Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Janelle Arthur from American Idol Season 12.

It is, after all, a duet with country legend Dolly Parton.

And that means it’s also a full-circle moment for Janelle, the fifth-place finisher on American Idol Season 12.

Janelle landed her very first singing job at age 8, playing a young Dolly Parton in “Paradise Road,” a show at Dollywood about Parton’s humble beginnings.

In fact, Janelle posted an Instagram photo from the show of Dolly hugging her on stage earlier this week.

“I’m so thankful for her heart and her belief in me/this song,” Janelle writes.

“Hand Me Downs” is a song Janelle wrote with Emily Lynch about being proud of the things inherited from family, whether it be an heirloom, a physical characteristic or a personality trait.

“We had no intention of really doing anything with the song when we wrote it,” Arthur told KnoxNews.com. “We were just writing something from the heart.”

A few months later, Janelle decided Dolly needed to hear the song and reached out to a friend who might be able to make that happen.

Dolly wound up doing much more than listening to the song. The duet was recorded in 2019. A planned release last year was pushed back because of the pandemic. With normalcy slowly returning, Janelle decided now would be a good time for a release she’d kept largely secret.

“It’s almost like I’ve been given another life-changing opportunity, yet again from Dolly, and it’s just crazy because it’s so many years later,” Janelle, 31, told the site.

Oh, and you’ll hear a heartbeat on the song, the heartbeat of Janelle’s mom, Judy.

“What more could I ask for than to have my musical hero and my greatest hero on the same song?!” Janelle wrote on Instagram.

Here’s “Hand Me Downs.”