Oprah Winfrey looks back on ‘one of the mistakes of my career’: ‘It was pretty bad’

Raechal ShewfeltFri, July 24, 2026 at 2:51 AM UTC

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Oprah Winfrey in JuneCredit: Astrida Valigorsky/GettyKey Points -

Oprah Winfrey acknowledged making a mistake in her career on Keke Palmer’s podcast.

The former daytime TV star’s show aired nationally between 1986 to 2011.

Winfrey, 72, left her talk show 15 years ago.

KeKe Palmer couldn’t help but bring up Oprah Winfrey’s short stint as a singer when the former talk show host was a guest on her podcast.

At one point during their conversation on Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, the I Love Boosters star began crooning, “I think I’m gonna run on,” which Winfrey quickly shut down.

“Girl, please,” Winfrey, 72, said of what she recognized as one of the theme songs of Oprah. “That is one of the mistakes of my career.”

Palmer protested, but Winfrey has had a long time to think about it. The daytime TV star sang her own theme song briefly in the late ‘90s, and her show aired nationally between 1986 and 2011.

“It is a mistake,” Winfrey reiterated. “So what happened was — what had happened was — I was trying to decide, am I gonna end the show or not end the show? And then I had a little talk with Jesus, and Jesus said, you gotta keep going. And so I said, you know, there’s this song. It’s an old spiritual.’”

And then she sang the line implanted in the minds of ’90s kids everywhere who routinely watched the show after school.

To which Palmer said, “You got to give them a little slave hymn sometimes.”

Winfrey blamed herself for why the song didn’t work on her popular series.

“And then we realized, I can’t sing,” she said, “even though I took the singing lessons.”

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‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ in 1998Credit: George Burns/Harpo Productions/Everett

Palmer tried to argue that “it wasn’t bad,” but Winfrey was adamant.

“You know it was bad,” the Oscar-nominated star of The Color Purple said. “You’re just saying that cause you’re looking at me. It was pretty bad.”

The show had attempted to create a church choir type of vibe.

When Palmer noted that such an approach sometimes works, Winfrey replied that it “didn’t work this time.”

Still, no one can argue that Winfrey’s attempt wasn’t memorable.

It even provided a classic moment on her show in 1999 when guest Whitney Houston, who died in 2012, famously sang the first line on Winfrey’s show, as they talked music.

Winfrey eventually walked away from her series in 2011, after 25 seasons.

Watch their full conversation above.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”