“Idol” Alum John Foster Tips His Hat To Dolly Parton With Heavenly “Hard Candy Christmas” Cover
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One month after Dolly Parton’s death, John Foster is continuing to honor her through song.
20-year-old Foster rose to fame while competing on American Idol in 2025. He came in second place behind champion Jamal Roberts, while Breanna Nix was the third-place finisher.
Foster is a country music artist who’s known for his emotional songwriting and more traditional-leaning sound. Fans admire his respect for the genre’s classic hits and the artists behind them.
With the chill of autumn finally setting in, Foster’s mind quickly turned to the holiday season. That made him think of Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas,” which she recorded for the 1982 movie The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The song was also included on the 1997 reissue of Parton’s Once Upon a Christmas album with her longtime duet partner and close friend Kenny Rogers.
Although “Hard Candy Christmas” is typically played during the holidays, Parton felt it wasn’t a true Christmas tune. During an with ABC News Radio, she said:
“It’s really just about people having hard times and saying, ‘It’s like a hard candy Christmas,’ like when you’re so poor that all you get for Christmas is a piece of hard candy.“
Regardless, John Foster says that “Hard Candy Christmas” is his all-time favorite Christmas song. He shared his version in a video on Instagram, and it has garnered over 100,000 views in less than 24 hours.
The short clip shows Foster strumming his acoustic guitar as he sings, his voice gliding through the lyrics. Fans loved what they heard, with people commenting that his performance was “beautiful” and “so good.”
You can watch John Foster tip his hat to Dolly Parton with his heavenly cover of “Hard Candy Christmas” in the clip below.
John Foster Shared Two Prior Tributes To Dolly Parton, Including A Cover Of “I Will Always Love You”
This isn’t the first time that John Foster has delivered a tribute to Dolly Parton. The day of her death, he shared a video of himself singing one of her signature songs, “I Will Always Love You.”
“I know that my words could never do her justice,” Foster wrote in the caption. “Instead, she said how I’m feeling when she wrote one of the best songs ever written. We will always love you, Mrs. Dolly. Rest with our Jesus.”
His video moved many of his followers to tears and earned over 830,000 views.
A few days later, Foster added a few new lyrics to his original song, “Tell That Angel I Love Her,” in another tribute to Parton. Foster first wrote the track after his friends Maggie Dunn and Caroline Gill were killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve in 2022.
“The lyrics in this video came to me shortly after Dolly passed,” John explained, “[and] after seeing so many wonderful posts about her from so many grieving people, and I figured that Maggie and Caroline wouldn’t mind me writing another chorus of their song about someone I’m sure they both loved, and now get to have with them.”
He ended his caption by writing, “Lord, tell those 3 angels, and all other loved ones that we’ve lost, that we love them!”
Hear John Foster sing his updated version of “Tell That Angel I Love Her” in honor of Dolly Parton by watching the video below.
