Four decades after Dolly Parton denied Elvis Presley the rights to “I Will Always Love You,” a 13-year-old Austrian girl took the ballad and made it all hers.
The “forbidden” song – introduced by Whitney Houston to a new generation in 1992 – was flawlessly performed by Laura Kamhuber on The Voice Kids, blind auditions.
And she left the judges temporarily speechless.
Keep reading to learn more about the young girl’s audition that has 226 million views on YouTube!
In 1974, Elvis Presley made a play for Dolly Parton’s hit song “I Will Always Love You,” that she released the same year.
If Parton agreed to the terms, it meant she’d have to give up half the publishing royalties to the country song that she wrote when ending her professional relationship with long-time partner Porter Wagoner.
And though Presley was her hero, she couldn’t bring herself to sign.
“Something in my heart says, ‘Don’t do that.’ And I just didn’t do it,” she said in an interview with CMT. “But I always wondered what it would sound like. I know he’d kill it…He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn’t. Then when Whitney [Houston’s version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland.”
Topping the charts in 1992
In 1992, Whitney Houston recorded a pop ballad of the same song for the film The Bodyguard, where she starred opposite Kevin Costner. The song was a global success and with over 20 million copies sold, the ballad became the best-selling single of all time by a female soloist.
