“Country Hunk.” — How Dolly Parton Turned Her Crush On Billy Ray Cyrus’s Mullet Into A Sassy 1993 Hit About Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places.
In the early 1990s, country music was in the middle of a cultural mood swing. Line dancing was everywhere, mullets were having a moment, and Billy Ray Cyrus had become an unlikely global heartthrob thanks to “Achy Breaky Heart.” While much of Nashville scrambled to keep up with the trend, Dolly Parton did what she has always done best: she flipped the script.
Rather than dismiss the phenomenon as a passing fad, Dolly saw opportunity—specifically, an opportunity to have fun. The result was “Romeo,” a playful, high-energy single released in 1993 that turned the male heartthrob into the object of desire and made female gaze the punchline. It was cheeky, self-aware, and unmistakably Dolly.
At its core, “Romeo” is a song about looking for love in all the wrong places. The narrator is instantly undone by a man who walks into the room and commands attention without saying a word. Dolly made the reference crystal clear, winking directly at Cyrus’s breakout hit with the lyric about a “hillbilly with an aching heart.” It wasn’t subtle—and that was the point.
What made the moment truly iconic was that Dolly didn’t just write the song with Billy Ray Cyrus in mind. She personally called him and asked him to star in the music video as the titular “Romeo.” Instead of the usual country video dynamic—where women orbit a male star—Dolly engineered a rare role reversal. Cyrus became the eye candy.
She didn’t stop there. Dolly assembled a dream lineup of female country powerhouses—Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tanya Tucker, Kathy Mattea, and Pam Tillis—turning the video into a playful chorus of women openly admiring, teasing, and yes, objectifying the male lead. Shot in stark black-and-white, the video leaned fully into its theatricality, making the joke impossible to miss.
At a time when country music was still deeply traditional in its gender dynamics, “Romeo” felt quietly radical. It allowed women to be loud, flirtatious, and in control, all while wrapping the message in humor instead of confrontation. That balance is classic Dolly—sharp without being bitter, progressive without losing warmth.
The song also proved that Parton’s Slow Dancing with the Moon era was anything but sleepy. “Romeo” reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot Country chart, earned a Grammy nomination, and even carried a philanthropic angle, with Dolly donating her proceeds to Hurricane Andrew relief efforts.
Perhaps the most Dolly twist of all is the irony behind it. Despite writing a song celebrating a “country hunk,” she has always insisted that the only Romeo in her real life is her husband, Carl Dean. The flirtation was never personal—it was performance, humor, and mentorship rolled into one.
By turning Billy Ray Cyrus’s mullet-era fame into a knowing joke, Dolly Parton didn’t just stay relevant in 1993. She reminded Nashville—once again—that she wasn’t following trends. She was setting the rules.
"""My husband brought his mistress to our daughter’s wedding—and then asked me to give her my seat beside him.
"""My husband brought his mistress to our daughter’s wedding—and then asked me to give her my seat beside him. For a few seconds, I honestly thought I was looking at the wrong table, because my name card had vanished and Melissa’s was sitting exactly where mine had been on every seating chart. She wore a pale blue silk dress, lifted her champagne as if she belonged there, and avoided my eyes when I stopped beside the chair. David stood up, pointed to an empty seat at the next table, and quietly said, “For tonight, why don’t you sit over there?”
I had spent fourteen months helping our daughter, Emily, plan that wedding, from dress fittings and florist meetings to late-night calls over napkins and seating charts. That morning, while I fastened the pearl buttons on her gown, she made me promise I would enjoy the day and not let anything between her father and me touch it. I meant that promise, because whatever was left of my marriage, I would not make my daughter’s wedding the battlefield where it died. But David had apparently made a different plan, and he expected me to cooperate with it in silence.
When I asked what Melissa was doing there, David’s face showed guilt for only a second before he hid it behind irritation. He acted as though I were creating the problem simply by noticing that his mistress was seated at the family table in the place reserved for the bride’s mother. Then Melissa looked at me and said, “Honey, today really isn’t the day to make Emily uncomfortable.” I almost laughed, because the woman who had been sleeping with my husband for nearly a year was now warning me not to embarrass my own daughter.
I could feel people settling into nearby seats, laughing and talking, unaware that my marriage was being quietly rearranged in front of them. David kept his voice low and told me we should not “do this here,” as if the humiliation belonged to me because I refused to disappear politely. I looked at the empty chair he had chosen for me between a cousin and someone from the groom’s side, and I realized something colder than anger. This was not spontaneous; he had thought about where Melissa would sit, and he had assumed I would move.
For twenty-eight years, I had been the woman who adjusted, explained, forgave, and made excuses when David forgot anniversaries, missed dinners, or put work ahead of family. When he became distant, I learned to expect less instead of asking for more, and somewhere along the way he mistook that patience for permission. Even now, part of me considered taking the other chair, smiling for photographs, swallowing the humiliation, and telling myself it was all for Emily. I actually reached for the chair because protecting my daughter still mattered more to me than winning a public fight.
Then I heard one word behind me: “Mom?” Emily was walking toward us in her wedding dress, still glowing from the ceremony, and at first she looked confused rather than angry. Her eyes moved from me, to the empty chair, to Melissa, then back to the family table where she had personally placed me months ago. David quickly stepped in and announced that he had “rearranged a few things,” as if changing the bride’s seating chart without permission were no more serious than moving a centerpiece.
Emily asked why I was not sitting in my seat, and David casually pointed to the neighboring table and said I would be sitting “right there.” Her smile disappeared, and her eyes dropped to the place card in front of Melissa. I watched my daughter’s expression go completely still as she picked up that card and turned it over in her hand. In that instant, I understood the worst part: Emily had not approved this, and David had brought his mistress into our daughter’s wedding believing he could force everyone to accept what he wanted once it was already done.
What Emily did not know was that six months earlier, I had discovered David’s affair through a message that appeared on his phone while he was in the shower. Melissa had written, “I hate pretending I don’t miss you when she’s around,” followed by another message asking whether Friday was still theirs. When I confronted him, David spent eleven minutes calling me paranoid, insecure, dramatic, suspicious, and unfair before I repeated Melissa’s words exactly. The silence that followed ended our marriage long before either of us ever said the word divorce.
We had kept the details quiet because Emily was planning her wedding, and I refused to turn her happiest season into a crisis about us. David told me he was “confused,” that what he had with Melissa was “more complicated than an affair,” and that he needed time before making decisions. I agreed only that Emily’s wedding came first, so we slept in separate rooms, spoke carefully, and tried to appear functional while our marriage quietly collapsed. I believed David understood that one day required restraint, but he had apparently used that silence to prepare something else.
Three weeks before the wedding, he had casually asked whether Emily had finalized the family table and whether every seat had been assigned. At the time, I thought it was harmless conversation, but standing there with Melissa’s card in my daughter’s hand, I finally understood why he had asked. He had been checking whether there would be room, and when there was not, he simply removed me. Emily looked up at her father and asked, very quietly, “Where is Mom’s place card?”—and for the first time that night, David had no easy answer.
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