Dolly Parton says her good friends and God stopped her from being like Whitney Houston.
The country musician believes the singer - who died of accidental drowning due to the effects of heart disease and cocaine use last month - failed to “make sure she was surrounded by the right people, and the right things’’, and the country star is grateful to her “close friends’’ for not ending up in a similar situation.

She said: “I’ve always had good and close friends, and a spiritual faith. God will take the wrong people and things out, and teach me to have the right people and the right things”.

“Some people don’t have that, and that’s where it can go wrong.’’
Whitney covered the 66-year-old music legend’s original 1974 composition ‘I Will Always Love You’ for the soundtrack of the her 1992 movie ‘The Bodyguard’, and the country singer is grateful for the singer for making the song “popular worldwide’’.

She explained: “I thank God every day for that song - and Whitney made it popular worldwide. It’s a very simple song, really, as simple as anything I’ve ever written.’’

Dolly enjoyed writing the score for her forthcoming musical ‘9 to 5’ - which is based on the 1980 film ‘Nine To Five’, which she starred in - for both male and female singers as she feels able to relate to both sexes because she has always been able to ‘’think like a man’’.

She added to the Daily Mail newspaper: “I often said I look like a woman, but I can think like a man, meaning I never felt I had to take a back seat to anybody and I always knew how to hold my own. That’s why I enjoyed writing the score from the male and female perspectives.’’