Dolly Parton reduced Stephen Colbert to tears by performing a rendition of “Bury Me Beneath the Willow” in an appearance on his late-night talk show.
The country music singer joked about the fact that Colbert was apparently overwhelmed by her singing.
“Are you crying?” she asked, explaining the lyrics before picking the song back up again.
“I’d better hush before you cry yourself to death and we can’t finish the show,” Parton joked upon seeing Colbert, who appeared to be wiping tears away from his eyes.
“Like a lot of Americans, I’m under a lot of stress right now,” Colbert responded.
Parton was appearing on the show to promote her new memoir, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, as well as her Christmas album, A Holly Dolly Christmas.
She explained that the book contains a number of stories about how she wrote certain songs, and how she was feeling at the time.
She also revealed that she was “really glad” to write her pandemic-themed song, “When Life is Good Again”, due to its uplifting nature.
“I can’t wait for this year to be over, can you?” she asked Colbert.
Colbert asked her to pick her favourite songs from her own canon, leading her to pick “The Coat of Many Colors”, which is about her mother and family, “I Will Always Love You”, and the lesser-known “Down From Dover”.
Parton was recently praised by excited fans for “saving Christmas”, thanks to her album along with a recently announced festive Netflix musical starring Christine Baranski.
Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square will be released on Netflix on 22 November.
