relatively low, attending therapy and trying to move on from what happened as privately as possible. She did apologize to Dolly, and even wrote her a letter, and Dolly was as gracious as ever, saying that Elle “felt worse than anybody ever could.” Obviously, I don’t think Dolly took the incident personally at all, which is far from how her sister, Stella Parton, reacted to the event. Dolly shared:

“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 it and move on, ‘cuz she felt worse than anybody ever could.”

If anyone is going to make you feel better about your mistakes, it’s Dolly Parton. King touched on how that moment was a rock bottom for her while appearing on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s podcast, but now, a year later, she is revisiting the incident with Bunnie Xo on the Dumb Blonde Podcast.

Early on in the episode, King admitted she struggled with postpartum depression for a long time after the birth of her first son, Lucky. While some people say postpartum depression lasts for a few months after birth, King had a very different experience. She said that she was in a deep depressive stage for nearly two years after the birth of Lucky, some attributed to adjusting to being a mother, and other aspects of it were related to the whirlwind state of life that she was in.

Bunnie asks King if she felt like the Dolly Parton tribute was a result of this deep depression. King said it was without a doubt related to the struggles that she was going through, but it was not a direct result of her postpartum depression.

“Honestly, I think I’d come out of postpartum and everything that had accumulated, everything that I had just like sucked onto my life in my depression, all just came to a head. I think it was probably just rock bottom, right? If it wasn’t that it was going to be something else.

I just took, for the first time, when I was pregnant, I was like, okay, ‘Maybe I’ve got this time given to me.’ This year was the first time I was like, ‘I’m stepping away from this.’ Everyone was telling me to go kill myself. Everyone was telling me to surrender my child. It was just so so wrong, and you know, if a man did it, it would have been a completely different story.

I’ve spoken to everybody, and I’ve spoken to everybody at the Opry. They said that I’m not banned.”

Bunnie interjects to note that country music is a very forgiving genre, and she’s not surprised that the Opry too forgave her for this mistake.

“The saddest part about it is, and I don’t really want to use these words, but somebody is going to get arrested, somebody is going to get something that happens. And some people might say it’s good for you, but like for me, I’m like, that’s sad.

The biggest thing I learned was, like, okay, take nothing you read online for the full-blown truth because you never know. From my experience, what was going on then, I was going through some heavy, heavy, heavy s***. Not even postpartum, not even my breakup, not even just that.”

Bunnie interjects again, asking if they could dive into what happened during her breakup.

In 2024, she and her partner Dan Tooker split up; however, the two reconciled and got back together. King shared that she was not willing to delve into that, as it was really dark and a part of her life that she did not want to revisit. She continues with her thoughts surrounding the Dolly Parton incident, detailing what happened that day, which led to her embarrassing onstage moment.

“Because of that, no one really knew what was really going on. And they just thought, God forbid somebody looks and thinks, ‘Wow, what was going on with her that day?’ I played two shows that day, I played two f****** shows. The first show was great, it was perfect. But I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t done anything, I hadn’t slept in days. I had such bad anxiety and everything.

I just walked back on out stage, and I had taken one shot too many. I walked through that alleyway and we went to Robert’s Western World, and a bunch of people were celebrating, and I took one shot of tequila when I had been drinking a martini, and that was the tiniest I had ever been. And boom. I come to and the curtain’s down. And it sucks. It’s awful. 

But at the same time, I went home, and I was like I never want to cry like that on a car ride home. I never want to wake up feeling like that ever again. I never want to feel that shame. I never want to, you know, any time Dolly Parton calls you is cool, but I didn’t want it to be under those circumstances. But she called me to make me feel better…

I learned so much from this experience, and if I can come out of it, literally everyone can. I’ve had so many experiences like that, I hope I have less of those in the future.”

While King admitted at the start of this conversation that she’s sure people will not like some of what she has to say or wish that she would stop talking about it altogether, she said she will not apologize for continuing to speak and grow from that moment. King shares that she sees every experience, good or bad, as a learning lesson, and while that moment was a huge lesson, she’s thankful for what it has taught her about herself.

Elle King had grown a lot from this moment, and you can see it fully when you hear her reflect on these moments. Thankfully, for King, I think most have also moved on from this moment and are choosing to leave it in the past as well. On the bright side… at least she got a good tune out of it.

Listen to “Banned From The Grand Ole Opry” HERE.

Check out the whole Dumb Blonde Podcast episode while you’re here.

The post Elle King Says Drunken Dolly Parton Tribute Was Her Rock Bottom: “If It Wasn’t That, It Was Going To Be Something Else” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.