Who among us hasn’t taken a few minutes to belt an overly sincere version of “I Will Always Love You” in the privacy of our own homes in the 72 hours since Dolly Parton’s death?
Based on his latest Instagram post, Vin Diesel has. Unlike most of us, Vin Diesel, a world-famous celebrity with hundreds of millions of social media followers, decided to make his Parton rendition public.
The results are almost moving in their self-seriousness: At one point, Diesel’s falsetto cracks when he sings the word “please” in the line “goodbye, please don’t cry.” Diesel, an occasional hobbyist musician, seems to have spent some time actually recording whatever this is. By the time he gets to the second chorus, his vocals are seemingly double-tracked. Whether these are real musicians or an AI-prompted arrangement, he has a sparse full band backing him as he takes on Parton’s immortal 1973 hit. The caption? A prayer-hands emoji.
The clip has barely caused a blip in his social media: It has significantly less engagement than recent posts of a car revving its engine or a blurry photo of Diesel holding a black dog while standing near water. But on a week when everyone’s timelines have been filled with sentimental Parton tributes, Diesel’s post — perhaps the most sentimental of them all — has been something of a moment that’s divided the internet and provided lots of comic relief. (One recent headline put it kindly: “Vin Diesel Leaves Dolly Parton Fans Speechless With Musical Tribute to Late Country Icon”).
Those encountering Diesel’s Parton cover this week with no context may not know that there’s a rich history of Diesel singing dead-serious torch songs. In 2013, Diesel broke a much more innocent version of the internet with an out-of-focus video singing Rihanna’s “Stay” that seemed so earnest it felt like performance art (Diesel later clarified he sang the song as a tribute to his longtime partner).
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Not two years later, a staggeringly bizarre (and yes, moving) video of Diesel singing karaoke to Tove Lo’s “Habits (Stay High)” emerged, with Diesel singing the early aughts pop hit in his turtle-adjacent baritone while wearing a white tank top. The performance was assumed to be a tribute to Diesel’s late co-star, Paul Walker, after he posted the video with the caption “the ever continuing process of healing.” Diesel dabbling in music used to be so much of a thing that Vice once published a list of his “best musical moments” while Mic ran a story called “The Strangely Beautiful History of Vin Diesel’s Singing.”
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Diesel leveled up his music career in 2020, when, months into the pandemic, he debuted his solo career in earnest with a pair of dance-pop singles released on Kygo’s record label. One highlight of this period (among many): Diesel launched his solo career on the Kelly Clarkson Show, where the remote studio audience danced by themselves, on screens from their own homes, to the music.
It’s unclear if Diesel had any connection to Parton apart from being a fan, like the rest of us. But perhaps the only other thing that can bring the internet together like remembering Dolly Parton is Vin Diesel trying to do music.
