On an album of otherwise excellent songs,"Jolene" gets rid of Dolly Parton's seductive vulnerability., Beyoncé’s eighth studio album.
I like it! It’s fun and genre expansive and production-wise, sonically delectable. The singles she released to tease the album—”a bit longer, let them roll around in my brain like Beyoncé’s warm and warbled Texas drawl, and see how they grow on me. But there’s one song I do feel ready to denounce due to the infinite amount of time I’ve already spent with it. It brings me no joy to do so but…Bey’s spin on Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” misses the mark of what makes that song so potent.
“Hey Miss Honey Bey, it’s Dolly P,” Dolly Parton herself says in the interlude intro to the song, “Jolene’s” iconic fingerpicking ostinato revving up behind her voice. “You know that hussy with the good hair you sing about? /Reminded me of someone I knew back when/Except she has flamin’ locks of auburn hair,” she continues.fame—to back down from stealing her man. And the song has been run through the Girl Bossifier 5000, leaving little to chew on.
she basically croons. It is gorgeously pathetic, the rhythmic motif of the guitar never quite delivering us to a point of satisfaction. While I can appreciate the gesture of a more confident narrator, Beyoncé’s beautiful rendition of the song’s despondent melody is at odds with this revamped message of. The decision to have a chorus come in to finish out the bridge is also such a bizarre choice, dissolving any perceived intimacy in the conversation between the narrator and Jolene.
I’m glad Dolly hopped on to introduce the song. It is no small courtesy for the Queen of Nashville to hand over the reins of her career-defining heartbreak ballad to Queen Bey, effectively silencing country music’s purists. I just wish the power imbalance between the narrator and Jolene and the raw vulnerability of begging this auburn-haired woman remained intact during that transition of power.