Part 3
Jolene, Beyoncé, and the Mystery of a Good Line
So you heard Beyoncé's version of 'Jolene' and you're wondering: did Dolly actually sign off on that? Did she clutch her pearls? Did she wish Queen Bey had done it 'the real way'? Let me tell you, the answer is a flat-out no. Dolly loved it. She made a cameo on the album, and she was genuinely surprised by how much Beyoncé poured into it. In her words, times have changed, Beyoncé is not your average artist, and writers love it when people interpret their songs their own way. That's not just polite talk. Dolly was proud. She said so. And if you're a songwriter, you get it: once you put a song out there, it belongs to the world. The best covers aren't carbon copies. They're conversations.
Now, if you're like me, you've probably wondered how Dolly writes a song like 'Jolene' in the first place. Does she have a ritual? A special pen? A cabin in the woods? Nope. She'll tell you she has no real process. Songwriting is just a way of life. She'll be doing laundry, spot her guitar, and boom—a song shows up. Everything is a song to her. She pulls ideas from TV, the news, everyday life. She records melodies on her phone or scribbles lines on whatever's handy. Sometimes she sits down and words and music come together in one go. She doesn't always perfect the words right away; she'll fill in the gaps and critique later. That's the thing about Dolly: she's not precious about it. She just does it.
Take '9 to 5.' That iconic line about the cup of ambition? It just rolled out. She thought, 'That has to be something divine out there because I'm too stupid to have thought of that.' She gets excited about good lyrics. She loves that she can write because she can express everything. That's not false modesty—that's a woman who's been doing this since she was a kid and still gets a kick out of a perfect rhyme. And she's not wrong to be excited. Lines like that don't come along every day. They come from somewhere deep, and Dolly knows how to tap into it.
But let's back up. Before the glitz and the global fame, there was a teenage girl with a guitar and a one-way ticket to Nashville. After high school, Dolly moved to Music City to be a star. That meant songwriting, singing, recording. Movies? Not on her radar. She just wanted to be a country music star and have her songs recorded by others. That's it. No Plan B. She'd been writing since she was a kid—love songs, war songs, anything she heard people talking about. Her mama would show her off to visitors: 'Rammy, get your guitar.' And Dolly would sing something she'd written. That's where the belief came from. Not from a fancy coach or a rich uncle—well, her Uncle Bill did help—but from the simple fact that she was doing something nobody else was doing. She was getting attention for it. And in a big family, attention was currency.
She's the first to admit there are people more talented than her. Better writers, even. But nobody loves it more. And that love is the engine. It's why she can call her guitar her friend and her therapist. It's why she can channel other people's feelings as well as her own. That's the mystery of a good line: it's not just words. It's empathy. It's observation. It's a lifetime of paying attention.
So when Beyoncé took 'Jolene' and made it her own, Dolly didn't see a threat. She saw a continuation. A new chapter. And that's the beauty of a great song—it can live a hundred lives. Dolly's gift is her ability to turn life into song, and her willingness to share it with the world. She could have kept it all to herself. Instead, she gave us the cup of ambition, the plea to Jolene, and a thousand other moments. But what happened when she finally did step in front of a movie camera? That's a story for another day.
