Dolly Parton changed the lyrics to her hit “Jolene” Tuesday as she received the COVID-19 vaccine: “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine/I’m begging of you, please, don’t hesitate.” The next chorus ended with the words, “Cause once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.”
The country star sang it on camera as her shot was administered by her friend Dr. Naji Abumrad at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Parton joked around during the 4-minute video she shared, and she sent a (rhyming) message to “all of you cowards out there: Don’t be such a chicken squat. Get out there and get your shot.”
The 75-year-old has been a big supporter of a vaccine from the start of the pandemic. In November, Moderna cited her $1 million donation through the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund in a report about their vaccine’s effectiveness. So it made sense that she captioned her video, “Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine.
No special treatment
Parton had said just last month that she was waiting for her dose, because she didn’t want people to think she was receiving special treatment. “I’m not going to get mine until some more people get theirs,” she told the Associated Press. “I don’t want it to look like I’m jumping the line just because I donated money. I’m very funny about that. I’m going to get mine, though, but I’m going to wait.”
Of course, when she did sit down for the shot, she was fancy, wearing a sparkly dress with cutouts, and as Dolly as ever.
She teased Abumrad that he was working too slowly: “Well, it didn’t take this long to film 9 to 5.”
And she initially balked at the idea of wearing a bandage, because it would “mess up my beauty mark.”
Parton was vaccinated on the same day that President Biden said that he expects the U.S. to take delivery of enough vaccine for every adult in the country by the end of May. He also announced that drugmaker Merck will help produce the newly approved vaccine from its competitor, Johnson and Johnson, to make more of it available.
