Alexandra Kay is celebrating Dolly Parton’s 76th Birthday with an epic medley of Parton’s biggest hits.
On Wednesday evening (Jan. 19), the fast rising country star shared a video paying tribute to country icon and thanking her for being a huge inspiration through her heart and music.
“Happy birthday to the QUEEN HERSELF Ms Dolly Parton 
” Kay captioned the clip. “Thank you for inspiring me in so many ways through your heart and your music! I can’t wait to meet you some day! 
“
The just over 2-minute video begins with Kay wishing Parton a Happy Birthday, while sitting beside her friend and tour mate, Thomas Mac, backstage at Uptown Theater in Kansas City, MO on the third leg of their headlining In Real Life Tour.
As Mac strummed the acoustic guitar, Kay is seen performing an epic mashup of Dolly Parton hits, including “Coat Of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” “Islands In The Stream,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “When I Get Where I’m Going,” a duet with Parton and Brad Paisley. The only song missing from her medley was the fan-favorite hit, “Jolene.”
“Happy Birthday,” Kay said, concluding the clip with a smile.
Watch the epic mashup by Kay below.
Did You Know That Kay’s Cover Of Parton’s “Jolene” Went Viral And Earned Her New Heights Of Success?
With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Kay skyrocketed into country music with her viral cover of Parton’s iconic hit, “Jolene,” which has gone on to amass tens of millions of views and changed her life.
“The ‘Jolene’ story is kind of crazy how it came about,” Kay told CMT during their Viral To Verified series, which you can watch below.. “I was sitting at my house Googling some songs, trying to figure out what I was going to do this week and typed in Alexandra Kay and one of the first searches to come up was ‘Alexandra Kay singing Jolene’ and I had never sung that song before.”
Kay added, “So, I went to my guitar player and I said ‘hey, people are Googling this, and they’re searching for it like crazy on YouTube, probably means we should do this song. So we did a lot of takes… We did it and I remember being frustrating thinking I didn’t think it was the best that I could do.”
“I was sitting at my computer about clock in [for work], uploaded it from work. Didn’t get off work from bartending until like 2 o’clock in the morning, and it had like 900,000 views on it, and I was like ‘what?’” Kay continued, before she said, “So I started freaking out, and it was at, I believe 2 million views, by the time I woke up and people started to share it like crazy. By the time that I started doing press about it, which was a week after it came out, at that time it was at 15 million views.”
The viral cover ended up putting Kay on the maps and earned Kay her first radio tour as well as opening slots on shows with some of her country music heroes. Shortly after going viral with her “Jolene” cover, Kay was cast into a Netflix Original Series called Westside and lived in Los Angeles, California before returning to Nashville to pursue her country music dreams.
Kay is currently on the road alongside her friends and viral sensations Cooper Alan and Thomas Mac. Kay, Alan and Mac are on the third leg of their highly-successful In Real Life tour.
Additionally, Kay will join Tim McGraw on the road later this year in the Spring on his McGraw Tour 2022.
The trek will visit 17 cities around the United States and will kick off on Friday, April 29 in Rogers, Arkansas, the amphitheater tour will make stops in cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia and Raleigh, North Carolina before wrapping up on Saturday, June 4 in Mansfield, Massachusetts.
For a full list of Kay’s tour dates, click HERE.
