Dolly Parton‘s chart-topping grudge against her titular temptress “Jolene” has been well known since she first put it to a melody and released it in 1973, and now, with a cameo on Beyoncé’s new album Cowboy Carter, she’s directed some of her scorn at another “other woman” on Bey’s behalf.
Cowboy Carter, released Friday, is comprised of 29 tracks, including several spoken interludes from country legends like Willie Nelson, and features Bey’s cover of Parton’s “Jolene,” introduced by Parton herself. In her intro to Beyoncé’s version, Parton invokes the track “Sorry” off of the Grammy Award-winner’s 2016 scorned woman epic surprise album, Lemonade, which doomed “Becky with the good hair” to a lifetime of looking over her shoulder with the song’s final line.
“Hey miss Honey B, it’s Dolly P.,” Parton says in the intro to the cover. “You know that hussy with the good hair you sang about? Reminding 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.”
Becky, it’s about time you meet Jolene. Start a support group or something. Timeshare a bodyguard, maybe.
Immediately after Parton’s intro, Bey launches into her cover, tweaking a few lines, such as, “Jolene, I know I’m a queen / Jolene, I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisianne (Don’t try me).” If Jolene let her guard down anytime in the last half-century, it’s going right back up after this.
Amid fevered speculation about what Cowboy Carter would bring the Beyhive, Parton seemingly accidentally revealed—then immediately tried to hedge—the existence of the cover.
In an early March interview with Knox News, Parton called Beyoncé “a beautiful girl and a great singer” and confirmed that the two have been in touch, then realized that maybe she’d said a little too much.
“Well, I think she has!” she said. “I think she’s recorded ‘Jolene,’ and I think it’s probably gonna be on her country album, which I’m very excited about that.”
She added that “We’ve kind of sent messages back and forth through the years. And she and her mother were like fans, and I was always touched that they were fans, and I always thought she was great.”
And, as we know, 78-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Parton doesn’t text. Parton faxes, which means that Beyoncé also must fax. So that’s two gifts we’ve been given: Parton’s singular delivery of “hussy,” and the joy of imagining what Beyoncé’s fax machine looks like. What a time to be alive.
Kase Wickman
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