Dolly Parton knows Kid Rock can be, uh, polarizing but she decided to release “Either Or,” her duet with the Bud Light-blasting personality anyway. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Country Music (and Rock & Roll) Hall of Fame member said she could accept Kid Rock for who he is. The recording will feature on her upcoming Rockstar album.
“Of course I did that before the controversy that he had, but somebody was talking to me the other day, ‘How could you do this [song] with Kid?’” she said. “I said, ‘Hey, just because I love you don’t mean I don’t love Kid Rock. Just because I love Kid Rock don’t mean I don’t love you.’ I don’t condemn or criticize. I just accept and love.” (Note: It’s unclear which controversy Parton was referring to when she said she recorded it “before the controversy,” since Billboard has a timeline of Rock gaffes that goes back to 2004.)
Parton continued that even after a controversy, she still would have recorded a song with Kid Rock. “I’d have probably still done it, because he is a gifted guy, and that song was about a bad boy; it was about a boy that was cheating and mistreating her,” she said. “But like I say, I love everybody. I don’t criticize, nor I don’t condone nor condemn. I just accept them. But anyhow, just because I love you don’t mean I don’t love Kid Rock in that God way.”
Speaking of God, Parton invoked her faith in the interview as the reason why she doesn’t like cancel culture. “I think that’s terrible,” she said of cancel culture. “We all make mistakes. We don’t all get caught at it. But also when somebody makes a mistake, it depends on who they are. That’s what God is there for.
“Now I happen to believe in God; I’m a faith-based person, so therefore I am able to see it like that,” she said. “A lot of people don’t, but even still, everybody deserves a second chance. You deserve to be innocent until you’re proven guilty. Even when you’re proven guilty, if God can forgive you, so can I. If God can forgive you, we all should forgive one another.”
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Later in the interview, she also expertly dodged a question about the divisive nature of Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” and Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” “I’m just proud that country music is that popular,” she said. “Everybody has a right to sing it, if they feel it, and if they love it.”
The interview also contains less incendiary back-and-forths about why she has turned down Super Bowl halftime shows, how she got the surviving Beatles together on a song on the album, and her plans to bring her life story to Broadway next year. She’ll be launching her Rockstar album, which comes out Nov. 17, with special “first listen” events in movie theaters two days beforehand.
