Carrie's duet with Dolly, of "I Will Always Love You", from, I think, 2009, was chosen as the closing video tonight on Big T's Real Country.(Big T Campbell has been playing Country Music here as a radio DJ for over 30 years, and now also has an hourly show on the TV channel, recently renamed as Spotlight TV.)
His experience is significant - the "Real" in his show's title implies that he aims to pick material that he considers classic. Dolly obviously fits that bill, but Carrie would be the youngest artist in the playlist, and the fact that he picked the duet, rather than other Dolly performances, shows recognition of her feel for the genre's ethos.
I think Carrie demonstrates that in this performance by the pure clarity of her delivery, and the slightly slower tempo than might have been used in a solo performance - this gives prominence to the song, allowing the lyric and melody to get full attention, and Carrie shows a real gift for expressing additional emotion by small changes in intonation, which are significant, but not overstated. The song was originally meant as Dolly's "goodbye" to Porter Wagoner, and shows the conflicting emotions of regret and realism in striking out alone. Understanding the context, and letting the song speak through the singer, is not straightforward, and can't be successfully achieved by power singing alone. Carrie has almost certainly known the song for most of her life - but it's particularly impressive at this relatively early stage in her career. What I particularly liked in this duet was the way the two artists echoed each other's lines - in a way that showed a real mutual respect. Along with Carrie's occasional other "classic" covers, it shows a side of her talent that is too often rather overlooked.