Introduction
Dolly Parton’s cover of “Wrecking Ball,” featuring the original artist and her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus, is a standout track from Parton’s 2023 rock album, Rockstar. While the song was originally a defining 2013 pop ballad for Cyrus, Parton’s rendition reinterprets the track with a powerful, rock-infused grandeur that highlights its raw emotional core.
The song details the painful breakdown of a passionate but ultimately destructive relationship. The narrator enters the relationship with intensity—”I came in like a wrecking ball”—with the intention of breaking down her lover’s emotional walls. Instead, she finds herself being the one who is destroyed: “All you ever did was wreck me.” The lyrics convey a vivid sense of chaos, self-destruction, and the devastating consequences of unbalanced love, where vulnerability is mistaken for weakness.
Parton chose to cover the song because, as she explained, its powerful chorus “hit me like a wrecking ball,” drawing an emotional parallel to the first time she heard “I Will Always Love You.” The duet with Cyrus elevates this emotional weight, beginning as a stripped-back piano ballad before exploding into a dynamic rock arrangement complete with electric guitars. The collaboration is a symbolic passing of the torch and a perfect union of their vocal styles, adding a mature, seasoned depth to the song’s themes of heartache and vulnerability. The cover transforms the pop hit into a soaring, epic power ballad that resonates with the raw, timeless emotion characteristic of both artists.