In a stripped down 2009 performance, Parton recounts<\/a> how Wagoner took the news.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cWhen I started working with Porter, I told him I had come to Nashville to be my own star and to have my own group. But the money was so good that I told [him] I would stay for 5 years. And he agreed to that. Well, 5 years came and\u2026I told him I wanted to go out on my own. He was just having a fit about it. We argued a lot and I thought, he\u2019s never going to listen to me. He\u2019s not hearing a word I\u2019m saying\u2026So, I went home, wrote a song about it, came back the next day and I said, \u2018Porter, just sit down, let me sing you something, then you\u2019ll know how I feel.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In Houston\u2019s version of \u201cI Will Always Love You,\u201d it always felt clear to me that the end Houston was encountering wasn\u2019t one of her own design. I\u2019ve always heard an unspoken \u201cand I really wish I could stop\u201d after Houston finishes her final \u201cand I will always love you.\u201d There\u2019s an anger, and a feeling of being held hostage, that was easier for me to understand than the clear-eyed agency that underscores Parton\u2019s rendition. Until relatively recently, life felt like something being done to me; I\u2019d find myself in places without necessarily knowing how I got there. Every ending felt like a surprise, or like a hidden landmine whose detonation would fundamentally reconfigure everything that came before it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In \u201cI Will Always Love You,\u201d Parton offers a vision for a different kind of ending, one chosen and enacted with love. In the place of anger, there\u2019s an almost clarified grief that ultimately had its intended effect. When Parton sang Wagoner the song, he finally relented. \u201cYou can go,\u201d he told Parton. \u201cProviding I can produce that record.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Despite some early tabloid rumors that Houston\u2019s cover set off a feud between her and Parton, the two always spoke glowingly of each other. Parton credited Houston with cementing her legacy as a songwriter and said that Houston\u2019s cover of her \u201clittle sad country song\u201d was \u201cone of the greatest experiences of my life.\u201d And for good reason: it would take too long to list out the various chart records and accolades deservedly heaped upon Houston\u2019s rendition. And while I\u2019m sure the royalty checks ultimately helped soothe whatever heartache might have lingered decades after Parton and Wagoner went their separate ways, I wonder if the memories they took with each other ever stopped tasting bittersweet. It\u2019s much easier to move on when you hate someone; there\u2019s a real comfort in a definitive breaking point. But still, as I get older, it\u2019s Parton\u2019s version that I find myself returning to, maybe because hers is one that ultimately made way for a new beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was an adult when I encountered Dolly Parton\u2019s \u201cI Will Always Love You\u201d for the first time.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-877606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}