Highlights
- Vin Diesel posted a two-minute cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ just two days after her death.
- Fans flooded the post with praise, though some early comments wondered if the tearful tribute was a joke.
- The tribute followed Parton’s death at 80 from cancer; her nephew confirmed the news in an emotional video statement.
Vin Diesel has never met a torch song he didn’t want to strangle with sincerity.
Two days after Dolly Parton’s death at 80 following a brief battle with cancer, the Fast & Furious star posted a black-and-white photo of the country icon, paired with two full minutes of himself singing “I Will Always Love You.”
Parton first recorded the song in the 1970s; Whitney Houston made it a global anthem after featuring it in 1992’s The Bodyguard.
The caption was just a single prayer hands emoji. Diesel let the vocals do the talking.
And the vocals talk. His voice noticeably wavers right as he reaches the song’s tender farewell line, the kind of moment that either makes you weep or reach for your phone to text a friend.
Fans mostly chose to weep. “Vin, you never cease to amaze me,” one commenter wrote.
Others focused on the performance itself, with one fan calling it “one of the best covers of this song I’ve ever heard.”
A few needed a beat to catch up, wondering aloud in the comments whether the whole thing was secretly a bit.
This isn’t new Diesel behavior. He’s said before that he’s wanted to do a musical his entire life, once floating an actual Fast and Furious musical. Back in 2013, he famously serenaded the internet with a cover of Rihanna‘s “Stay,” a tribute he later said was for his longtime partner.
Parton’s own camp kept things graceful. Her said that her legacy was built on “her wit, warmth and kindness that made us all feel like family.”
Her nephew, Bryan Seaver, who confirmed her death in a video statement, said the announcement itself was “something Dolly asked of me years ago.”
Diesel’s cover will not win a Grammy. Somewhere, though, Dolly is almost certainly cackling, rhinestones and all, thoroughly charmed.
