The Surprising Reason Jelly Roll Thought Vodka Was Sweetener Until He Was 13

Jelly Roll recently spoke with Eric Church for a joint interview on stage at the 2025 Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, where the "Save Me" singer got extremely candid about his upbringing and revealed something that we didn't know about him.

Church asked Jelly Roll about his childhood and what it was like.

"We lived in a lower middle class neighborhood. Mother kind of struggled with drug addiction, Daddy drank," Jelly Roll told a totally engaged and focused Church.

"I was probably 13 years old when I found out vodka wasn't a sweetener," he recalled to Church, who laughed out loud at that statement.

Jelly explained, "If you watch vodka getting poured into a Stanley coffee cup your whole life at 5AM, you just assume it's fu--ing Sweet 'N Low. Until you're 13 and you're old enough to want to drink some Sweet 'N Low with your coffee," he added, laughing along with the audience.

As Jelly recalled, that led him to showing up drunk to elementary school one day.

"I'll never forget that conversation," he said with a hearty laugh:

Jelly Roll and Church spoke as part of an event called "The Conversation," which took place on Friday (Feb. 21) as part of the last day of the 2025 Country Radio Seminar in Nashville.