Dolly Parton and Elton John collaborated on a song in 2023. Years before this, though, she wasn’t sure that his career was going in the right direction. Parton said as much in an interview, and quickly regretted it. She asked the interviewer to alter her comments afterwards. 

Dolly Parton felt bad about something she said about Elton John

In 1978, Parton gave an interview to Playboy. Her career was on the rise, and she acknowledged that not everyone was that lucky. She knew that careers in show business could flare out quickly.

“Most people say in this business the life span of a career is five years from the time you really get hot to the time you start getting colder, like an Elton John. Maybe I shouldn’t call names,” she said, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “That’s just what I heard, that you don’t expect to really be the hottest except for maybe five years, and with a TV show, it’s usually a three-to-five-year thing, and then you cool off, people have seen what you do. I think maybe I am right now starting in my first year of from one to five. That’s what I’d like to think.”

Initially, the “an” wasn’t in front of John’s name. Instead, she used him as an example of an artist with a struggling career. As the interview neared its publication date, Parton contacted interviewer Lawrence Grobel and asked if he could slightly alter her words. She didn’t want anyone to think she thought poorly of John.

Years after this, Parton and John teamed up on the song “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”