Lily Allen shares thoughts on Beyoncé’s “weird” cover of ‘Jolene’
Lily Allen has shared her thoughts on Beyoncé’s cover of Dolly Parton‘s ‘Jolene’.
Despite, Parton hailing Queen Bey’s version of the track, Allen said she found it “weird”.
Speaking on her Miss Me? podcast, she said: “It’s very weird, that you’d cover the most successful songs in that genre. It’s quite an interesting to do, when you’re trying to, like, tackle a genre and you just choose the biggest song in that genre to cover.
“I mean, you do you, Beyoncé – and she literally is doing her, but why is she doing Dolly?”
Allen did though say she had not heard ‘Cowboy Carter’ in its entirety yet.
She added: “I’ve heard a few bits, I listened to the Miley Cyrus one and I listened to the ‘Blackbird’ one, which is the Beatles cover. I have to listen to the whole thing from start to finish, because I haven’t done a deep dive on it yet.”
Fans were in for a shock when the album dropped and Beyoncé had rewritten most of the lyrics to reference husband Jay-Z’s cheating scandal. ‘Jolene’ now refers to someone trying to “come between a family and a happy man”, with Beyoncé singing in the chorus: “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene / I’m warnin’ you, don’t come for my man / Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene / Don’t take the chance because you think you can”.
Earlier this week, the star revealed that she gave Parton the sole songwriting credit for ‘Jolene’ and that Stevie Wonder played harmonica on her cover.
Elsewhere, Paul McCartney commented on Beyoncé’s cover of his song ‘Blackbird’, commending her for using it to “ease racial tension”.
His comments came after it was confirmed that Beyoncé used The Beatles’ original ‘Blackbird’ backing track in her cover of the song.
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Damian Jones
NME
