Elle King Says She's the 'Best Version of Myself Now' After Drunken Dolly Parton Tribute Performance (Exclusive)

Elle King is taking the high road.

The Grammy-nominated singer dropped her new single "High Road" on Friday, Sept. 20, and it's a melancholic, Willie Nelson-inspired country ballad with a wink.

"Since last year, if anything was going wrong or something pissed me off, my manager would say, 'High Road 2024,' and that was our theme of like, 'Take the f---ing high road, bitch. Be the person that you would hope that you could be through any situation,'" King, 35, says of the track's inspiration. "And it's just been a phrase that we've used."

King began writing "High Road" in the shower, then finished it with her friend and bassist Paul DeVincenzo, and they've been playing it live at shows since last year.

"We do this all the time: I'll write a song and then we'll play it on tour, and most of the time, it doesn't make the record," says King, who's putting the finishing touches on her next album, a follow-up to 2023's Come Get Your Wife. "But now, I've been writing these songs that all tell a story and they're funny, but it's got more of a classic country feel, which is my favorite stuff. It's all the stuff that I listen to. And a lot of the record has all of these nods of my favorite things about country, which is sort of funny storytelling, but also there's realness to it and makes you laugh or it makes you feel something."

King adds: "We've been lucky enough to get to open for Willie Nelson a couple of times, and I've gotten to sing with him. I'm not trying to make a Willie Nelson record, but at the same time, his music and all of that '70s country music has really been so impactful and influential on my storytelling and my music."

And King has found solace in music as she's faced some personal struggles publicly.

“This song carried me through this year,” she says of “High Road," “and I think a lot of people know this year has not been the easiest for me.”

The “Ex’s & Oh’s” singer faced backlash after a drunken performance at a Dolly Parton birthday tribute concert at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in January.

“Try having something bad you did go f---ing viral — that was pretty hard,” King says of the incident, which she has said happened as she was experiencing a “high level of pain” in her life. “I never thought that a single human being would ever buy a ticket to my show again. But they do.”

King has spent the year healing and is “the best version of myself now,” she says, as she is out on the road for her Baby Daddy’s Weekend tour.

“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 says. "I did let people down. And ultimately, I let myself down that day, and I never wanted to feel that ever again ... 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."

Since the incident, King's family — her partner Daniel Tooker and their 3-year-old son Lucky — have been her foundation.

"I'm doing things that make me proud of myself," she says. "I've got a small son. 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."

Adds King: "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 ...  This is worth all the effort in the world. My family, this is what deserves all the energy and effort. All this other s--- is just a plus."