“I will always love you”: the singer Dolly Parton was always “in awe of”
In a lot of ways, Dolly Parton had every right to be bitter about the fact that Whitney Houston swooped in, covered her song, and made it even more famous than the original.
It’s a tale as old as time in the music business – artists not getting anywhere near as much of the recognition as they should for their songwriting masteries, because some other bright star wanted to get a leg up and instead managed to shoot off to the stratosphere with a tune that wasn’t theirs in the first place.
It can sure cause a fair amount of animosity, but Parton frankly doesn’t know the meaning of that word. For a woman who, both in an artistic and personality sense, can only really be compared to sunshine personified, the idea of her seriously warring with another singer is not only unpleasant but also hilariously inaccurate.
In this sense, when Houston came along in 1992 and recorded a ballad version of the country classic for the soundtrack of The Bodyguard, her haul of Grammys and record-breaking 14-week stint at number one, it could have easily got another artist’s hackles up, but not Parton’s. She was more than happy to delight in the success and hail Houston as the pop icon she truly was.
Subsequently, when tragedy sadly struck in 2012, and the singer unexpectedly passed away, the country queen was among the first to pay tribute to her song’s heiress. “Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston,” she said at the time.
“I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‘Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.’”
Dolly Parton
Of course, it spoke volumes about the magnitude of the loss of Houston, but also the true heart of humanity possessed by Parton that she was more than ready to doff her cap when the unfortunate occasion called. Indeed, on a wider scale, being able to put her own heartbreak aside in order to let the song enjoy a new, reimagined life was something quite remarkable in itself.
After all, Parton initially wrote the track back in 1973 as a fond but heartbreaking farewell to her former lover and musical mentor, Porter Wagoner, with whom she was parting ways in a professional capacity, after a seven-year working relationship. That obviously signalled a seismic change in her life, but also a true testament to the power of putting her heart on her sleeve.
It goes without saying that even with this weight of personal emotion behind it, no one could have resisted the bright lights of Hollywood when they came calling almost 20 years later, and you could imagine Parton being more than happy to sign on the dotted line when told that Houston was covering her song for a major blockbuster movie.
But rather than resenting the typhoon of champagne and acclaim that got thrown at the singer in the wake of the reinvented ‘I Will Always Love You’, Parton ultimately knew a good thing when she saw it, and Houston glittered in gold. She not only gave the song a whole new meaning but also completely made it her own, and for that, the country legend could only bow down in reverence.
