When Dolly Parton DEFENDED Michael Jackson and REFUSED to Turn on Him – dw

and a really sweet, sweet soul. Always thought Michael had the heart of an angel. That’s not a headline talking. That’s Dolly Parton and she meant every word of it. There was a time when just saying Michael’s name got you headlines, lawsuits, or an argument. Celebrities were against him. The whole world doubted him.

But whenever someone asked Dolly Parton about him in almost any interview across almost any decade, you got something else entirely. Warmth every time. Not once did her tone shift toward doubt or distance. I still always know that they were both very spiritual and very, you know, tender-hearted, very good people. Little Michael was just like a little angel to me.

So, what exactly did she see in him that so much of the outside world seemed to miss completely? To understand that, you have to go all the way back to 1977, decades before either of them carried the weight they’d later carry. That year, Dolly and Michael found themselves booked on the very same bill at the Royal Variety performance in the UK.

Dolly was already a country superstar by then, filling arenas and topping charts on her own. Now, I noticed at the your concert in Sydney, which I went to, um, yeah, there were plenty of men, lots of men, but lots of women. Hopefully, they do. I hope I’ve been an inspiration. Michael was only 18, still performing alongside his brothers, years away from the global phenomenon he’d later become.

That night they both performed for Queen Elizabeth II in the same room on the same stage. Country royalty, a future king of pop and the actual royalty all under one roof for one evening. It produced a rare photograph of the two of them together. One of the only images that exists from that meeting. They didn’t leave that night as close friends.

There was no ongoing correspondence. No dramatic bond formed overnight. But something about that shared stage stayed with Dolly. She kept his name close for the next four decades. Their paths kept crossing indirectly after that, mostly through people they both trusted deeply inside the music business. Kenny Rogers was close to both of them.

And Lionel Richie and I were good friends and Michael Jackson and I were good friends. And Kenny was close enough to Dolly because he said that a song once changed the moment she walked into the room. Well, as only Dolly can do, she marched in the room and once she came in, the song was never the same.

I mean, it was really that different when she sang with me than when I sang it by myself. Kenny told a story that says more than most interviews ever could. According to him, Michael once came to visit him, expecting the whole thing to last maybe 15 minutes. Well, Michael, I said, you know, you’ll be in and out in 15 minutes. He stayed eight hours.

He came over and he brought Bubbles, this chimpanzeee with him and we sat and talked. And I think when you get it’s like Elvis, when you get to that status, you don’t have a lot of people you can just talk to. 15 minutes turned into eight hours. Michael even brought Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee, along with him that day.

Kenny didn’t just tell the story for laughs. He explained exactly why that visit meant so much to Michael. Every public appearance came with cameras, demands, and people wanting something from him before he’d even said hello. Kenny even photographed him wearing a hat that day, testing how the shadows might cover an upcoming surgery. He couldn’t go anywhere.

He couldn’t be a person. And and and we talked I shot the first pictures of him with a hat because I think he was going to have some surgery done and he wanted to see if the shadows would cover it. and they’re beautiful pictures, some no one’s ever seen before. Dolly, meanwhile, kept working through the years that followed, touring, writing, and constantly fielding questions about the biggest names in music.

Eventually, one interviewer asked her something heavier than the usual small talk about hit songs and old friends, whether losing icons like Michael Jackson and later Whitney Houston made her think differently about the true cost of fame. And then when she when she died, when she passed away and along with your friend Michael Jackson, um, did it make you think of what a tough business this is about the price of fame? She didn’t dodge the question.

She answered it the same way she answered almost everything plainly and honestly. Then came the phrase that would end up following her for years. Quoted long after that interview first aired. Yes, you always think of that. And I did know Michael. I did not know uh Whitney that well.

I I’d seen her a time or two different places, but we we were not close. I did not know her. Okay. But my two styles of music. Yes. But they I I still always know that they were both very spiritual and very, you know, tender-hearted, very good people. Little Michael was just like a little angel to me. Not the king of pop, not a headline, just little Michael the way you talk about someone from back home.

That interview came years after his death, which makes the warmth in it even harder to dismiss. There was no publicist in the room pushing her toward a sound bite, just a direct question and a direct answer. But her very first public reaction happened much earlier, the actual week the world lost him. Dolly recorded a video message for her fans that week.

Well, hello everybody. As you know, Michael Jackson passed away suddenly a few days ago, and with that, we lost a true music legend, and this is a sad time for music lovers everywhere. I knew Michael and he really was a true musical genius and a fantastic performer and a really sweet sweet soul.

She didn’t mention scandal. She didn’t touch any of the controversy that had followed his name for years by then. She talked instead about the person she remembered using the same word she’d repeat again years later unprompted. Always thought Michael had the heart of an angel and I’m sure that he’s rejoicing with him now.

Of course, we’ll all miss him, but I know that he’ll live on through his music. And this should remind us all to treat every day as our last and let people in our lives really know how special they are to us. She called him Angel twice in two completely separate interviews, years apart, like she never stopped thinking about him.

She didn’t stop there, either. She turned his death into a quiet lesson for everyone still listening at home. That wasn’t a publicist’s carefully worded statement. That was a woman genuinely shaken using grief to say something true. Now, here’s where the story usually gets messy the moment you search it online.

Type Dolly and Michael together into any search bar, and you’ll find wild dramatic claims scattered everywhere. Stories about tense standoffs, refused handshakes, secret backstage arguments between the two of them that supposedly nobody else witnessed. None of that exists anywhere in Dolly’s actual recorded words, not in a single verified interview.

Her real documented remarks never once matched that kind of manufactured drama. Not in 2009, not in 2013, not ever. But there was one person who connected Dolly Parton and Michael Jackson in a much more personal way. Sandy Gallon. Sandy Gallon was Dolly’s longtime manager, but he also managed Michael Jackson. for those listeners that Sandy is a friend of ours, but he was my manager, one of my best friends for for the last 30, 40 years.

Yeah, we had a you know, common ground. So, I would have my friends or, you know, whoever would come to visit me, but we also had a lot of mutual friends. In a 2023 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Dolly was asked about Whitney Houston and whether she had known Whitney personally. She explained that she had not known Whitney particularly well. But Michael was different.

Dolly said Michael would come to Sandy Gallon’s house where Gallon would host dinners with celebrities and friends. And when Michael was there, Dolly said that Michael and I would sit and just talk. That’s a very different kind of connection from the one most people would expect. No concert, no cameras, just a couple of famous people sitting at a dinner and talking.

Dolly also said she knew Michael better than she knew Whitney. And there is another interesting piece of this story. Sandy Gallon himself later talked about Michael Jackson during a conversation with Andy Cohen. Gallon remembered the extraordinary amount of attention Michael required and shared stories from the years when he was managing him.

One story involved a meeting about a possible Neverland related project. Michael had just finished performing and a large group of people was waiting to meet with him. But when Michael finally arrived, he wasn’t exactly walking into the meeting like a normal businessman. He had two children sitting on his lap. It’s a strange little glimpse into Michael’s world, but it also tells us something about the people around him, and Gallon was one of those people.

He was close to Michael professionally, and he was close to Dolly personally. Dolly’s comments about Michael weren’t confined to one famous tribute after his death. They appear in different conversations at different points in time. Then there’s one final detail that makes the Sandy Gallon connection even more complicated.

A 1996 Vanity Fair profile of Gallon included comments from Dolly about Michael during the period when he was facing allegations of abuse. Dolly explained that although she and Sandy were extremely close, Sandy kept his other clients affairs private, even from Dolly. So Dolly wasn’t claiming to know everything about Michael’s life, she was describing the Michaels she personally knew.

And that’s exactly why her later comments are so interesting. Because when she was asked about him years after his death, she didn’t suddenly rewrite their relationship into something it wasn’t. She described what she actually remembered, and she remembered him fondly. So, here’s the real question worth sitting with after all of this.

Who do you think really destroyed Michael Jackson’s reputation? The media, the accusers, or the industry? Drop your answer in the comments. See you in the next one.