I Will Always Love You: The Goodbye Dolly Parton Wrote (and Wouldn’t Sell)

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

I Will Always Love You is, at its root, a graceful goodbye. Dolly Parton wrote it in the early 1970s as a farewell to Porter Wagoner, her mentor and longtime professional partner, as she stepped out to build her own career. It’s a song about leaving someone with love rather than anger — choosing tenderness at the exact moment most people choose resentment.

The decision that paid off twice

There’s a now-famous business twist. Elvis Presley wanted to record it — but when Parton learned that doing so would mean signing over half the song’s publishing, she declined, holding onto what she’d written even though saying no to Elvis was almost unthinkable. That decision looked stubborn at the time. It became one of the smartest calls in music history.

The voice that made it a phenomenon

Because two decades later, Whitney Houston recorded it for The Bodyguard (1992), opening with that spine-tingling a cappella line and turning it into one of the best-selling singles ever made. Parton, who’d kept her rights, reportedly earned a fortune from it — a songwriter rewarded, at last, for refusing to give her goodbye away.

What it measures like

On our scale Parton’s original is gentle and intimate — soft, slow and restrained, the kind of song that trusts a single voice to carry it. Full profile on its song page.

I Will Always Love You was written and first recorded by Dolly Parton in the 1970s as a farewell to Porter Wagoner; the Elvis publishing anecdote and Whitney Houston’s record-setting 1992 version are matters of public record. No lyrics are reproduced.