Beyoncé and her Retrograde version of Dolly Parton's 'Jolene': When the Blame for Infidelity lies with 'The Other one'

Beyoncé has explained that the decision to make a country album, a variety traditionally associated in the United States with rednecks, secessionist flags and white pride (like the state where she is from), was born from an experience related to this sound universe in which she was made to feel that she was not welcome: "That simply pushed me to want to learn, to overcome my limitations and create this work, in which I mix different musical traditions".

Jolene is a song that puts the issue of sorority among women on the table because, in its original version, you can hear Dolly Parton plaintively pleading with another woman to stay away from her partner. Parton herself has explained that the song is based on real events: she wrote the song after Carl Thomas Dean -with whom she has been married since 1964, although there are hardly any images of them together, because they have always zealously protected their privacy- began to frequently visit a bank employee and to pronounce her name in her dreams. Parton has said that it was the woman who had become infatuated with her husband, and not the other way around, but that he let her do it.

As if perfectly aware that her husband's unfaithful drive could only be stopped if the other woman involved lent her 'help', Parton wrote a tender and pathetic song that the Texan diva, Beyoncé, has changed from head to toe, always with the consent of the original author, who continues to sign the song.

Beyoncé also completely changes the narrative of the verses in which Parton originally confesses that she can't stop crying when her husband says "the other one's" name in his sleep and in which she admits to Jolene that she knows that if she wants him her husband will be unfaithful, which is why she begs for his cooperation.

The threatening tone of Beyoncé's version was met with irony by some of her peers. Singer Azealia Banks, known for her brutal honesty, even dared to personally and publicly address Beyoncé in her Instagram stories to tell her, "No one finds your husband attractive anymore. Find other material to generate content." That comment generated a huge stir because Jay Z's constant infidelities have been the subject of rumors in the industry since the beginning of the relationship between the singer and the rapper, when long before Jolene, Rihanna was the woman everyone suspected.

Beyoncé has received harsh criticism for changing the sorrowful meaning of Parton's lyrics. It has not gone down well with Variety's trade journalist, nor with that of the Washington Post. But the fiercest of them all is perhaps that of Stephen Kornhaber in The Atlantic, who wrote: "On first listen I guffawed. But then I was sad: it's not like popular culture needs more songs about women pulling their hair out for a man. Beyoncé has replaced the vulnerability that made Jolene one of the greatest songs of all time with a bunch of 'bully girl' clichés." And the controversy was served: because Beyoncé may have made a lyric full of clichés, but there is no greater cliché than that of accusing a black woman of aggressiveness for expressing herself freely. Doesn't the singer have the right to generate a fiction in which a woman gets angry with another woman? The prestigious cultural journalist Nadira Goffe, in fact, has provided another possible reading: what if Beyoncé was speaking from the point of view of her mother, who, notoriously, was the victim of her husband's infidelities since her daughters were little girls?

In the singer's defense, the song's author and rights holder quickly came out, who of course had to give her approval to the lyrics and expressed her sympathy by saying: "I just heard Beyoncé's Jolene. Wow. She gives that girl trouble and truth be told, she deserves it."