Dolly Parton #51: Run, Rose, Run (2022)

Not content to simply have conquered the worlds of music, film, philanthropy, and theme park attractions, Dolly Parton set her sights on the literary world in 2022, teaming with mega-bestselling author James Patterson to write Run, Rose, Run, the story of a young woman fleeing her dark past with dreams of country music success. After so many years of putting books in the hands of needy children, writing one of her own probably seemed like a logical next step, even if the resulting book doesn’t sound all that kid-friendly. To go along with her first foray as a novelist, Dolly also turned out something more in her wheelhouse: a companion album. Thus, Run, Rose, Run is a multimedia project of sorts, with a film adaptation apparently in the works.

I’ve not read the book, but it’s not hard to glean a rough narrative from the album alone. After the opening song “Run” serving as a sort of prologue, the titular character sets out for Nashville on “Big Dreams and Faded Jeans,” tries to avoid the pitfalls of opportunists and conmen on “Snakes in the Grass,” finds love and recovers from heartbreak on “Demons,” “Lost and Found” and “Dark Night, Bright Future.” There’s also some more general character kind of songs like “Driven” (about being, well, driven) or “Firecracker” (about being feisty and not some passive flower), and a few songs that don’t really fit into the story but are maybe meant to be songs written or performed by Rose? Having not read the book, I can’t be totally sure, but even without the narrative, it works as a pretty straightforward Dolly album, with plenty of her favorite themes and styles.

Musically, Run, Rose, Run matches its Nashville setting with an array of classic country sounds, from swaggering honky-tonk on “Woman Up (and Take it Like a Man)” to stomping acoustic blues on “Snakes in the Grass” to several full-steam-ahead bluegrass barnstormers like “Firecracker” or “Dark Night, Bright Future.” It’s an approach that mostly looks backwards, which is a good thing, because its story feels archetypal in a lot of ways. Setting these in a more radio-country kind of milieu wouldn’t work nearly as well.

It’s on the ballads that the album sometimes stumbles, with a couple tracks feeling like they stepped straight out of the early 90s moment when country and so-called “adult contemporary” started to fuse together, something Dolly herself is no doubt well acquainted with. “Secrets” has a very 90s sheen, with some chiming synths and a sort of quasi-R&B slow burn rhythm. The final track “Love or Lust,” a duet with Dolly’s longtime collaborator Richard Dennison, has a sort of musical theatre feel that can’t help but come off as corny. “Demons” does a little better, with a more dreamy, country sound and a vocal assist from Ben Haggard, Merle’s youngest son, along with a more complex lyric about two people struggling to see through their own problems to be able to help each other.

Despite these slight missteps, Run, Rose, Run is a pretty solid Dolly Parton album, probably her most satisfying since Blue Smoke nearly a decade prior. It’s cozily in Dolly’s wheelhouse, trafficking in the kind of stuff that she could probably do in her sleep at this point, but it contains a few moments of brilliance that rank among her best songs in years. Easily the highlight comes at the album’s midpoint on “Blue Bonnet Breeze,” an outlier and a sort of “story within a story” in the narrative.

As gently twinkling chimes give way to droning fiddle and waltz-time acoustic guitar strums, Dolly spins a tragic yarn in a sweet, beguiling melody about two young lovers from different economic backgrounds who run off together, only to end up dead for their trouble. It feels like a song that could’ve been written hundreds of years ago, despite its more modern trappings, and easily the kind of song Dolly herself probably could have written during her much sadder early 70s period. The star-crossed lovers story is as ancient as stories themselves, and while Dolly doesn’t exactly find a new spin on it, the song is so enchanting that it hardly matters. It fades out with wordless vocals from Dolly before leaving us with those twinkling chimes, gently swaying in the titular breeze.

“Blue Bonnet Breeze” is a standout track, but the rest of the album delivers the Dolly goods too. After a couple excursions into children’s music and Christmas music, it’s nice to get another collection of Dolly doing what she does best, and making it look so darn effortless. No need to worry if you haven’t read the book; you’ll still be able to follow along.

Dolly Parton #50: A Holly Dolly Christmas (2020)

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time (and judging by my readership numbers, that’s a big if), you may know that typically my timing of listening to Christmas albums isn’t great. More than once, I’ve heard sleigh bells jingalin’ in the dead of summer, or in early January after my holiday cheer has already been spent. Though maybe Dolly Parton has some extra Christmas magic, because looking back, I managed to listen to her Kenny Rogers collab Once Upon a Christmas in early December. That also means I’ve been working on this Dolly project for well over a year, which is kinda nuts.

Anyway, during one of the worst Christmas seasons in modern memory, Dolly graced us with her third yuletide collection, 2020’s A Holly Dolly Christmas. How it took over 50 years for her to get around to using that title is beyond me.

Christmas 2020 just might have been the strangest Christmas in my lifetime, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It was the first time in my life that I had to spend Christmas apart from my family, my partner and I opting to stay put in Chicago rather than travel to our loved ones during the most deadly time of the pandemic. While we still made it special in our own way, it was a more somber, scared, subdued kind of holiday, and one I hope I don’t have to repeat any time soon. Dolly had been working on this album well before the pandemic hit, but the timing of its release couldn’t have been better.

For her third Christmas outing, Dolly turns in a mix of holiday classics as well as a healthy number of originals, calling in some of her famous friends and family to help her out. Unsurprisingly, the album works best when she keeps it simple, sticking to the classic sounds that send that instant serotonin boost into your brain. Album opener “Holly Jolly Christmas” (why they didn’t swap Jolly for Dolly that time, I don’t know) sets the tone nicely, with some western swing-inspired strings and a crisp, Bakersfield sound kind of vibe. “Cuddle Up, Cozy Down Christmas,” a duet with Michael Bublé, has the kind of jazzy standard feel of a “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” only without the icky subtext. Dolly and Bublé play off each other nicely with a welcome dose of cheese that lets us know they’re not taking any of this too seriously. “Christmas on the Square” goes in a more bluegrass direction, and her take on “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” splits the difference between country and jazz.

Sometimes, though, Dolly does take things very seriously indeed, with a few more somber ballads to balance out all the sugar. There’s “Christmas Is,” a duet with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus (whose voice sounds like it was recorded via Zoom, which it may very well have been), a slow-burn song that reminds us to check our privilege, that Christmas for some can be another crushing reminder of inequality. It’s an important message, a necessary antidote to the Capitalist underpinnings and conspicuous consumption of the season. Elsewhere, Dolly gives us a reminder of the holiday’s overtly Christian origins with “Circle of Love,” a paean to Jesus’ love that starts with a dreamlike guitar pattern and builds to a stirring devotional. Her take on Willie Nelson’s weeper “Pretty Paper,” with Nelson himself joining for a duet, is lovely and moving, which doesn’t take much when it comes to that song.

As is often the case with Dolly’s albums, while there are plenty of highs, not all of it works. The less said about “Christmas Where We Are,” an overwrought slab of jangly-guitared country pop with a strained-sounding Billy Ray Cyrus, the better. Same goes for her take on Mariah Carey’s modern staple “All I Want for Christmas is You,” where she’s joined by a smirkily ad-libbing Jimmy Fallon doing his Jimmy Fallon thing all over it. Not a fan. It’s moving to hear her duet with her late brother Randy on “You Are My Christmas,” but the song itself is a pretty underwhelming piece of pop-country radio fodder, with that same kind of overly jangly acoustic guitar that makes it feel instantly dated.

Luckily, Dolly ends the album on a strong note with her take on “Mary, Did You Know?” a Christian pop track that’s become a holiday staple on the more religious end of the spectrum. Dolly doesn’t mess with it too much, mostly sticking with guitar and strings under her awestruck vocals.

So will A Holly Dolly Christmas become a future holiday staple? Probably not, but it’s an above average collection all the same, and a welcome dose of warmth from a time in our recent past where that was in dramatically short supply.

Dolly Parton #49: I Believe In You (2017)

With her larger than life image and a persona radiating decency and joy, it’s a wonder it took Dolly Parton 50 years to make a children’s album. But lo and behold, a half century after her debut, Dolly released I Believe In You, her first and to date only record for children. Though it’s entirely likely that kids had been enjoying her music for quite a long time before she got around to making an album just for them.

I Believe In You was made with a very noble goal in mind: all proceeds go directly to Dolly’s Imagination Library charity, which has been sending free books to needy kids for decades now, fostering a love of reading from a very young age. To date, they’ve sent out over 200 million books, and show no signs of slowing down. So I, as a grown man in my 30s, can feel a bit less weird about listening to an album expressly made for children by knowing my tiny fraction of a cent of streaming residuals is going to help fund a very worthy cause.

And make no mistake, I Believe In You is not one of those children’s albums that an adult could throw on for their own enjoyment, at least not without raising a few eyebrows from anyone within earshot. No, this thing is for kiddos in nearly every way, from its short song lengths to its toy-keyboard production to Dolly’s emphatic vocals delivered as if there were a gaggle of toddlers running around the recording studio (knowing her, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if there were).

To Dolly’s credit, all of the songs here are original, and most of them are new to this collection. She could’ve easily cranked out a country version of “The Wheels on the Bus” or something and called it a day, but she actually wrote a whole new album instead. And the songs really aren’t half bad as far as kids music goes; they’ve got good lessons for kids to learn, from loving themselves (“I Am a Rainbow”) to the power of imagination (“Imagination”) to not being a little asshole (“Makin’ Fun Ain’t Funny”). It’s all pretty straightforward, but we’re not usually looking for complexity in these kinds of songs. The band does have fun adding in a bit of rhythmic complexity though, with several songs that shift from straight-ahead 4/4 country rhythms into syncopated R&B and even a Latin rhythm at one point.

Dolly does give us a couple re-dos, including a new version of her classic “Coat of Many Colors,” which is a great song for kids already, and she doesn’t mess with it too much here. There’s also a new version of “Brave Little Soldier,” one of the most annoying cuts on For God and Country, which sadly is not any less annoying here. One original song that stuck out to me in a good way is “Chemo Hero,” which benefits from a more specific point of view. Dolly inhabits the character of a young cancer survivor, bravely going through treatment to fight the “bad cells” that are making them sick. It’s gotta be hard to write a song about a kid with cancer that manages to be uplifting, but I can imagine it would be incredibly important to anyone going through that kind of fight. It’s the sort of thing Dolly’s so good at, looking at something others might not think about.

Sadly, while Dolly’s in fine form as usual, the album is somewhat let down by its production, courtesy of Dolly’s longtime collaborator Richard Dennison along with Toms McBryde and Rutledge. Most of the instrumentation feels very canned and a bit chintzy, particularly the synth horns which are all over the album. It may have been an aesthetic choice, but personally I don’t understand why kids music has to sound like it was recorded using cheap synthetic instruments. It’s true a lot of kids albums are shat out for a quick buck, but you’d think if Dolly was going to put in the effort to write a bunch of brand-new songs, her producers would back her up with a more organic sound.

All that said, it’s hard to find fault in an album whose main goal is putting more books in the hands of kids. Even if it’s not one I plan to listen to again any time soon, only the most shriveled-hearts among us could possibly find anything to complain about here. If you’ve got young kids, you could do a whole lot worse for them than playing this album. So next time you want to occupy them for a half hour or so, skip another replay of Cocomelon and put on some Dolly Parton instead. Though I’ve got a few other albums you might wanna play before this one.

Dolly Parton #47: Blue Smoke (2014)

At this point in her career, it seems that Dolly Parton is much more content to take her time between albums, waiting until she’s got a solid batch of songs or something to say, rather than trying to keep up with the feverish pace of the pop world. Of course, there’s also her being a business mogul, occasional actor, and all around pop culture icon to keep her busy; at this point, music is just one of the many aspects of the Dolly mythos.

Released three years after Better Day, 2014’s Blue Smoke is another solid, confident batch of songs, one that finds Dolly less concerned about courting country radio than she seemed to be on her last album. Turns out, she didn’t need to worry about trying to stay current, as this album did quite a bit better than the last, making it to #2 on the country album charts and #6 on the Billboard 200, bolstered by TV promotions and a word tour. It earned strong reviews, currently sitting with a solid 81/100 on Metacritic (if you care about that sort of thing). I found it to be a more enjoyable collection overall, not that Better Day didn’t have plenty of strong moments.

It kicks off with the title track, a dobro and chugging country shuffle underpinning its themes of heading out on the titular train, leaving a bad situation behind. The song changes styles a couple of times, transforming into a bluegrass hootenanny and a gospel clap-along before turning back into its original form. It’s probably the most musically adventurous track, with most songs content to stay in a straightforward country lane, with dips into bluegrass, gospel, and Appalachian folk.

One of the coolest tracks has to be the original “If I Had Wings,” a minor-key ballad with a melody that sounds much older than it is. It has a similar progression to “Jolene,” but doesn’t feel like a knockoff, with a sort of sultry, vaguely Latin flair to the rhythm. Later, Dolly proves she can still write a bracingly sad song with “Miss You-Miss Me,” a song that starts as a remembrance of her departed dad and the hope that he misses her from the beyond before turning into a heartbroken lament from a child towards their divorced parents, who can’t see their way through their own animosity to realize what their feuding has cost them. It doesn’t end with any real resolution, just a plea from a heartbroken person appealing to their parents’ love for them. Dolly hasn’t written a song that sad in quite some time.

Unlike Better Day, Blue Smoke isn’t an all-originals album, but its covers are well-chosen. There’s Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” here just called “Don’t Think Twice,” which Dolly transforms from a melancholy, slightly bitter ballad into a sprightly country track filled out with dobro and vocal harmonies, lending it a bit more hopeful edge than Dylan’s original. Later on, she gives us an updated version of the traditional murder ballad “The Banks of the Ohio,” playing both a convicted murderer and a writer who visits him in his jail cell. I love any time Dolly dips into these traditional tunes from her Appalachian upbringing, her voice is perfectly suited for them.

She adds another countrified take on a rock track to her growing repertoire alongside “Stairway to Heaven,” “Shine,” and “Time For Me To Fly,” this time transforming Bon Jovi’s horny power ballad “Lay Your Hands On Me” into an epic gospel-flavored devotional, changing the subject from a sexy lady into the Lord Himself. As usual, it works better than it has any right to, with big bombastic drums, dobro, fiddle, and handclaps. These sorts of covers could be gimmicky, but Dolly always makes them work through sheer conviction.

A couple of other country legends join Dolly for duets; first up is Kenny Rogers on “You Can’t Make Old Friends.” Over percussive guitar strums and pedal steel, Rogers and Dolly trade verses about the importance of long-time friendships, how the deep level of knowing someone can never be replaced. It’s a moving song in the wake of Rogers’s passing, hearing these two old pals share a song together. I’m sure Dolly couldn’t help but think about it when she got the news.

Willie Nelson shows up towards the end of the album to duet on the love song “From Here to the Moon and Back,” the kind of easygoing, unshowy balladry that Willie is known for built atop a gently swaying rhythm and strings. There’s even a harmonica solo courtesy of Willie’s old Stardust collaborator Mickey Raphael, and a guitar solo with his distinctive tone. It’s not flashy, but it’s lovely, just what you’d expect from two old masters.

Dolly Parton #46: Better Day (2011)

As the 2000s turned into the 2010s, America was locked in a perpetual state of anxiety. A war overseas had dragged on for nearly a decade, a housing market crash and subsequent recession left many out of work and unable to stay afloat, while the Wall Street bros who caused the whole thing got a massive bailout just to keep the economy from completely tanking. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought with it a wave of hope for change, but also brought just as much backlash, much of it racially motivated. Not to mention the steadily mounting threat of climate change that we were even further away from taking seriously. Suffice it to say, it was hard to feel very good about the way things were going.

So leave it to Dolly Parton, pop culture’s eternal optimist, to try to lift our spirits through her chosen medium of song. Dolly said her specific aim with Better Day was to make people feel better, to give us a little hope amid the economic and geopolitical gloom, to remind us that if we keep pushing, keep trying, keep hoping, good times may be around the corner. Dolly’s optimism isn’t exactly naive or wrongheaded. She’s seen tough times before, written plenty of songs with plenty of suffering, but her faith and her belief in the goodness of people has seen her through. Sometimes, choosing to see the good can be a radical act.

Better Day is Dolly’s first album in quite a while to be made up of all originals, though that doesn’t mean the songs are all brand new. Four of them, “I Just Might,” “Get Out and Stay Out,” “Shine Like the Sun,” and “Let Love Grow” were all repurposed from her score for the 9 to 5 musical from a couple years prior, and lead single “Together You and I” dates back to her Porter Wagoner days. It all added up to a decent success, making it to #51 on the Billboard albums chart and #11 country and getting good reviews. It seems that Dolly wasn’t wrong in thinking people might like a little dose of uplift.

She kicks it off by offering some much-needed perspective on “In the Meantime,” reminding us that people have been forseeing doom since the very beginning, and there’s something about the human condition that makes us always think the world’s going to end. But until that happens, we have a choice to aim ourselves towards the good, to try and do right with the time we have, however much time that is. In the decade-plus since this album was released, that feeling of doom has only increased, and it’s important to remember that our generation isn’t the first to feel this way.

Most of the uplift on Better Day is of the more personal variety, with characters choosing to do whatever it takes to improve their lot in life. “Just Leavin'” is a classic Dolly track where the narrator decides to leave an unsupportive partnership in order to strike out on their own; even if that means uncertainty and doubt, it’s better than where they’re at now. “The Sacrifice” feels like a more personal song, where Dolly songs about everything left behind in the pursuit of success. I kept waiting for a turn at the end of the song, that Dolly’s character would realize all that sacrifice wasn’t worth it in the end, but that’s not really what we get. There’s a brief moment of doubt, but it’s quickly cast aside. Is the narrator in denial, or are we to believe it really was worth it? I’m not sure, but it makes for a more interesting song.

The four tracks from 9 to 5 definitely betray their more conversational, musical theatre roots, and their optimism is a little more guarded. “I Just Might” leaves room for doubt that its narrator can truly make it, and “Get Out and Stay Out” is the kind of kiss-off song that Dolly can nail in her sleep. The other two, “Shine Like the Sun” and “Let Love Grow,” are a bit more indistinct, generic uplift anthems that are transformed here into radio-friendly glossy pop.

In general, the album is split between sounds that would have felt right at home on early 2010s country radio and more traditional sounds. The pop-centric stuff doesn’t do much for me, with its “regular pop with pedal steel” kind of vibe, all shimmery electric guitars and steady rhythms. It feels a bit like Dolly trying to bend her style to the popular trends, rather than the other way around (aka the correct way). I’m much more into the traditional style, which Dolly has always pulled off so well. “Country Is As Country Does,” a Mac Davis co-write, is some classic high-stepping country with all the fixin’s, perfectly matched to its theme of pride of place. The title track is one of the album’s best, beginning with bluesy piano and a spoken-word intro before the dobro and shuffling drums kick in, backing Dolly’s sultry vocal with a lazy, easygoing rhythm.

Dolly’s aim with Better Day was to offer a ray of home through the gloom, and wouldn’t you know it, I did feel a little better by the time it was over. The America of 2023 is still a pretty scary place, possibly even more so than 2011, with mounting crises and a frightening tilt towards Nationalism and bigotry. A song can’t save the world, but it can make things just a bit less frightening, at least for a few minutes. There are plenty worse things a star like Dolly could do, that’s for sure.

Dolly Parton #45: Backwoods Barbie (2008)

After nearly a decade spent exploring more traditional forms of music from bluegrass to gospel, with stops in between for patriotic songs and covers, 2008’s Backwoods Barbie marked a return to the highly polished country-pop Dolly Parton had been making in the 80s and 90s, albeit with a more contemporary sheen.

The first album released on her newly-founded Dolly Records, it wasn’t as well received as her acclaimed bluegrass trilogy, but was still met with a pretty warm welcome, making it as high as #3 on the country charts and #17 on the Billboard 200. It seemed that through the late 90s and 00s, Dolly had mostly given up on trying to be a mainstream country force, but Backwoods Barbie seemed to show there was still some gas left in the ol’ tank.

The album still manages to be fairly eclectic, splitting the difference between highly contemporary pop-country and more classic sounds, made up mostly of Dolly originals with a couple unexpected covers, something Dolly always seems to enjoy doing. Songs like “Better Get to Livin’,” “Jesus & Gravity,” and “Somebody’s Everything” feel very much in line with the slick, pop-oriented radio country of the late 00s, a style that I personally have a hard time enjoying. It’s on the tracks that harken back to more classic styles where the album really shines.

The title song is a straightforward country track anchored by a steady rhythm and accented by fiddle and pedal steel. It hit me as Dolly’s “Jenny From the Block,” a song that asks us to look past the surface of her big wigs and heavy makeup to see the real person underneath. It’s funny to me that even this far into her career, Dolly will still pen a line like “I’m all dolled up and hopin’ for a chance to prove my worth.” You or I could say she’s already proved it many times over, but that’s Dolly, ever so humble.

My favorite songs on the album are the ones that call back to the old-fashioned songcraft of Dolly’s heyday. “The Lonesomes” and “I Will Forever Hate Roses” are classic honky tonk barroom ballads, complete with wailing pedal steel and soft, swaying rhythms good for cozying up to someone on the dance floor. “Cologne” goes a little bigger, but feels like a classic Dolly song from the point of view of the “other woman,” forced to remain a secret despite her unyielding love, unable to even wear a fragrance lest it be carried home with him. The use of “cologne” instead of “perfume” is interesting here; could this be a gay tryst? Dolly doesn’t say, but I need a drag performer to pick this one up and run with it.

“Shinola” is another song that plays with a classic Dolly archetype: dressing down some asshole guy who thinks he’s hot shit but really isn’t much of anything. Playing off the refrain “you don’t know love from Shinola,” she describes a no-account guy with a high body count who clearly doesn’t care for anyone besides himself, and Dolly’s narrator isn’t gonna take it anymore. It even features an audible, intentional *bleep* at one point, just to drive home the point.

One of my favorite tracks has to be “Only Dreamin’,” an appropriately ethereal song featuring deep rumbling guitar and droning fiddle, calling up the synthesis of Celtic and Appalachian music that permeated her childhood, driven home by John Mock’s tin whistle. I love any time Dolly dips into that deep well of tradition, and it makes for a haunting song that floats along despite its apparent heaviness.

Her use of covers is fun, but not quite as impactful as it has been in the past. I happen to love Fine Young Cannibals’ “Drives Me Crazy,” and Dolly turns in a mostly faithful cover with a few country touches like fiddle and banjo for good measure. “Tracks of My Tears” feels like a pretty easy choice for Dolly, right in line with some of the stuff she writes, a classic “smiling on the outside, crying on the inside” kind of jam. It’s a solid cover, though can’t match the pathos of Smokey Robinson’s original.

I found Backwoods Barbie to be a bit of a mixed bag, but as with pretty much any Dolly project, the highs are very high and the lows really aren’t that low at all. Her songcraft is as strong as ever, even if some of the production (courtesy of Dolly and Kent Wells) feels a bit overwrought and aimed at country radio. Any time spent in the company of her talent is time well spent, anyway.

Dolly Parton #44: Those Were the Days (2005)

As I mentioned in the last post about Dolly Parton’s mammoth collection For God and Country, the post 9/11 era in America was a strange time. Reeling from a mass trauma unseen since the days of Pearl Harbor and an overseas conflict that most Americans supported even if they didn’t exactly understand it, it was the dawn of a new age in American politics whose ripple effects are still being felt to this day. America was a long way from its post-WWII glory days, less a beacon for Democracy than a world superpower with revenge on its mind.

Of course, time has a way of simplifying things, of making shades of gray look a whole lot more black and white, like an old Xerox machine. The post-war years in America are remembered as a time of prosperity, but that was only really ever true for a select few of its citizens. As the 40s bled into the 50s bled into the 60s, the children of that postwar generation began to use their freedoms to question authority and whether the promise of America was being shared equally among everyone, and popular song became a medium for speaking truth to power in a way it hadn’t before.

I bring this up because this is by and large the era that Dolly draws from on Those Were the Days, her first all-covers album since Treasures back in 1996. Pulling from the vast repertoire of the 60s folk and country boom, it includes a number of songs that were considered protest anthems in their day, though Dolly once again went out of her way to tell everyone she wasn’t trying to make any kind of political statement. Regardless of her intentions, I think it does add an interesting dimension to its seemingly wistful title; the past is often something we long for, but we shouldn’t look at it with rose colored glasses.

This is evident from the jump on the title track, a big hit for Mary Hopkin back in the 60s, itself adapted from an old Russian folk song. The lyrics find the narrator thinking back to the innocent days of yore, drinking and dancing in an old tavern, back when it felt like anything was possible. But of course, the good times never last, and the narrator catches her aged reflection in a window and wonders “was that lonely woman really me?” Putting this song up front signals that, while we can look back fondly on times gone by, dwelling on them too much can end up making us miserable.

Interestingly enough, Dolly used her innate star power to recruit many of the original artists to guest on these songs, along with a slew of other guest stars. Hopkin is credited on the recording of her hit alongside a murderer’s row of Nashville singers assembled by Dolly’s old boss Porter Wagoner, also credited, along with British post-punk band the Moscow Circus, who provide some appropriately Russian ambience.

Most of Dolly’s renditions are pretty straightforward, using her recent sonic palette of guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and dobro. Her voice is in fine form throughout, and her takes on classics like Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” (evidently Dylan declined to take part for some foolish reason) or Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” might not be revelatory, but serve to highlight how good these songs were in the first place. When she does mix things up a bit, those tend to be the best parts of the album, like turning Joni Mitchell’s ruminative folk ballad “Both Sides Now” into an uptempo bluegrass ripper (Mitchell was supposed to take part but had to drop out due to an illness in the family). Her take on “Crimson and Clover,” featuring original artist Tommy James, retains the dreamy psychedelia of the original but fuses it with traditional instrumentation.

Most of the guests Dolly brings in are barely recognizable, content to just hang out in the background and let Dolly take the reins. You wouldn’t know Cat Stevens guests on his own song “Where Do the Children Play,” or that Roger McGuinn is backing her on her take on the Byrds’ classic “Turn, Turn, Turn,” but knowing that they’re there all the same enriches the experience. There’s plenty of non-original guests as well, from Norah Jones and Lee Ann Womack’s harmonies on “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” to Nickel Creek’s instrumental and vocal prowess helping to lift up “Blowin’ in the Wind,” to regular collaborators Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski joining forces with Mindy Smith to lend some extra emotional depth to “The Cruel War,” the album’s only traditional song.

When the guests do make their presence known, it gets a bit distracting. Contemporary country stars Keith Urban and Joe Nichols trade verses with Dolly on “The Twelfth of Never” and “If I Were a Carpenter,” respectively, in what I can only assume was a feint to country radio, though interestingly only “The Twelfth of Never” was released as a single, and the third single at that. I’m sure all of them were more than happy to lend a hand to Dolly, and maybe soak up a bit of her cred as a result.

Covers albums always feel a bit inessential, even when they’re good, and Those Were the Days is a pretty good one. Some critics at the time noted the seeming incongruity of following up an uber-patriotic and religious collection like For God and Country with one that included tracks that were skeptical of both patriotism and religion, but such is the dichotomy of Dolly Parton. I believe her to be a genuinely religious and patriotic person, but also someone who doesn’t want to see those things tip over into dogma or jingoism. In recent years, we’ve seen the effect that an abundance of either of these beliefs can have on our way of life when believers try to foist them onto others, so maybe Dolly was just trying to level out the scales. Or maybe she just wanted to make a covers album of some mid-century hits that she liked. Hell, maybe it’s both. I would’t put it past her.

Dolly Parton #43: For God and Country (2003)

Post-9/11 was a strange time to be an American. We look back on it as a time of solidarity, uniting in the wake of tragedy against a common enemy, standing up for freedom worldwide, saying our ways would not be silenced. But the truth is, of course, far more complicated.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 had many adamant critics at the time, people who saw it as a pretense to assert American imperialism, using the war on terror as a justification. 20 years on, many veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom struggle to understand what their sacrifice was even for, if anything. Back then, it felt like the US had a clear enemy, a clear cause. Nowadays, it’s a hell of a lot more murky.

You probably already know, but I am hardly the one to try and make sense of any of this. I was nearly 11 when the Twin Towers fell, nearly 13 when we invaded Iraq. I only had the fuzziest sense of the whats and the whys, and I don’t know much more now than I did back then. But I can’t help but think back to that strange time in our history, that mix of patriotism and fear, while listening to Dolly Parton’s For God and Country, released in November of 2003, some eight months after the US officially invaded Iraq. It’s an album that feels inextricably linked to its moment in history.

Dolly’s politics have long been a source of speculation, and she’s tried to be very calculatedly apolitical throughout her career, not wanting to ruffle anyone’s feathers or alienate any potential fans. It’s a big part of why she’s managed to create a fanbase in so many disparate groups over the years, from queer city folk to Christian country folk. For God and Country is probably as “political” as Dolly really gets, even if she mostly sticks to things most of us can agree on, like supporting our troops.

To be honest, I was kind of dreading listening to this album. The sort of ra-ra good ol’ US of A stuff is generally very off-putting to me. While there’s nothing wrong with having love of country, patriotism is a complicated thing these days, when the people labeling themselves as “patriots” are the first to try and undermine the very institutions that they claim to love, and any criticism of American policy very quickly gets you labeled as “un-American.” In that way, things haven’t changed that much since the post-9/11 days, very much the nadir of the “with us or against us” mentality.

Not to mention, this album is extremely fucking long. An hour and fifteen minutes of pro-America and/or pro-Jesus songs sounds like my personal idea of torture, even if it’s Dolly Parton doing the singing. But I must say, parts of the album were quite enjoyable, even if I did have to take it in smaller chunks. After a few slabs of overproduced schlock, the album hits a groove of more traditional sounds around the midpoint, which is easily the most enjoyable stretch.

First, the schlock. The album actually starts out pretty promising, with the mostly-acapella prayer “The Lord is My Shepherd.” Dolly sings alongside a faintly-Gregorian backing choir before transitioning into a spoken word prayer as the choir murmurs beneath her. Her take on that old voice-tester “The Star-Spangled Banner” is pretty good too, and Dolly’s more than capable of handling that vocal workout. After that, we get three tracks that almost derail the whole thing.

First is Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” possibly the most overwrought pro-America track ever written, here given a big sappy arrangement with synths and booming drums like an 80s ‘ludes flashback. Then, the stone-cold Dolly classic “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” is nearly drowned in over-processed early-00s adult-contempo-pop gloop. This unholy trinity is rounded out by the Civil War ballad “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” complete with the requisite martial drums and light fife. It’s hard not to giggle when the deep-voiced backing vocalists come in with “America! America!” like something out of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Luckily, the album does manage to recover its dignity, particularly in the aforementioned traditional section beginning with a church choir hymnal arrangement of the old gospel track “Whispering Hope,” courtesy of the Harding University Concert Choir and Dallas Christian Sound. This leads into my personal favorite track, “There Will Be Peace in the Valley,” a southern gospel classic and collaboration with the incredible vocal group the Fairfield Four, recent standouts from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.

Dolly puts spoken word interludes throughout the album, explaining her connection to the songs and relating them to her religious upbringing. Here, she frames it as if she’s snuck off to listen to the music at a Black church and just happened to run into the Fairfield Four, inviting them to sing with her. Their sumptuous harmonies are the driving force behind the song. We then get a couple bluegrass tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place on The Grass is Blue or Little Sparrow: “Red, White, and Bluegrass” and a take on “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Both of them are fun, uptempo bluegrass rippers, and it’s clear Dolly’s still enjoying the heck out of playing this music.

Things get a bit wobbly from there, flapping from the soft synth pop balladry of “I’m Gonna Miss You” to the fire and brimstone gospel of “Go to Hell” to her take on former Billboard #1 single “Ballad of the Green Beret” like a flag caught in a windstorm. I nearly puked listening to “Brave Little Soldier,” a song about…child soldiers, I guess? Or at least kids joining in the patriotic effort by pretending to be soldiers? Honestly when the kiddie choir (or maybe adults trying to sound like a kiddie choir, it’s hard to tell) came in, I found it hard to concentrate.

Dolly gives us her own contribution to the over the top pro-America anthem tradition with “Color Me America,” an 80s-style soft rock ballad with a big bombastic chorus. And just when you think we’ve reached a patriotic fever pitch, she ends the album on “The Glory Forever,” a musical rendition of the Lord’s Prayer that bookends the album with “The Lord is My Shepherd.” It’s a lovely note to end on that lends the whole thing more cohesion than its array of styles might suggest.

Truthfully, had Dolly cut out all the overdone cheese from this collection and stuck to her more traditional instincts in gospel and bluegrass, this could’ve been another stellar album in a run of stellar albums. As it is, it’s an album with some highlights buried in all the gloop. Like I said, it was a weird time.

Dolly Parton #37: Treasures (1996)

After an album of all-Dolly originals, perhaps it was inevitable that the pendulum would swing back the other way and we’d get another covers album. Luckily, Treasures is a pretty good one, even if it can’t help but feel inessential by its very nature. Dolly’s last covers album, The Great Pretender, was back in 1984, during her peak pop star era, and felt very much like it was trying to fit into the mold of the times with synth-heavy arrangements. Treasures doesn’t exactly avoid the trappings of its decade, but feels more organic on the whole.

Treasures is Dolly’s first album with a new label; after her contract with Columbia expired, she decided to join Doug Morris over at Atlantic Records, as she claimed he was the only executive that really took her seriously as an artist. After Morris got pushed out of Atlantic, he started his own label Rising Tide Records, partnering with MCA, and Dolly followed him there. She also started her own imprint, Blue Eye Records, though I’m not sure how all that businessy stuff works. Maybe with all that tumult, a covers album felt like a soft landing.

The album is mostly made up of hits from the 70s and 80s, ranging from the expected country standards to singer/songwriter stuff and pop chestnuts, all delivered in her signature country style, polished to a blinding sheen. It kicks off with her cover of Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train,” beginning with a sound you might not expect to hear on a Dolly Parton album: the indelible tones of South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Evidently Dolly wanted a backing choir for the song but couldn’t find what she was looking for until she heard the group singing in a Lifesavers commercial and sought them out. They mostly take a backseat during the verses, but get an extended intro and outro to show their stuff. Basically any recording is improved by the presence of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Dolly blends with them surprisingly well.

I give credit to Dolly and her producer Steve Buckingham for choosing a set of songs that digs a little deeper to find its chestnuts. As you might expect, her takes on country tunes like Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again,” Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” or Carl Butler and Pearl’s “Don’t Let Me Cross Over” are all easily nailed by Dolly and her band, the latter even feeling like something she could’ve written with its tale of a woman tempted to cheat on her partner. Other country tunes work even better when they introduce new elements, like Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo playing accordion and singing a Spanish verse on “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” which is fitting given that original artist Freddy Fender did the same thing.

There’s quite a few guests on the album, from the aforementioned Hidalgo to Union Station’s Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski, Blues Traveler’s John Popper, and the Mavericks’ Raul Malo. They mostly take a back seat, lending some lovely, ethereal harmonies in the case of Krauss and Tyminski. Popper gets to do his thing all over “Today I Started Loving You Again,” which might be the most 90s part of the album. The Mavericks are one of my favorite country groups of the era, so I was hoping Malo would get a bit more of a showcase, but he’s just there to back Dolly up on “Don’t Let Me Cross Over.”

The covers are all pretty straightforward, but that doesn’t mean Dolly and her band don’t work magic with them at times. Probably the most unexpected choice is her cover of Neil Young’s melancholy, stoned anthem “After the Gold Rush,” its simple piano arrangement transformed into downtuned guitar, ethereal vocals, and thudding drums. Dolly naturally takes out any drug references, but her plaintive voice still works wonders. Even better is the final track, her take on “For the Good Times.” Written by Kris Kristofferson and first performed by Ray Price, it’s a stately song to begin with, but Dolly transforms it into a lush, jazzy, American Songbook-esque standard, her voice adorned with guitar, piano, and subtle strings. It’s a beautiful, heartwrenching song about clinging to a love that’s run its course, and it’s an absolutely transportive moment to end this collection.

Dolly Parton #36: Something Special (1995)

Two years after her superhero team-up with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton was back on her own with 1995’s Something Special. The album received mixed reviews but did pretty good business, peaking at #10 on the country charts and #54 pop. Pretty standard issue for Dolly at this point in her career. It’s her first album in quite some time to be made up of all Dolly-penned (or co-penned in one case) songs, with seven brand-new compositions and three re-dos of some of her classic 70s tracks. Unsurprisingly one of these, her “I Will Always Love You” duet with Vince Gill, gave her her best commercial showing for a single in years, peaking at #15.

I feel a bit out of step with the consensus, because I happened to find Something Special to be her most satisfying album of the 90s, and most of the 80s for that matter. She doesn’t reinvent her own rulebook or anything, but it’s a strong set of songs and the production seems less enamored of 90s signifiers than her previous records of the decade. It seems to take more of a page from neo-traditionalists like Lyle Lovett or Union Station (whose Allison Kraus sings backup somewhere on the album), featuring a slightly more stripped-down sound that feels more evergreen. Lyrically, Dolly’s songs are treading pretty well-worn territory, looking at relationships from a number of angles; their effervescent beginnings and their sad, painful ends. They’re the kind of songs Dolly could write in her sleep by this point, but they make for an effective blend of words and music.

The set kicks off with the lovely “Crippled Bird,” which minimally adorns Dolly’s vocals with delicate piano, soft strings, and ethereal backing vocals. The melody feels conjured from some long-lost Appalachian spiritual, Dolly’s voice dipping into subtle melisma like a recitation. She returns to the well of avian imagery, using the image of the crippled bird as a metaphor for healing from a broken heart.

It’s not the only time Dolly’s characters have their hearts broken. “Change” has to be one of her saddest, most wrenching songs in years, an anguished ballad where her narrator is forced to admit it’s time to leave a toxic relationship, long past the point where the wounds can be mended. There’s a slightly weary hopefulness to the song, as she sings “someday when I’m over you / and I think I might be able to / well I might try to be / your friend again.” It’s unclear if that day will ever come, and whether she’ll be ready if it does. “No Good Way of Saying Good-Bye” treads similar ground, feeling a bit less anguished and more sorrowfully resigned to its ending.

It’s not all bad, though. Songs like “Green-Eyed Boy” or the title track have a sprightly uptempo sound as they explore the happy feelings that loving someone can bring. “Green-Eyed Boy” in particular has a festive atmosphere, as the band keeps adding in new instruments, starting with guitar and dobro then throwing in backing vocals, fiddles, and mandolins, all backing Dolly up in her desire to see the one she left behind for fame and glory. It’s similar to earlier tracks like “My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy” or “Will He Be Waiting.”

“Speakin’ of the Devil” falls somewhere in the middle, a jaunty Western swing joint where Dolly’s character is drawn to a man who’s probably not good for her, but whose charms she simply cannot resist. The song doesn’t make this sound like a bad thing, more like giving into the temptation is just too much fun to pass up. Maybe it’ll end up badly, maybe not, but she’s gonna have her fun while she can.

As for the three redos, they’re all fine but don’t do much to improve upon the originals. “Jolene” and “The Seeker” follow the original blueprint pretty much to the letter with some slightly updated production; they’re still great songs, but they don’t do much to justify their existence. “I Will Always Love You” stands out slightly more, seemingly pitched somewhere between Dolly’s original gentle, folky version and Whitney Houston’s epic reimagining. Dolly and Gill don’t conjure the fireworks that Whitney did, but they don’t really seem to be aiming for that anyway.

I quite liked Something Special, and I think it might be something of an overlooked gem in her catalogue. Maybe not reaching the heights of her best work, but an enjoyable, stripped-back set of songs that easily vaults ahead of her other work in this decade so far. Plus, it’s a treat to get a whole album of Dolly songs after so many that brought in outside songwriters.