On Loop: Beyoncé’s feisty reimagination of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic hit “Jolene.” And whilst everyone was arguing whether it was a good remake or not, there was only one opinion that mattered. And the Queen of Country dropped her verdict: She loved it.
Queen Bey Warns “Jolene”
“Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene / I’m warnin’ you, don’t come for my man (Jolene) / Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene / Don’t take the chance because you think you can,” Queen Bey opens the track. Instead of the original version, where the woman desperately begs the other woman to please not take her man just because she can, her Cowboy Carter version warns the woman not to take her chances just because she thinks she can.
Aside from the intro, she also overhauled a significant chunk of the lyrics to match the change in mood, replacing them with lines like: “You don’t want no heat with me,” “But you don’t want this smoke, so shoot your shot with someone else,” “I know I’m a queen,” and “I’m stilla Creole banjee bitch from Louisianne.”
But the biggest sonic departure would be the addition of a bridge at the end, a male voice promising that he would stand by Jolene and Jolene would stand by him.
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So, what was Dolly Parton’s reaction?
Dolly Parton gave her a short but sweet seal of approval. In her Instagram post, she wrote, “Wow, I just heard Jolene. Beyoncé is giving that girl some trouble, and she deserves it.” Years before the song’s release, Parton had been actively expressing that she wanted the singer to cover “Jolene.” And now, it’s finally here.
Aside from covering her song, Beyoncé also featured Parton twice in her new album: in an interlude titled “Dolly P” and an intro line kicking off her track “Tyrant.”
Despite differing opinions on Beyoncé’s “Jolene” and Cowboy Carter as a whole, it will never take away the fact that both were phenomenal. Catch the reimagined version of the track below.
