The Wilco musician opened up about his distaste for “I Will Always Love You” during an interview on Tuesday’s episode ofThe Late Showand admitted his opinion places him in the minority of the 77-year-old country icon’s fans.
Jeff Tweedy; Dolly Parton.Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage, Jason Kempin/Getty
Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage, Jason Kempin/Getty
“The book would’ve sounded really silly if I didn’t take ownership of some things that aren’t for me, and one of them is ‘I Will Always Love You,'” said Tweedy, 56, to gasps in response from the talk show’s live studio audience.
“You hate Dolly Parton,” joked Colbert, 59.
“No, I love Dolly Parton,” clarified Tweedy. “All I know is that she wrote ‘Jolene’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ in the same day, and I think she should’ve stopped after ‘Jolene.'”
“I know it’s me, and I know I’m wrong,” explained the Grammy winner, noting that the elongated “I” in the song’s chorus bothers him.
Tweedy then hinted toward jealousy as the reason for his distaste toward “I Will Always Love You,” which earned Houston two Grammy Awards for record of the year and best pop vocal performance, female, in 1994 and has sold over 10 million units in the United States to date.
“It’s obviously me, because I think that people have a natural kind of inclination to reject things that they can’t do,” admitted the alternative musician. “And I can’t hold a note for very long, so that song is dead to me.”
Elsewhere in Tweedy’s new book, as Colbert mentioned during the interview, he names more generally beloved songs that he’s not a fan of, including Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and the Allman Brothers Band’s “Ramblin’ Man.”
Dolly Parton; Whitney Houston.Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage, Charley Gallay/AMA2009/Getty
Colbert remarked that Tweedy must be brave to admit his opinions on the songs, to which the performer replied, “I know. This has been a disaster.”
Parton opened up about writing “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” back-to-back during a conversation broadcast on the platformClubhousein 2022, addressing the rumor that she wrote both in the same day.
“Well I don’t really know if they were written in the same night,” she said at the time. “When we found an old tape, they were on the same cassette. That could have been a few days apart.”
Parton continued, “But they also wound up on [1974’sJolene] album. They were certainly written within a very short span of time.”
source: people.com
