The meaning is obvious, but how she came to write the song is very interesting. She was playing a gig and saw a beautiful little girl, about nine, fitting the Jolene physical description and the girl later told her that she'd never seen her father. There's this theory that a lot of women who steal people's boyfriends tend to not have had a father figure in their lives and so Dolly wrote this song with her in mind.
The meaning is obvious, but how she came to write the song is very interesting. She was playing a gig and saw a beautiful little girl, about nine, fitting the Jolene physical description and the girl later told her that she'd never seen her father. There's this theory that a lot of women who steal people's boyfriends tend to not have had a father figure in their lives and so Dolly wrote this song with her in mind.