Shania Twain Says Dolly Parton Taught Her to Live 'Unapologetically'

Shania Twain will forever remember the late Dolly Parton's influence.

"She is the ultimate example of being true to oneself in every way," Twain, 61, exclusively told Us while promoting her collaboration with Candy Crush's new music season. "She never abandoned her vision of things and her perspective on things and always fulfilled them all unapologetically and so courageously. I always admired that so much in her and it's empowered me a lot in my own life and in my career but also in my personal life."

News broke on August 25 that Parton died after a "brief" battle with an undisclosed form of cancer. She was 80.

"Dolly's going to be very missed because we can never get enough of Dolly, and we didn't get enough of Dolly," Twain said. "She's a big loss and she's on my mind."

Twain, who reimagined her hit song "You're Still the One" for Candy Crush with DJ Zedd, reflected on others wanting to put their own spin on Parton's songs through the years.

"‘Jolene' has been rerecorded so many times now in so many different ways, and in the end, she is still this magical songwriter who inspires others to reimagine and to redo their own take on her music," Twain said. "It's only a flattering thing."

Twain's collaboration with Zedd gave her iconic track a fresh flair, celebrating 30 years of "You're Still the One." The pair created a new sound and music video for Candy Crush in honor of the app's new Music Season, with the track keeping the heart of the original intact while handing it a new pulse, turning it into a dance song built for right now - without losing what made it timeless in the first place.

"Well, Candy Crush chose the song, and I thought it was a very exciting concept because, first of all, Zedd's style of arranging and producing is a whole other world from the song's vocals and the style. So it's kind of this beautiful contrast," she told Us. "When [these two styles] come together, it's this explosion of a candy-coated country world. So it's just a really fun take on a classic song, and I feel like it's been refreshed with Zedd's animated sound that works really well with the animation and the spirit of this treasure hunt … and excitement of all the colors. It's just a lot of fun. It's taken this beautiful love song into a whole different world of love, I guess you could say. It's really great. It's exciting, and it's another platform for one of my classics. I'm excited about it."

She continued, "I think it's just a whole new, wonderful energy to the song, and it just gives a second life to something that we already know and has been in our lives for so many years now. It's like hitting the refresh button on something. It's fabulous."

Not only has she been busy with Candy Crush, but Twain also released her seventh studio album, Little Miss Twain, in July. The record features collaborations with country music legend TanyaTucker, as well as Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and duo The War and Treaty, whom Twain shared she feels inspired by.

"There's so much room for inspiration, and being around younger artists and meeting them and performing with them gives me a lot of hope about where we're going with music and creativity, because they're just so full of new ideas, and that's where inspiration comes from," she told Us. "Being around people that are doing things you may never have thought of [or] doing things in a different way you may never have considered, like Zedd's doing. … That's certainly a genre that I wouldn't have imagined for ‘You're Still the One,' so this is what young people do. They come up with all kinds of really fun things that continue to inspire me, so it's really great new juice and I like being around it. It's a joy."

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This story was originally published September 13, 2026 at 6:00 AM.