Dolly Parton on the Most Prolific and Invigorating Music of Her Career
“My songs are like my kids and I expect them to support me when I’m old.” #DollyParton https://t.co/HVHvjd5WmJ
— Lindsay Kusiak (@lindsay_kusiak) November 27, 2023
It’s hard to choose extracts, cuz this whole interview is so good! From NYMag, “Dolly Parton on the Most Prolific and Invigorating Music of Her Career”:
Dolly Parton has always been a rock star, even if it took her a bit of time to weave that title into her coat of many colors. It began last year, when she held a contrarian view of her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination: Parton rejected it — a very Sex Pistols move — believing she wasn’t worthy of the honor. However, she would go on to warmly accept her induction at the annual ceremony, which culminated in the promise of recording a rock album to affirm her acrylics-on-electric-guitar finesse. That opus, Rockstar, features 21 covers and nine original songs with just about every name in the classic canon. (Hell, she reunited the living Beatles.)
The new album is also, somehow, the 49th in Parton’s discography. But her sprawling, decades-long career doesn’t mean we know everything. Rather, the country legend and entrepreneur prefers to channel most of her emotions and beliefs through her songwriting. “If you want to know about me and my life, you’ll find every piece of me in a song,” she explains. “I always write a little bit of something about me without realizing, because it is me. I’m all in, wound and woven in and out of my songs.” This ethos has affected every stage of Parton’s career, dating back to her 1967 Nashville debut, Hello, I’m Dolly; her late-’70s crossover to Hollywood stardom; and now her arrival at Rockstar. And while her succinct Dollyisms might make us smile — as does her exaggerated style, favoring rhinestones and sky-high hair — when it comes to the craft, Parton knows how much of a prolific storyteller she really is. “A lot of people can sing,” she says, “but not everybody can write and make up stuff for other people to sing.”…
Song that cemented your creative freedom
I started making songs before I was able to write them down. My first story of “Little Tiny Tasseltop” goes, “You’re the only friend I got, I hope you never go away, I want you to stay.” It was my little cob doll. I was born with the gift of rhyme, so I knew early on that I was going to love making up songs and doing rhymes and all that. I learned how to play the guitar when I was 7 years old, so after I started writing very serious songs. I love to sing them, of course, because I’m from a musical family, so it was always natural to sing. But as the years went by, I realized when other people recorded my songs that I was more excited about having them sing songs I wrote than I was about singing those songs myself.
Late Night Respite Open Thread: Dolly Parton, Rock StarPost + Comments (48)