Is "Jolene" Fan Fiction?
On Beyoncé’s reinterpretation of "Jolene" and cover songs as fan fiction
It’s been a week since the release of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, and already the discourse has been discoursing. Cowboy Carter, a 27-track opus years in the making, offers listeners, fans, and even casual observers a metaphorical American mood ring. Each listener can try it on, and identify their own mood, and seemingly the nation’s, based on the colors they see.
Beyoncé’s album offers rich layers of meaning. From the opening “American Requiem,” she calls on listeners to see in her and the album a need for a reckoning in country music as a genre, and in our nation as well. “Can you hear me / or do you fear me?” is an incredibly powerful opening to DJs and other country music influencers who have kept the airwaves white despite the diversity of artists in the genre. Likely inspired by the lack of welcome she received when she performed “Daddy Lessons” with the Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Awards, the album imagines programming on Beyoncé’s own KNTRY Radio Texas. Producing the content she’d want to see in the world, if not in country music, the album features a collaboration with Black women artists on the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” hazy DJ interludes featuring Willie Nelson, and interludes with Linda Martell, the first Black woman to perform at the Opry. “Genres are a funny little thing, aren’t they?” Martell asks at the start of “Spaghetti,” offering what may be one of several theses for the album. As Beyoncé reminded fans, this is not intended as a country album, but a Beyoncé album, so it teeters between country and many other genres that all define Beyoncé’s sound.
What has really made me think is not only Beyoncé’s choice to cover “Jolene,” the Dolly Parton classic, but the varied responses to her choice since the album’s release. Notably, Beyoncé changes the lyrics of Dolly’s song, and adds a bridge that includes the response of the man the speaker of the song is trying to keep. You can read a comparison of the lyrics here.
In Dolly’s original verse, she focuses on the beauty of this other woman.
Your beauty is beyond compare With flaming locks of auburn hair With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green Your smile is like a breath of spring Your voice is soft like summer rain And I cannot compete with you, Jolene
The song itself was allegedly inspired by a woman her husband (the elusive Carl Dean) kept seeing during visits to the local bank. Leave it to Dolly to turn this story into a literal bank, as she earns an estimated $8 million a year from “Jolene” and “9 to 5.” That she wrote “Jolene” the same day as “I Will Always Love You” is not the point of this essay, but I have to note it. (Don’t get me going on Dolly’s talents because we’d be here forever! Her guitar playing on “Jolene” alone is proof of her insane and criminally underrated musicianship.)
“Jolene” is one of the most covered songs of all time, and you can find plenty of playlists grouping some of the better-known versions, from Pentatonix (not my journey) to The Little Willies (love), to her own goddaughter Miley (a great cover). You can read a countdown featuring other covers here.
Dolly has indicated over the years that she’d love for Beyoncé to put her spin on the song, and even introduces it on the album.
Hey Miss Honeybee, it's Dolly P You know that hussy with the good hair you sing about? Reminded me of someone I knew back when Except she has flamin' locks of auburn hair Bless her heart Just a hair of a different color but it hurts just the same
When Dolly hits you with “Bless her heart,” Jolene should know she’s already in danger. I also love Dolly namechecking “Becky with the good hair” and am now imagining Dolly sitting quietly in her home chapel listening to “Sorry.” Did this happen? Where does Dolly listen to music? I need to know!
After the album dropped, Dolly posted on Instagram to give the cover her official seal of approval:
So why are people mad? And why do people continue to care so much about this song enough to cover it?
Some are noting Beyoncé’s reinterpretation of the lyrics and the addition of a bridge as removing the vulnerability of Dolly’s original lyrics.
Here’s Dolly’s chorus:
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene Please don’t take him just because you can
And Beyoncé’s:
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene I’m warnin’ you, woman, find you your own man Jolene, I know I’m a queen, Jolene I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisiane (Don’t try me)
Beyoncé also adds a bridge:
Me and my man crossed those valleys Highs and lows and everything between Good deeds roll in like tumblin' weeds I sleep good, happy 'Cause you can’t dig up our planted seeds I know my man's gon' stand by me, breathin' in my gentle breeze I crossed those valleys Highs and lows and everything between Good deeds roll in like tumblin' weeds Good and happy 'Cause you can't dig up them planted seeds Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene I'ma stand by her, she gon' stand by me, Jolene
In this bridge, Beyoncé leans even harder into staying with her man, and has this imaginary man sing that he’s going to stand by her too. Is this lyric healing for the ghost of Dusty Springfield? Asking for me.
It reminds me of the cover of one of my fave zines that I have on my office wall:
The cover of this feminist zine is itself a provocation by rewriting the lyrics to Dusty’s Stand By Your Man to be more empowering (while mystifyingly matching the lyric to Dolly who did not make this song famous, but I won’t question it). Some were mad Beyoncé leaned into staying with a man with a wandering eye, or didn’t turn her ire on this man (but in fairness, she made an entire album about this already and perhaps has not read this zine).
Now, some of the criticisms of her cover can be boiled down to the racism that all people of color have been subjected to when trying to break into country music. Beyoncé’s album and its number one single are no small feat, and make her fusion of country elements with hip-hop, trap, and soul really fun to listen to on this album. Other critics simply don’t want Dolly’s songs changed.
Besides these more basic complaints, I’ve been interested in the people who basically are upset that it’s not what they would have done. Specifically, queer people like myself are sad that Beyoncé’s changes make the song more hetero and less queer. Half the joy of Jolene is how much Dolly stans this other woman in a way that makes you question if this man is even worth it, and whether Dolly might be better off joining a local softball team. I am not alone in seeing the queer reading of the song, as many a comedian or person who is extremely online has pointed this out.
Meanwhile, Azaelia Banks, noted internet chaos agent, let loose on the album with a bevy of complaints, calling the work “boring” and comparing Jay-Z to “Daddy Warbucks.” For her, the effort required to maintain her marriage is not worthy of celebration. That struggle, however, notes Slate’s Nadira Goffe, is exactly what she values in the cover. “This rendition, to me, screams about the labor of Black love, which has to defy plenty of odds to subsist without falling apart,” she writes. “ Black women don’t have time to beg—or, rather, historically, begging has gotten us nowhere. Instead, we have learned that we must defend what we’ve worked so hard to create—even, potentially, our own delusions about our relationships.”
Doing a cover is a thankless task (unless you’re Kelly Clarkson, who does not miss). It’s really hard to put your own spin on a well-loved song. Even harder when your fan base will channel the Warren Commission in assigning meaning to the smallest choices to map your creative work onto your personal life. Some people want to mine Beyoncé’s music for signs of her daddy issues, marriage, etc., and are frustrated with the ways Jolene feels tired after Lemonade and its focus on battling to survive infidelity. That misses the ways artists can make choices in their work all the time that have no direct parallel to their real lives.
Because of the microscope of fame, our biggest artists have increasingly moved away from intimacy or any kind of real personal disclosure. Dolly is a great example of this, and it's been decades since she offered the kind of intimacy of her Playboy interview of the 70s (hard to find but an essential read). Beyoncé also doesn’t do profiles or revealing exposes, a lesson that Taylor Swift appears to be taking too. Anne Hathaway’s recent profile in Vanity Fair is a great example of someone being willing to talk about the difficulties of navigating this. She describes being told early in her career to have a public and private self, and basically found that impossible to maintain with any kind of authenticity.
Beyoncé covered “Jolene” in part because it serves her purpose of acknowledging the history she’s entering while honoring one of its pioneers. More than that, however, she may have chosen this song because it was a fun opportunity for her to bring new life to a well-worn script.
Covers of well-loved songs let singers play pretend and act out new roles. They can even offer a kind of generative fan fiction for fans. The internet is full of fans sharing what songs inspired real fan fics. “Jolene” is a perfect and prominent example. Yes, Beyoncé changed some lyrics, but she’s not the first! Country group Chapel Hart sang “You Can Have Him Jolene!” and Cam wrote a song from Jolene’s perspective called “Diane.” One fan even sang right to Dolly in an imagined response from Jolene, singing “I promise, darlin, I don’t want your man.” Even Reba’s iconic “Does he love you?” duet with Linda Davis feels like Jolene fan fic. (I love the version she did with Dolly).
So much of fan fic is about rewriting the story the way we wish it was. Giving a minor character main-character energy or a romance with a character we think is a better match, for example. I once read a retelling of Pride & Prejudice that killed Mr. Collins off with a bee attack (truly inspiring about the bounds of what is possible in fan fiction).
This is a medium that invites fans to write themselves into the story. That’s part of its power, especially for folx in marginalized groups who don’t feel represented in things like Jane Austen or country music. I think if we think of Beyoncé’s “Jolene” as fan fiction we can imagine its power for this reason, for the more dynamic version of this well-known story. However, the relationship between fan fiction and inclusion cuts both ways. For some fans, I think the cover felt disappointing because her reimagining inadvertently wrote them out of the story. Sometimes when we don’t like the plot, it’s because we want to see ourselves in it.
I get that impulse. After all, my favorite versions of “Jolene” are the ones that feel gay. I want a queer reading of “Jolene” because I want to see myself in Dolly’s world. I want to remake the world with more space for people like me in it. That’s why Brooke Eden performing “She’s in Love with the Girl,” a queer reimagining of Trisha Yearwood’s classic “She’s in Love with the Boy” felt so joyful (for real joy, see Trisha performing it with Brooke Eden at the Opry).
But greater inclusion and more inclusive storytelling is what Beyoncé wants too, and what she’s calling for on this album. In the final track, “Amen,” she imagines monuments of our national life ruined by the national lie of slavery. (Slavery is a lie in that it contradicts our promised national freedoms.)
This house was built with blood and bone And it crumbled, yes, it crumbled The statues they made were beautiful But they were lies of stone, they werе lies of stone
Beyoncé imagines the rotten core of these monuments but offers the hope of renewal. For me, that’s the best part of her “Jolene.” Even if I prefer the original, I love the gesture of Beyoncé remaking Dolly’s song in her own voice. It’s a new kind of fan fic, or monument, that remakes an old story with her in it. Even if it’s not exactly Beyoncé’s plot, it’s her voice, and that makes all the difference.
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