When Beyoncé released Cowboy Carter back in March, country music icon Dolly Parton — who is featured on the album — was one of the first celebrities to praise it publicly.
Dolly appears twice on Cowboy Carter — once on the song “TYRANT,” and once in the interlude “DOLLY P,” which comes just before Beyoncé’s version of Dolly’s iconic 1973 song “Jolene.”
Dolly says in the interlude, “Hey, Miss Honey Bey. It’s Dolly P. You know that hussy with the good hair you sang about? Reminded me of someone I knew back when. Except she has flaming locks of auburn hair. Bless her heart. Just a hair of a different color, but it hurts just the same.” Dolly is referencing “Becky with the good hair,” a figure Beyoncé referenced throughout her 2016 album Lemonade, which charted how she navigated her husband Jay Z’s infidelity.
In Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene,” she switches up some of Dolly’s classic lyrics. Instead of begging “Jolene” not to “take” her man, Beyoncé warns her not to “come for” him, singing: “Takes more than beauty and seductive stares / To come between a family and a happy man / Jolene, I’m a woman too / Thе games you play are nothing new / So you don’t want no heat with me, Jolene.”
At the time of its release, Dolly wrote on Instagram: “Wow, I just heard ‘Jolene.’ Beyoncé is giving that girl some trouble, and she deserves it! Love, Dolly P.”
But sadly, Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene” was also met with heaps of criticism from longtime country music fans — much of which several internet users deemed was rooted in racism.
Even though Beyoncé is a Houston-born artist who has released country music before, many people felt strongly she shouldn’t be making country music. In fact, Beyoncé’s previous experience of not being “welcomed” in the country space led her to create Cowboy Carter — an album she describes as not a country album but a “Beyoncé album.”
Some country music fans vowed to stop listening to Dolly altogether because of her praise for Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene.” Some of the comments under Dolly’s post read, “Okay this is getting ridiculous your country music Beyoncé is not a country music if you're going to continue with her then I'm done with listening to your music,” and, “Beyonce needs to STOP and go back to her own music style...country music fans don't want her!”
Another comment read, “She does BUT your original version has class, intelligence and subtlety. The beauty lies in the relationship between the 'I' and Jolene. In B’s version, that relationship is gone. It’s aggression.”
Meanwhile, other fans pointed out that Beyoncé switching up the lyrics in “Jolene” was in line with her brand, which centers on “strong women” and empowerment.
“Beyoncé’s entire brand is about strong women. Think people and get out of your feelings. It’s a new version of the song. They are both phenomenal in my opinion,” one person wrote.
Fast forward to now, and Dolly has shared her love for Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene.”
Dolly began by revealing that she actually had no idea Beyoncé was going to be putting her own twist on “Jolene.”
“When they said she was gonna do ‘Jolene,’ I expected it to be my regular one, but it wasn't. But I love what she did to it,” Dolly told E! News, adding that it was “very bold” of Beyoncé to make the song her own.
“As a songwriter, you love the fact that people do your songs no matter how they do them,” she said.
Dolly went on to praise Beyoncé for refusing to “beg some other woman” like she did, before joking that she may rewrite the classic hit in Beyoncé’s “style.”
“She wasn’t gonna go beg some other woman like I did,” Dolly said with a laugh.
Dolly added, “I was very proud of her album. I thought she did a great job in country music, and I thought it was great. And I was just happy she did ‘Jolene.’”
“I, of course, would’ve loved to have heard how she would’ve done it in its original way, but… you know, it’s Beyoncé. Her life is different than mine,” she added.