Elle King Was ‘Really Nervous’ to Ask Miranda Lambert to Join Her on ‘Drunk (and I Don’t Wanna Go Home)’

Elle King and Miranda Lambert released their collaboration “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” in February, a team-up that was born after King opened for Lambert on the Texas native’s 2019 Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars Tour. In a recent interview with Audacy’s Katie & Company, King opened up about the story behind the song, admitting that she was hesitant to ask Lambert to join her on the track.

“I was really nervous to ask because she had already done so much for me and inviting me on this tour,” King explained. “I didn’t want it to seem like I was taking advantage or anything, but it just seemed like a good idea so I just held my breath and texted her and she said she liked the song.”

The duo performed the song together at the ACM Awards in April, and King shared that she “was losing my voice because I was laughing so hard.” She added, “I feel really lucky and blessed that she agreed to sing this song with me.”

King wrote “Drunk” with Martin Johnson, and the pair initially started writing the song when the now-31-year-old King was around 24 years old. “It’s weird because sometimes songs have a different life and they’re not finished for a reason,” she reflected. “We had started writing it when I was like 24 years old and then Martin, the other songwriter, we reconnected and I was like, ‘Hey. We’ve been sitting on this song, ‘Drunk,’ and I feel like it’s a big song. I feel like there’s something to it, but I hate the verses. We have to re-write it.”

The duo finished the track while King was on Lambert’s Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars Tour, and King pointed out that “country tours are the heaven of all tours.” “Country knows what’s up,” she said. “They’re usually Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then you go to sleep on the bus and you wake up in Nashville on Sunday and you can have half of a week and you can be home, see your family.”

“So I would be on tour with Miranda and then I would go to Nashville and I would write with Martin,” she continued. “We re-wrote the song and I had just been hanging out with Miranda and was like, ‘It’s weird, the song feels finished. It feels finished, but the life of it, it’s missing something.’ So we were like, ‘What if Miranda sang with us?’”