Oprah Winfrey’s foray into the music world, albeit brief, continues to be a source of amusement and self-reflection.
The iconic media mogul was recently reminded of her self-penned theme song, “Run On,” during an appearance on the “Baby, This Is Keke Palmer” podcast.
When Keke Palmer began to sing the tune, Winfrey playfully responded, “Girl, please. OK. That is one of the mistakes of my career.”
Winfrey explained that the song stemmed from a pivotal moment when she was contemplating the future of her legendary talk show. “I was trying to decide, ‘Am I going to end the show or not?’ Then I had a little talk with Jesus, and Jesus said, ‘You gotta keep going.’ So I thought, ‘There’s this song. It’s an old spiritual.’”
Reflecting on her musical venture, she added humorously, “And then we realized, I can’t sing, even though I took the singing lessons.”
The Emmy winner confessed that even adding a church choir for backup vocals couldn’t hide the fact that her rendition of the traditional spiritual song wasn’t good.
“It was bad. You know it was bad,” she concluded.
The daytime TV star sang her own theme song briefly in the late ‘90s, and her show aired nationally between 1986 and 2011.
This isn’t the first time someone has brought up Winfrey’s short-lived singing career.
Late singer Whitney Houston playfully sang a snippet of the gospel-style theme song while appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1998 and 1999.
After 25 seasons of her iconic talk show, Winfrey eventually walked away from the series in 2011.
Although she has continued to build her media empire, she has never returned to music.