Elle King has admitted that she was “overwhelmed” before her drunken Dolly Parton tribute performance in January.
The singer has opened up about the disastrous performance she gave at Dolly’s 78th birthday tribute show in Nashville, Tennessee, in January.
“I had been going through something very heavy and traumatic in my life at the time,” Elle, 34, explained on Thursday’s episode of Chelsea Handler’s Dear Chelsea podcast. “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.”
The Ex’s & Oh’s hitmaker added she was “really overwhelmed” before the show, noting she “hadn’t eaten” and “hadn’t slept in days”.
“I was like a shell of myself,” Elle confessed. “There was a big snowstorm that day, and this other singer who’s supposed to be the headliner backed out like three hours before, and they asked me if I would sing – if I would be the headliner and sing Jolene. I was like, ‘Great, I know that song.'”
The singer, who performed twice at the event, said that while her first performance went smoothly, she had taken “one shot too many” before taking to the stage for the second time.
During her performance of Dolly’s 2001 hit Marry Me, Elle stumbled through the song, forgetting the lyrics, swearing repeatedly in front of the family-friendly crowd and admitting she was “f**king hammered”.
“I got the curtain dropped on me,” the artist recalled, “and I was totally disassociated, and I just cut to the dressing room – me on the floor just sobbing, like, ‘What have I done?'”
Two weeks after the event, Dolly said she didn’t hold the performance against Elle, telling 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.”
