Photo: Dolly Parton | By Hannah Kirby, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Toldja!!! Next thing you know, they’ll be banning Guns N’ Roses’s song “Civil War” ‘cause it talks about war! | After a Waukesha teacher found out that “Rainbowland” was planned to be one of the songs her first-grade students would be singing at their spring concert, she played it for them. And then they wanted to hear it “over and over” again.
“Rainbowland” is a duet by Miley Cyrus and her godmother Dolly Parton off of Cyrus’ 2017 album “Younger Now.”
“It’s such a fun song and they just immediately took to it,” said Melissa Tempel, a first grade dual language teacher at Heyer Elementary School.
Tempel later found out that the Heyer Elementary administration was not going to permit the song to be performed after all. Tempel and her students were “so sad,” she said.
“We just really feel bad because the kids were excited about it,” Tempel said, who has been teaching for 20 years and is national board certified. “It’s just really confusing. … It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
Waukesha’s superintendent says ‘Rainbowland’ could be ‘perceived as controversial’
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In 2017, Parton told Taste of Country that the song is “really about if we could love one another a little better or be a little kinder, be a little sweeter, we could live in rainbow land.”
“It’s really just about dreaming and hoping that we could all do better,” she told the outlet. “It’s a good song for the times right now.”
Some of the lyrics Tempel especially appreciated were: “Wouldn’t it be nice to live in paradise, where we’re free to be exactly who we are. Let’s all dig down deep inside, brush the judgment and fear aside. Make wrong things right and end the fight.”
“That’s like the core of what we teach at school or what anybody teaches,” Tempel said. “You can be who you are, you should be proud of what you look like and how you learn. And that everyone has differences that we can all appreciate. And that no one’s the same, so you shouldn’t be afraid to be yourself around other people.”
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For the May concert, “Rainbowland” was replaced with “Rainbow Connection” from “The Muppet Movie,” Tempel said. But then that song got axed too, she said. It has since been re-added. Other songs that will be performed at the show include “It’s a Small World,” “De Colores,” “Here Comes the Sun” and “What a Wonderful World.”
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Read the whole story here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/miley-cyrus-dolly-partons-song-rainbowland-banned-from-wisconsin-first-grade-concert/
Drake Bentley and Alec Johnson contributed to this report.
Photo: Dolly Parton
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Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton’s Song ‘Rainbowland’ Banned From Wisconsin First-grade Concert
