Last year, Bebe Rexha told ABC Audio that if she could remake any song — in the same way she reworked “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 for “I’m Good” — she’d choose Dolly Parton‘s classic “Jolene.” Well, her new album doesn’t include a version of that song, but it does include a duet with Dolly.
As People reports, Bebe found out that one of the producers she was working with on her new album was also working with Dolly. Bebe recalls, “I have this beautiful song (‘Seasons’) that I really love. I was like, ‘Oh my God, Dolly Parton would be so iconic on this.’ The producer was like, ‘Why don’t we just send it?"”
“I was like, ‘Most likely, she’s probably not going to even hear this,"” Bebe told People. “But she heard it and sent me a verse that she put together a week later, and it’s coming out! So, that’s epic.”
And speaking to Metro UK, Bebe expanded on the song and Dolly’s part.
“I cried the first time I heard it,” she says. According to Bebe, the song is “about the seasons changing and also wanting to change for the better, after getting stuck in bad habits.” She says Dolly’s verse was “so beautiful, talking about looking at herself in the mirror and still feeling like a child, nobody warning you that, when you grow older, you’re born and you die alone.”
Bebe continued, “It’s a cool perspective because you’re getting it from her, where she is in her life versus where I’m at in mine … no matter what age you are, you’re searching.”
Best of all, Bebe says she actually got to meet Dolly in person.
“It was everything I expected: kind and beautiful, inside and out,” she says of the music icon.
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