{"id":796959,"date":"2026-10-09T11:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T11:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796959\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T11:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T11:36:14","slug":"why-did-country-singer-dolly-parton-recorded-jolene-in-welsh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796959\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did country singer Dolly Parton recorded Jolene in Welsh?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Welsh language collaboration between Dolly Parton, her niece Jada Star and singer-songwriter Bronwen Lewis might not have been on your bingo card for this year.<\/p>\n

But their cover of smash-hit Jolene, with Welsh and English lyrics, has been released on Friday.<\/p>\n

The song, recorded before Parton’s death on 25 August<\/a>, is her second posthumous single.<\/p>\n

A teaser video released last week<\/a> shows how Parton spent some time understanding the phonetics of Lewis’ translation and recorded her parts at her studio in Nashville in early 2025.<\/p>\n

Lewis, a proud Welsh speaker from Neath, started translating some of her favourite tunes in 2024, landed on the Parton classic and recorded a video of herself singing it.<\/p>\n

“I never expected it would go viral and definitely didn’t expect it to attract the attention of Dolly’s family – especially her niece Jada,” Lewis said.<\/p>\n

Star, also a singer-songwriter, came over to Wales from Nashville and bonded instantly with BBC Radio Wales’ Lewis. <\/p>\n

The teaser revealed it was Star’s suggestion to record Jolene in Welsh, and she would get her aunt involved too.<\/p>\n

Star and Lewis said Parton, who has links to Machynlleth in Powys<\/a>, was “proud” to sing in Welsh.<\/p>\n

On the track, Parton recites that “heartbreak sounds the same in every language”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Welsh language collaboration between Dolly Parton, her niece Jada Star and singer-songwriter Bronwen Lewis might not have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}