I Will Always Love You: the summer I went to Dollywood

The Whitney version of I Will Always Love You is still the best-selling single by a female artist, having sold over 20 million copies worldwide. And as a cover, it fully rocks. Whitney takes the original and blasts it into the stratosphere. But none of that would have been possible without the songwriting of country sweetheart and global treasure Dolly Parton.

It wasn’t until The Bodyguard mania had begun to die down (at least at my school, I think we watched it on a loop for the whole of year 7) that I realised that I Will Always Love You had been a cover of an old country song.

Fast forward a few months to summer 1993. Our family’s long-planned trip to Orlando had been cancelled the previous year following my stepdad’s cancer diagnosis. When he got the all clear we decided to do the trip — but with bells on. We were going to drive from our friend’s home in Chatham, Ontario all the way to the Magic Kingdom (a cool 1,200ish miles). Taking in every stop on the way.

As soon as we got in that damn car (an Oldsmobile with very hard seats, very sadly for my arse) a weird thing happened. My mum transformed from someone who expressed no interest in music — besides telling me to turn mine down— into a rampant country music fan.

I cannot express how floored I was. She literally donned a cowboy hat, stashed the car with country music cassettes and started belting out Tammy Wynette. And she never gave an explanation, just wordlessly reinvented herself, like Madonna doing a Thelma & Louise-themed concert tour.

We indulged the new Jan. My stepdad got a hat too, and I even took my headphones off long enough to begin to appreciate Glen Campbell. The only fly in the ointment was that my mum was now demanding what appeared to be an enormous detour to go to Dollywood, the Dolly Parton theme park.

Honestly, to my almost-teenage ears, it sounded like the shittest thing on paper. A ropey, dated country music star’s theme park with frontier-style rides. Had mum forgotten we were en route to Universal Studios? Wasn’t this like having steak tartare for dinner but ordering Chicken Mcnuggets for starters? We were skipping Nashville for this??

Full of holiday spirit, we agreed to go. And by that, I mean everyone agreed to go apart from me, but I had to come because I was in the car. In the middle-back seat. Numb-arsed.

I could feel my bottom lip protruding as we drove into the park. But from the moment we arrived, it was genuinely magical.

Unlike Disney, there was a layer of realness underneath the plastic. It was warm and friendly. Every stall you went to, every ride you went on, the people were so kind. And the rides were so good! Their runaway mine train was better than the one at Magic Kingdom, and the queues were infinitely shorter so we got to go on more stuff. And, of course, you couldn’t walk more than a few feet without tripping over some live music. It had charm. In spades.

Dollywood sold me on Dolly. I stopped sneering at her music and started listening to it properly.

I still can’t stand the sentimental songs (Coat of Many Colours, even Dolly’s version of I Will Always Love You pales in comparison to Whitter’s) — they veer too close to corny folk music for me. But Jolene, Butterfly, Apple Jack, Here You Come Again, the hideously overplayed but still genius 9 to 5 and many more found a place in my heart thanks to that special trip. Her songwriting chops were impressive too— she’s written an incredible 3,000 songs. That was a huge inspiration as a kid who was just about to pick up a guitar and start doing it herself.

But that summer didn’t just teach me about the wonder of Dolly. It taught me that life is to be lived, and guilty pleasures must be de-guilted and embraced. With stetson hat and off-key singing (sorry mum). Who cares about embarrassing your family or what anyone else thinks.

Share the love and you never know, you might melt the heart of the music snob squashed in the backseat of your car.

This post is part of the #write52 project. You can find out more about what that is and sign up for the newsletter right here.

I’m Penny Brazier, a freelance writer and creator of content for brands. This is my 26th post for #write52 which means I’m now HALFWAY through the fool’s errand of writing about a different number one single each week. I’m going to celebrate by puking in a bowl (thanks norovirus). Please do follow me on Twitter and Instagram.