Elle King is opening up about the incident that made headlines in January when she appeared visibly drunk during a tribute to Dolly Parton at the Grand Ole Opry. During an interview with Kaitlyn Bristowe of Off the Vine, the singer revealed that she entered therapy to work on herself following the show, where she forgot the lyrics to Parton's “Marry Me” and swore during the live broadcast.
“After everything that happened in January, I went to a different type of therapy because I was so sad and no one really knew what I was going through behind closed doors,” she said. “And I took it as, A. If it wasn’t this, it was going to be something else, and B. I had to heal and deal with things and go through them. And someone said to me, ‘I think you might find a silver lining or something good that comes out of your experience with this,’ and I’m like, I haven’t found it yet, you son of a bitch! But I feel like I’m a different person. I still have incredibly anxiety all the time, but I used to, so at least I’m more conscientious about it.”
After appearing at the Opry earlier this year, King postponed her subsequent tour dates in January and February, and briefly addressed the incident on social media. “Oh no, my show was human. To everyone who shows me love because I'm human and I actually spoke to Dolly: I love you. To everyone who told me to kill myself: I love you too,” she wrote in an Instagram post two months later.
King has mostly not spoken much about Aubrey’s performance so far. She has written handwritten notes apologizing for her behavior, and in this recent interview, she said that helped push her in a more positive direction. “If I had just reacted or talked about it then, it wouldn’t have been from the position that I wasn’t healed, but I waited to talk about everything until I was on a better footing because I wasn’t okay,” she said. “I’m still not okay, I’m mentally ill. You understand that. But I also come out a new person, and I’m still completely me. If anything, I’m more me now than I’ve been in the last 20 years.”
Parton expressed her forgiveness after the botched performance, telling Extra: “Elle is a really great artist. She's a great girl, and she's been through a lot of hard things lately. She drank too much, so let's forgive her and forget about it and move on, because she felt worse than anyone could ever feel.”
