Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You ‘feud’ and ‘row that sparked it’

Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton were said to have locked horns over I Will Always Love You when The Bodyguard was released in 1992

When Dolly Parton released I Will Always Love You in 1974, it scored a respectable number one in the country charts.

But when Whitney Houston covered it for 1992 blockbuster movie The Bodyguard almost two decades later, it took over the world, spending a massive 10 weeks as the UK’s number one record.

And according to reports at the time, the track sparked a bitter feud between the Whitney and Dolly after the latter allegedly reneged on a promise not to perform it while Whitney’s version was still in the charts.

Furthermore, it was claimed the women argued over who the song – and its success – truly belonged to.

Whitney Houston scored a global hit with a cover of Dolly’s track in 1992

Dolly apparently promised not to perform I Will Always Love You while Whitney’s version was in the charts

“There was a tabloid story saying that Whitney and I were in a big feud, she said it was her song and I said it was mine,” Dolly told CNN in 2003.

However, Dolly insisted there was no bad blood, arguing that she was just thankful for all the royalties it made her.

“I was so flattered, so honored and so lucky that she did it, because the song didn’t sound like that when I had it,” she said.

The pair went on to become friends and Dolly was devastated when Whitney suffered a heart attack and drowned in a hotel bathtub in 2012 after years of cocaine abuse.

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And hearing the song playing at Whitney’s televised funeral was almost too much for Dolly to bear.

Dolly wrote the track for her mentor after going solo in 1973 (
Image:
Getty)
“[It] just shattered me to hear that song played under those conditions,” she told ABC’s Nightline.

“I thought my heart was gonna stop. It just pierced me like a knife. I can’t explain that feeling, to think that that was so final for her, and that that was my words and my feeing – I would forever be so connected to her.”

Back in 1992, Dolly had no idea her track had been chosen for the film, and almost crashed her car when she heard Whitney singing it on the radio.

“They started out with it a cappella, and I thought, ‘That sounds familiar.… And it didn’t hit me,” Dolly told CMT in 2011.

“It was just one of those things where [you think], ‘What is that?’ And then all the sudden, when she started singing ‘I will always love you,’ I just about wrecked the car.”

Whitney’s co-star Kevin Costner was the one who originally plumped for the song after their first choice, What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted, was used in Fried Green Tomatoes.

“They were just in a panic at the last minute. And so they asked me about the song. I sent it. I didn’t hear anything more,” Dolly recalled.

Kevin Costner was the one who plumped for the song
The 9 to 5 singer originally wrote the track in 1973 for her mentor, Porter Wagoner, after quitting as the assistant on his show to go solo.

He thought she was making a mistake, so she penned the song over night and sang it to him the next morning, reducing him to tears.

“It’s common knowledge we loved and hated each other,” she told Times Free Press. “I was with Porter seven years and promised to stay for five. He was a hard-nosed businessman. I had my own dreams. I stood up for myself. We fought quite a bit.

Whitney’s cover made Dolly millions
“When we first broke up, it was hard for him and me. I wrote the song ‘I Will Always Love You’ for him because he wouldn’t listen to what I was trying to say.”

For Whitney’s part, she always refused to take credit for the hit, insisting that it was Dolly’s writing that made it what it was.

She told Rolling Stone in 1993: “I think Dolly Parton is a hell of a writer and a hell of a singer. I was so concerned when I sang her song how she’d feel about it, in terms of the arrangement, my licks, my flavor. When she said she was floored, that meant so much to me.”