Watch the Moment Dolly Parton First Heard Beyoncé's Version of "Jolene" — Her Reaction Was Not What Anyone Expected
Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter album arrived in March 2024 and immediately generated the kind of cultural conversation that music generates when it is simultaneously excellent and significant — when the quality of the work and the meaning of the work are both high enough that the response encompasses both at once.
The track called "JOLENE" — capitalized, which is itself a signal — reimagines Dolly's 1973 song from a position of considerably greater power than the original narrator occupies. Where Dolly's Jolene pleads with a woman not to take her husband, Beyoncé's narrator warns.
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