The song version sung by a 13-year-old girl of Austria was the return of the song in the limelight which resulted in causing the hearts of millions more to stop beating by its soaring brilliance when only 40 years earlier Dolly Parton made the tough, but smart choice to refuse to sell the rights to her treasured ballad to Elvis Presley.
Dolly Parton wrote the song I Will Always Love You in 1973; years back and issued the song in 1974 as she parted ways with her professional partner Porter Wagoner. The song turned into a country hit and it took a dramatic turn in its career still when Elvis Presley showed interest to record the song. Colonel Tom Parker, the manager of the King, demanded that Elvis would only perform the track in case Parton Honky Tonk Willie willingly give half of the publishing rights.
Parton turned down the gig, despite her own love of Presley, a decision that now can be called an act of brutal artistic purity, which, in hindsight, has served her well in more ways than she could have ever imagined. There is a feeling in my heart which tells me not to do it. So I did not do it”, she remembered in the CMT interview. Years later, Parton made light of the situation by saying that her rendition (Whitney Houston) made her money enough to be able to purchase Graceland.
The latter version arrived in 1992, when Whitney Houston covered that song as a Bodyguard soundtrack release, along with Kevin Costner. The energetic performance was a cultural event to be remembered, selling more than 20 million copies and naming itself as the best selling single of all time by any woman conducting it singly. Thanks to its reach vocal and emotional resonances, Houston made her version of the sweet country farewell an international cry of eternal love and separation. Only one other female artist has ever had a commercial success, as close as Celine Dion, who sold 18 million copies with My Heart Will Go On.
After the death of Houston in 2012, Dolly Parton paid a tribute to her in a touching message during which she stated publicly that she will always be grateful and in awe of that amazing song that Whitney sang so beautifully and employing this phrase from the bottom of her heart she said: Whitney, I will always love you. You will always be missed.’”
In 2013, only a year later, the torch of the song I Will Always Love You was transferred to the hands of Laura Kamhuber, a 13-years old girl of Austrian origin taking part in The Voice Kids Germany. Kamhuber then proceeded to present what judge Tim Bendzko termed jokingly as the forbidden song, which, given the complexity involved with the vocals and the almost divine place Houston original enjoys in the popular culture, was quite an apt description. Kamhuber, however, did justice to the legacy of the song and managed to create a new place in their hearts of a new audience, with a calmed poise and burning control of the voice.
The three judges swivelled their chairs in a rush to mentor the young singer, and everyone could see they were touched by her pure talent and emotional privacy. The speechless Bendzko heaped accolades on her as he noted that she performed in a manner that can only be described as sensational and lamented that the song is regarded as a territory that no one should visit because after all it is unsingable. But Kamhuber, of silhouette almost above her years, was contrary.
She did not manage to succeed in the knockout rounds of the competition, yet her audition did not fade away. The video has since been uploaded on YouTube and currently has more than 226 million views and is thus the most viewed video by an Austrian artist on YouTube. At 24 now and going by the stage name Laura Lun, she has put out three albums with her latest being in 2017: a pop-country-ballad consisting of songs that have given evidence to the diversity and emotional power that has made her such a popular hit in the first place.
I Will Always Love You is a story of love, separation, of risk, tradition, of Parton giving a final farewell, of Houston immortalizing the song, and of a little girl who took a risk with the forbidden song and chose to sing it. The very performance by Laura Kamhuber can be regarded as the testimony to the cross-generational, cross-border, and even cross-expectation power of music, making us realize the very reason why this ballad is still relevant nowadays.