Dolly Parton Covers “Wrecking Ball” With Miley Cyrus

We’re now less than a month away from the release of ROCKSTAR, the wild and guest-star-heavy rock album that Dolly Parton truly insists on releasing. ROCKSTAR includes a whole lot of covers, and we’ve already posted some of them: “We Are The Champions,” “Magic Man” with Ann Wilson, “What’s Up?” with Linda Perry, and “Let It Be” with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Frampton, and Mick Fleetwood. Today, Dolly has dropped another cover that features the song’s original artist.

Dolly Parton has known Miley Cyrus since Miley was a tiny little baby. Dolly is Miley’s godmother in real life, and she also played Miley’s godmother on Hannah Montana. On ROCKSTAR, Dolly and Miley sing a new version of “Wrecking Ball,” the titanic, thundering power ballad that Miley took to #1 in 2013. They’ve sang that song together before. On Miley’s most recent New Year’s Eve special, Dolly and Miley performed a medley of “Wrecking Ball” and Dolly’s “I Will Always Love You,” and it was really nice.

The new version of “Wrecking Ball” has some real canned session-musician moments, but those two voices are hard to deny. In a press release, Dolly says, “When I heard ‘Wrecking Ball’ I almost wept in my car. When it started into the chorus, it hit me like a wrecking ball! I thought, ‘How great can a song be, and how great can Miley Cyrus be?’ I thought, ‘I have to have that song on my rock album, and I have to have Miley sing it with me!’ I love it, and I hope you do!”

Below, check out the new version of “Wrecking Ball” and Miley Cyrus’ video for the original.

And here’s Dolly talking about recording with Miley:

ROCKSTAR is out 11/17 on Butterfly Records.