Sabrina Carpenter Opened Up About Her ‘Weird’ Connection With Dolly Parton
Sabrina Carpenter recently collaborated with Dolly Parton on her song “Please, Please, Please.” Carpenter described Parton as one of her heroes and expressed her excitement to work with her. Carpenter believes she and Parton have a connection through the way they look.
Sabrina Carpenter thinks she’ll look like Dolly Parton in the future
Parton and Carpenter collaborated on a remix of “Please, Please, Please” on the deluxe version of her 2024 album Short n’ Sweet. Parton’s appearance on the song makes sense, as producer Jack Antonoff thinks Carpenter sounds like her on the original recording.
“There’s like an Olivia Newton [John] feeling, there’s a Dolly feeling, there’s an incredibly super modern pop feeling,” Antonoff told Rolling Stone. “The little vocal runs she does are so bizarre and unique — they’re doing this really odd, classic, almost yodel-y country thing. She’s becoming one of the biggest young pop stars, and that song is such a statement of — expressing yourself, not just lyrically, but sonically.”
Parton and Carpenter filmed a music video for their version of the song. When they met, Carpenter felt that she was looking at a future version of herself.
“It felt like I was looking in a weird mirror into the future,” she told Rolling Stone.
Parton agreed. She thinks she and Carpenter look and sound as though they’re related.
“Our voices are very similar,” Parton said “I can’t tell sometimes which part’s her and which part’s me. And we look like relatives. She looks like she could be my little sister. We’re little women, doing big things.”
Dolly Parton had some rules for Sabrina Carpenter before they worked on the song
When Carpenter approached Parton about doing the song, she agreed. She had some stipulations, though.
“Of course, she can talk a little bad now and then,” she told Knox News, adding, “I told her, I said, now, I don’t cuss. I don’t make fun of Jesus. I don’t talk bad about God, and I don’t say dirty words, on camera, but known to if I get mad enough.”
The original version includes the line, “I beg you don’t embarrass me motherf***er.” In the updated version, she replaces “motherf***er” with “like the others.”
She had the same stipulations for ‘Saturday Night Live’ in the past
Years before Parton worked with Carpenter on this song, she hosted Saturday Night Live. In her opening monologue, she poked fun at her appearance. She had no problems telling jokes at her own expense, but she did not want to curse or say anything about her faith.
“I loved Dolly Parton,” castmember Jan Hooks said in Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. “She came in and said, ‘Look, okay, here’s the deal. I won’t use any cuss words and I won’t make fun of Jesus. Those were her two demands. And anything else was carte blanche.”
