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On Dolly Parton: ‘There seemed to be no set destination, no fixed political orientation, no guiding principle except that music is manna—and every person is deserving of dignity and respect’
It’s an understatement to say that Dolly Parton, who died on Tuesday, was many things to many people. She was multifaceted in a way that few are: she was a popular, well-respected, beloved iconoclast, a true original, and she also radiated the self-referential camp of a celebrity impersonator.
She operated both as a person and as an idea: Dolly seemed to consciously ‘do’ Dolly. A songwriter, musician, actress, philanthropist, advocate, mogul and more, she was always pivoting between different aspects of herself, and twirling those impressive embellished skirts and dresses all the while.
Someone who could sing, act and dance used to be known as a triple threat, but she was grander and more cherished than that.
Unlike the stars who want you to believe they’re from nowhere so that they can play anywhere, she was ‘proud of being from the South’, she wrote in her 1994 autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business – in particular, from Sevier County, Tennessee, ‘back in the hollers at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains’.
‘I’d rather be rocky road than vanilla,’ she said.
She would praise human rights and scripture in the same sentence, and made it clear that she valued gay and trans people. Her ever-shifting presence, both aesthetic and ideological, suggested she was in search of something and not ashamed if people knew it.
But there seemed to be no set destination, no fixed political orientation, no guiding principle except that music is manna and every person is deserving of dignity and respect.
[...] What Zohran Mamdani is doing to popularise class consciousness today, Dolly had already done with ‘9 to 5’, with its upbeat critique of ‘a rich man’s game, no matter what they call it/And you spend your life putting money in his wallet.’
Unlike ‘Islands in the Stream’, her duet with Kenny Rogers written by the Bee Gees, ‘9 to 5’ doesn’t mix its metaphors: ‘You’re in the same boat with a lot of your friends/Waiting for the day your ship’ll come in/And the tide’s gonna turn and it’s all gonna roll your way.’ The percussive instrumentation, a rhythm she tapped out with her acrylic fingernails to mimic the sound of a typewriter, anticipated the high-femme production flourishes of artists like Cardi B and Saucy Santana.
Central to Dolly Parton’s appeal was her appreciation of different ways of seeing the world; her interpretative generosity is what I will miss most about her. (One example: she found it flattering to be reimagined by drag queens.)
It seems like this was a quality that came from her upbringing – the creativity and resourcefulness that poor people display every day, which she sings about in ‘Coat of Many Colours’, one of her many masterpieces of compressed storytelling, a novel in three minutes.
[...] It might be the smallest dint of her brilliance that even a prosaic turn of phrase in the book, ‘people have a strange way of looking at stars,’ has the brilliance of an opening lyric (‘just the fact that we refer to certain people as “stars” is a little weird’).
Her ‘Tennessee Mountain Home’, where ‘life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh’, was the twinkle in her eye, and Dolly, who’s gone back to stardust, is still the twinkle in ours.
elle-elle-tee | a day ago
If that's not a political orientation don't know what is.
xixbia | 18 hours ago
The article also compares her actions with that of Mamdani. Pretty weird to do that and claim no political orientation.
What they mean is she didn't have a strong party affiliation. But you don't need to affiliate with a party to have a political orientation.
[OP] marketrent | a day ago
Excerpts from article by McSweeney's Niela Orr:
It’s an understatement to say that Dolly Parton, who died on Tuesday, was many things to many people. She was multifaceted in a way that few are: she was a popular, well-respected, beloved iconoclast, a true original, and she also radiated the self-referential camp of a celebrity impersonator.
She operated both as a person and as an idea: Dolly seemed to consciously ‘do’ Dolly. A songwriter, musician, actress, philanthropist, advocate, mogul and more, she was always pivoting between different aspects of herself, and twirling those impressive embellished skirts and dresses all the while.
Someone who could sing, act and dance used to be known as a triple threat, but she was grander and more cherished than that.
Unlike the stars who want you to believe they’re from nowhere so that they can play anywhere, she was ‘proud of being from the South’, she wrote in her 1994 autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business – in particular, from Sevier County, Tennessee, ‘back in the hollers at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains’.
‘I’d rather be rocky road than vanilla,’ she said.
She would praise human rights and scripture in the same sentence, and made it clear that she valued gay and trans people. Her ever-shifting presence, both aesthetic and ideological, suggested she was in search of something and not ashamed if people knew it.
But there seemed to be no set destination, no fixed political orientation, no guiding principle except that music is manna and every person is deserving of dignity and respect.
[...] What Zohran Mamdani is doing to popularise class consciousness today, Dolly had already done with ‘9 to 5’, with its upbeat critique of ‘a rich man’s game, no matter what they call it/And you spend your life putting money in his wallet.’
Unlike ‘Islands in the Stream’, her duet with Kenny Rogers written by the Bee Gees, ‘9 to 5’ doesn’t mix its metaphors: ‘You’re in the same boat with a lot of your friends/Waiting for the day your ship’ll come in/And the tide’s gonna turn and it’s all gonna roll your way.’ The percussive instrumentation, a rhythm she tapped out with her acrylic fingernails to mimic the sound of a typewriter, anticipated the high-femme production flourishes of artists like Cardi B and Saucy Santana.
Central to Dolly Parton’s appeal was her appreciation of different ways of seeing the world; her interpretative generosity is what I will miss most about her. (One example: she found it flattering to be reimagined by drag queens.)
It seems like this was a quality that came from her upbringing – the creativity and resourcefulness that poor people display every day, which she sings about in ‘Coat of Many Colours’, one of her many masterpieces of compressed storytelling, a novel in three minutes.
[...] It might be the smallest dint of her brilliance that even a prosaic turn of phrase in the book, ‘people have a strange way of looking at stars,’ has the brilliance of an opening lyric (‘just the fact that we refer to certain people as “stars” is a little weird’).
Her ‘Tennessee Mountain Home’, where ‘life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh’, was the twinkle in her eye, and Dolly, who’s gone back to stardust, is still the twinkle in ours.
SquidTheRidiculous | a day ago
Why is this so alien to so many people?
"Buh, buh what if they come from a BAD™️ GROUP?" no such thing. Next question.
[OP] marketrent | a day ago
Although I’m relatively unfamiliar with her oeuvre, her insightful lyricism is a throughline ubiquitous in music.