Wilco Singer Jeff Tweedy Says Dolly Parton Shouldn't Have Written 'I Will Always Love You'

Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" is considered to be one of the greatest songs ever recorded. However, if you ask Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy, he'll tell you that he thinks she shouldn't have written it at all. During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — promoting his memoir, World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music — Tweedy spoke (maybe a little too) candidly about his feelings towards the iconic track.

"The book would've sounded really silly if I didn't take ownership of some things that aren't for me," The Wilco frontman explained, "and one of them is 'I Will Always Love You.'" After a resounding gasp from the audience, Colbert quipped, "You hate Dolly Parton. That's what you just said. You said Dolly Parton has no talent is what you said Jeff Tweedy."

Tweedy then clarified, "No, I love Dolly. All I know is that she wrote 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You' in the same day and I think she should've stopped after 'Jolene.'" The Grammy-winning artist went on to note that he knows his take is "wrong," especially considering that Whitney Houston's rendition of the track — which won two Grammy's in 1994 — from the Bodyguard movie soundtrack currently holds the record as the all-time best-selling single by a female music artist.

Further clarifying why he has issues with "I Will Always Love You," Tweedy noted that he is not a fan of how Parton holds out the "I" in the song's chorus. "It's obviously me, because I think that people have a natural kind of inclination to reject things that they can't do," he confessed. "And I can't hold a note for very long, so that song is dead to me."

Notably, Parton is not the only fellow music artist that Tweedy takes some jabs at in his book. "Bon Jovi gets a couple punches in there too," he admitted to Colbert. "You got some balls, man," Colbert replied jokingly. Tweedy laughed and said, "I know. This has been a disaster."