Ethics Alarms commented on Madonna’s inexcusable two-hour tardy appearance at her concert (item #4) without realizing that The Grand Ol’ Opry could have said “Hold my beer!” The Nashville shrine to Country Music officially apologized to fans and audience members after four-time Grammy Award nominee Elle King disgraced the venue and herself with a vulgar and drunken performance on an evening last week that was supposed to honor Dolly Parton. “We deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used during last night’s second Opry performance,” the Opry wrote on X/Twitter over the weekend. That was an understatement of what happened.
Yikes. After she forgot the lyrics to Dolly’s song “Marry Me,” King started singing, “I don’t give a shit” and “I don’t know the lyrics to these things in this fucking town…Don’t tell Dolly, ’cause it’s her birthday….Holy shit. I swear if any of you guys tell Dolly!” Then she mocked the restless Opry audience. “”I’m not even gonna fucking lie. Y’all bought tickets for this shit? You ain’t getting your money back!” King called out from the stage. She then added, “I’ll tell you one thing more! Hi, my name is Elle King and I’m fucking hammered!’” When a musician on the stage suggested she do an original song instead of covering one of Parton’s, King answered, “I can barely play another person’s song, let me see if I can play one of mine!”
Stay classy, Ellie. In virtually all other professions, a single episode like that one would be a career-ender. In a field littered with rich narcissists and sociopaths with worshipful fans prone to forgive almost anything, King will almost certainly suffer minimal damage.
As I write this, though the Opry has apologized, King has not.
Incidentally, today’s Country Music trivia note is that King is the daughter of “Saturday Night Live” alum and Adam Sandler’s less successful pal Rob Schneider (“the copier room guy,” “The Animal,” “Cedric the Bellhop” in “Home Alone 2”). He must be so proud.
Ethics Alarms 
Apparently she’s always been a drunk, at least according to the article you linked to. Apparently performing on stage drunk has also been a thing of hers for a while. She’s also got a busy tour schedule lined up through the spring and summer. I don’t know how well that will do if those buying tickets are apparently looking for something other than this. The Grand Ole Opry was foolish to book her without really grasping what they were getting.
This is one of the reasons I stick mostly to classical crossover. The musicians there are a lot more professional and they stick to the script. I won’t say they don’t run into problems, but they don’t deliberately take the stage drunk and abuse the audience. Frankly, if you hate the audience that much, the stage is not where you belong. Not that fans are always perfect, far from it. I’ve run into some weird behavior from fellow fans and maybe I’ve done and said a few mildly weird things myself although not recently. However, there should be at least some kind of mutual respect, or what the heck is this event even doing happening?
No, fans aren’t perfect. I’ve run into my fair share of entitled fans. In this case, however, fans in the audience were within their rights to be disgruntled.
You are on the mark about the Opry. They should have known her reputation before booking her. And then not do it.
Yep, so have I, as well as wacky fans. One fan of a certain group I am also a fan of told their tour manager that if he didn’t stop trying to rush a meet and greet he was going to pick him up and put him face-first in a nearby dumpster. Another turned and burned on another performer and tried to get her sacked from the act she was with at the time because she dared to walk past him without engaging. Ooook. No, neither of these individuals was me, although I was pretty stern with a WLIW rep on the phone about a meet and greet that was paid for and didn’t happen (eventually they agreed to reduce the price paid by what wasn’t provided, which is fair).
This wasn’t someone telling fans after a show they couldn’t stop to chat or couldn’t sign autographs because of time constraints (reasonable) or snapping at someone who tried to approach them in a hotel lobby because they weren’t on the clock (a little less reasonable). While you are on stage you DO owe the audience a good show, and this wasn’t one.
Decided to post this here because there’s a little bit of a tie-in with performances.
I recently had a discussion with a manager who was absolutely convinced that the reason one of his employees was going on maternity leave was because she had a problem with his management.
I made the point: “I think that becoming pregnant to avoid working with you is enough commitment to the bit that even if that’s actually what happened, she deserves the time.”
This is similar
https://www.youtube.com/@DrKBoogieWoogie/videos
Brendan Kavanagh is a YouTube creator with two million followers. His act is to go into public places with pianos and blast out some ragtime, maybe get some people to dance. Seriously… watch some of his videos from more than a month ago, it’s some of the most wholesome content on the internet.
I say previous to a month ago because something is rotten in the heart of England. A month ago, while livestreaming some Boogie Woogie, he tried to get the wrong person to dance. Apparently, it came out subsequently, the woman he asked was part of a CCP TV crew and she told Kavanagh that he wasn’t authorized to film her. He basically laughed it off and said that he could. The TV crew called the police, who not only showed up, but tried to say that Kavanagh had assaulted the crew. The officer was also very interested in Kavanaugh not recording, perhaps because of how facially absurd what she was saying was in context.
This has ignited something of a firestorm, and now Kavanaugh and all his followers are being drafted into the culture war. He’s making the rounds through the news, and while it’s taken a little while to get over the pond, it’s being picked up by American outlets.
You read it here first.
I originally viewed the clip and thought that he might have been baiting them. I’m still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t. But like I said on Twitter:
“I think it’s possible that he knew what was going to happen, but I have no idea. Really though, even if this was censoring asshat bait (and it might not have been), the easy way not to look like censoring asshats is not take take the bait and be censoring asshats.”
And frankly, it takes a lot of work to build up a wholesome YouTube channel with millions of followers over the year. If that was all prep work to being a culture warrior, then that’s enough commitment to the bit to buy my credulity.
Tell us what CCP TV is? I am sure it’s not Chinese Communist Party, but….
CC=”closed circuit.” If you watch any British procedurals, you can’t hear five minutes without someone saying “CCP.”
Sorry, no, see my reply to Diego, it was actually China’s national doing a piece in the UK.
Ha! Is my face red! Confirmation bias gets me again…
No, sorry. It’s literally the Chinese Communist Party. They were waving Chinese flags and everything. The Chinese national broadcaster was trying to film a piece on something in the UK, and the producer thought that she could force Kavanagh to delete his footage.
The worst part was when she had to tell her security detail NOT to shoot him.
Why was she there in the first place.
(1) She is drunk
(2) She isn’t a country singer
Yes, she does ‘crossovers’ because they are popular, but she doesn’t have a country album or a country single. There are a lot of country singers out there who grew up respecting Dolly Parton and wouldn’t have gone on a drunken, profanity-laden rant. This was done by network focus groups trying to maximize ratings.
When you see a country music awards show, it is littered with rap artists as commentators and rap performances to maximize ratings. Do rap awards show have country artists doing the commentaries? My favorite one was a rap star interviewing Trace Adkins. Adkins was asked if he saw any similarity between rap and country awards shows and he responded “We both have a lot of guns”.