Dolly Parton And For King & Country Win Award For “God Only Knows” At 2020 Grammys

Jan 27, 2020

This year’s Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance / Song went to the Australian Christian music duo, For King & Country, and County legend, Dolly Parton. 

At the beginning of 2019, Joel and Luke Smallbone, from For King & Country, met up with Josh Kerr, Jordan Reynolds, and Tedd Tjornhorn to write a new song. Together, they created the track “God Only Knows” that reaches out to anyone going through a hard time. 

Soon after “God Only Knows” came out, For King & Country released renditions of the tune featuring other well-known artists such as Timbaland or Echosmith. At the end of 2019, they got country legend, Dolly Parton, onboard. The three produced a new version of the song with Dolly Parton singing some of the song’s most meaningful lines.

The new version soon climbed the charts, being loved by Country fans as well as people in the Christian music genre. But that was only the beginning not the end of their song’s success.

This Sunday, January 26, 2020, the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held in Los Angeles and For King & Country and Dolly Parton were deservedly honored with the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance / Song for their version of “God Only Knows."

That night Dolly Parton was unable to attend the ceremony, but Joel and Luke Smallbone still got up on stage to express their gratitude in an acceptance speech: 

“When we stepped in to write this song, we were all walking through really hard moments. As many of you writers know, when that happens you tend to put something on paper so you can reach out to people who are going through the same circumstances,” Joel Smallbone revealed

He then went on to praise Dolly Parton:

“To dear Dolly Parton, who is an incredible human being, it’s one of the great moments of our career to collaborate with her and her team. I talked to her manager’s sons in Sunday school, they were kind enough to reach out to her and play her the song. But she said something on a call, she said, ‘I love this song because it’s reaching to the marginalized, to the depressed, to the suicidal, which is all of us at some point.”

What do you think about For King & Country and Dolly Parton’s version of “God Only Knows”? Let us know in the comments and be sure to pass this article along to others.