A country music singer was too ‘f***ing hammered’ to give a proper rendition of a Dolly Parton song on the iconic Grand Ole Opry show this weekend.
It wasn’t the best night for Elle King… (Picture: Getty)
Singer Elle King delivered a ‘profane’ rendition of a Dolly classic on Friday night, forcing an apology from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.
It was meant to be a night of celebration dedicated to the 9 to 5 icon, who turned 78 on January 19, but things went from bad to worse during the live set.
The Ex’s & Oh’s singer, 34, first upset large parts of the audience with foul language before forgetting the Dolly song she was meant to be covering.
On X, the famous concert hall, which the Grand Ole Opry radio show comes from, said: ‘We deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used during last night’s second Opry performance.’
Country music fans across the USA were unhappy but it was the thoughts of one person in the audience that forced the almost 100-year-old radio show to apologise.
Dolly Parton birthday tribute performance goes off the rails
The patron said: ‘Elle King ruined the night with her horrible, drunk, and profane performance. Dolly Parton would’ve been mortified. For our first time at the Opry, it was a shame we all had to witness that.’
Their complaint continued: ‘It was such a disappointment to spend $300 on tickets for a show where one of the artists ruined an entire night.’
After finally remembering that she was due to perform Marry Me, a track from Dolly’s 2001 album Little Sparrow, King changed the lyrics to include lines such as: ‘I don’t give a s**t’.
Elle’s performances didn’t go down well with Dolly fans (Picture: Chad Scott)
Elle King scored a top 15 UK hit in 2014 with Ex’s & Oh’s (Picture: Red Light Mgmt)
And then things took another turn for the worse, somehow. ‘I don’t know the lyrics to these things in this f*****g town’, she admitted. ‘Don’t tell Dolly, cause it’s her birthday.’
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King then turned her attention towards the audience: ‘You ain’t getting your money back. I’ll tell you one thing more. Hi, my name is Elle King and I’m f*****g hammered.’
The cringeworthy moment was captured on social media, with the reaction from the audience appearing to be mixture of cheering, booing, and laughing.
When one of her King’s musicians told her to play an original song rather than cover a Dolly number, King said she could ‘barely play’ at all.
The Grand Ole Opry put the event on to celebrate Dolly Parton’s 78th birthday (Picture: AP)
King released her first album in 2015, backed by the internationally popular single Ex’s & Oh’s, which reached the top 15 in the UK in 2014.
She has continued to have moderate success as a country singer in the US, recording songs with the likes of Miranda Lambert, Nile Rodgers, and Ronnie Spector.
After the incident in Nashville on Friday, some fans have expressed concern about King’s health, with some referencing previous comments she has made about her attempts to achieve sobriety.
In an interview with the San Diego Union Tribune in 2022, she commented: ‘I really like to drink and sing. I don’t want to get as drunk as I used to… I get nervous before I go on stage, so I have couple of drinks.’
