Elle King Shares Update Months After Infamous Dolly Parton Tribute
Originally appeared on E! Online
Elle King has been on a personal journey to wellness since her drunken performance at a Dolly Parton birthday tribute concert sparked backlash.
Eight months after the infamous Grand Ole Opry performance, the "Ex's & Oh's" singer says she has been healing. In fact, King, who has since toured and performed more than 35 concerts, told People she is "the best version" of herself now.
"I felt so afraid to ever have a drink before I go onstage again because I appreciated someone buying tickets to my concert. I wasn’t going to let them down," she told the magazine in comments posted Sept. 20. "I did let people down. And ultimately, I let myself down that day, and I never wanted to feel that ever again."
The 35-year-old continued, "I'm definitely able to put on a better show because of some changes that I've made in my life, and it gets me more excited."
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Since the incident, King has been leaning on her loved ones for support.
"I've got a small son," noted the singer, who shares 3-year-old Lucky with partner Daniel Tooker, with whom she had recently gotten back together following a split. "He's going to find out about all this one day, and he's going to see that I tried to be just the best version of myself, and I used it to make myself better, and I did. It's more of a love story of self than anything."
King—the daughter of actor Rob Schneider and model London King—added, "I'm very happy, I'm very content, which is nice, and I don't know if I've ever really felt that, so it's a blessing."
At the Grand Ole Opry event in January, while performing Dolly's 2001 hit "Marry Me", King appeared to forget the words and began swearing onstage.
"Holy s--t. I swear if any of you guys tell Dolly," she said at the show, which Parton herself did not attend. "I'm not even gonna f--king lie. Y'all bought tickets for this s--t? You ain't getting your money back."
She then added, "I'll tell you one thing more. Hi, my name is Elle King. I'm f--king hammered."
King told People the incident occurred while she was experiencing a "high level of pain" in her life, echoing comments she made in May.
"I had been going through something very heavy and traumatic in my life at the time," she had said on Chelsea Handler's iHeartRadio podcast Dear Chelsea. "That day was a really big day dealing with what I was going through and am still going through, and I suffer from severe PTSD."
She continued, "I got the curtain dropped on me and I was totally disassociated, and I just cut to the dressing room—me on the floor just sobbing, like, 'What have I done?'"
Parton had reached out to King after the incident.
"Elle King is a doll," the country music legend told E! News in an exclusive interview at Dolly Parton's Pet Gala in February. "I called her, and I said, 'You know, there are many F-words. Why don't we use the right one? Forgiveness, friends, forget it.'"
The 78-year-old continued, "She made a mistake. She feels worse about it than anybody. But she's a talented girl. She's going through some hard times, and I think she just had a little too much to drink and then that just hit her. So, we need to get over that because she's a great artist and a great person."
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