Dionne Warwick has revealed that she and Dolly Parton have a new collaborative gospel song on the way titled ‘Peace Like a River’.
Tamron Hall shared the news during an episode of her talk show this week that featured Warwick as a special guest. “[Parton] sent me a song that she wanted me to record, and I said, ‘Okay, that sounds like a deal,’” Warwick said when asked how the forthcoming collaboration came about.
“She’s such a sweetheart, I know her. And she sent me another song, the one that we’re going to be doing as a duet. It’s a gospel song called ‘Peace Like a River’. She wrote it, and I am very excited about this. I really am. I’ve done so many duets over the years, but this one’s going to be very special.”
While Warwick and Parton have not previously collaborated, there is a familial link. As Hall points out during the discussion, Parton wrote ‘I Will Always Love You’ – famously covered by Warwick’s first cousin, the late Whitney Houston, for the 1992 film The Bodyguard. “It’s pre-ordained,” Warwick told Hall. “God’s got a purpose.”
Warwick has collaborated with multiple other artists in recent years. In 2021, she teamed up with Chance the Rapper for a duet titled ‘Nothing’s Impossible’. The same year, she also expressed a desire to work with Taylor Swift.
On New Year’s Day, a documentary about Warwick’s life and career, Don’t Make Me Over, had its television debut on CNN. During the documentary, Snoop Dogg made an appearance in which he recounts being “out-gangstered” by Warwick early in his career, as she tried to address misogyny in the 1990s hip-hop scene.
“She was checking me at a time when I thought we couldn’t be checked,” Snoop explained. Later in the film, he said: “Dionne, I hope I became the jewel that you saw when I was the little, dirty rock that was in your house. I hope I’m making you proud.”
Parton, meanwhile, recently performed with goddaughter Miley Cyrus at the latter’s 2022 New Year’s Eve party, with the pair mashing up ‘I Will Always Love You’ and Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’.