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Writer's pictureThomas Bennedetto

October 15th

Today in 1973, the single "Jolene" by Dolly Parton was unleashed upon the world. Now this song has a funny story behind it. When Dolly was recently married to her husband she's now been with for over 50 years, there was a woman at their local bank who was a little flirty with her husband. It then became an inside joke between them that he would eventually run away with the bank clerk. Clearly he didn't as they are together to this day, but she got a great song out of it.


The song is also kinda known for being oozing in gay subtext. The song's lyrics consist of the singer poetically telling a woman how beyond beautiful she is, and how she's afraid of losing her husband to her. It's not even made clear if Jolene wants the singer's husband or not, just that the singer finds her awfully pretty and her husband is talking about her in his sleep. You can imagine why people ran with this. Parton herself deeply appreciates the attention from her LGBTQ+ fans regarding the song, and has reacteated positively to a number of covers that play up the song's queer subtext. 

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Tori Corvelli
Tori Corvelli
Oct 20, 2022

JOLENE, JOLENE, JOLENE, JO-LEEEEENE — Dolly Parton is such a wonderful human being. I have a little funny tidbit of my own: my friend’s mom’s name is Jolene, and she actually hates the Jolene song because people would keep singing it to her.

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Tori Corvelli
Tori Corvelli
Oct 20, 2022
Replying to

Awww poor Pearl 😂

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