Dolly Parton, I have to assume, really hates rock music.
Perhaps that’s unfair; perhaps she just doesn’t care about or understand rock music, but I think it’s more charitable to read this album as a rejection and satire of rock than it is to assume this is what Dolly genuinely thinks rock music is.
The official story is that Dolly felt bad about her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, since she’s never played anything even close to rock music, not that that’s stopped any number of acts who made country, blues, R&B, funk, or hip-hop music from being inducted. In any case, she decided to rectify the situation by dragging out has-beens (and fellow Hall of Famers) like Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, and Journey’s Steve Perry to give their songs lazy do-overs so that future museum-goers will look at Dolly’s entry and go “Ah, of course! Because of that Rockstar album she did, which is a rock classic just like Dark Side of the Moon or Led Zeppelin IV.”
I can readily buy the idea of Dolly making an album this tacky because, well, that’s kind of her thing. But I find it harder to buy that she put out this album under the logic recounted above, because she’s also a smart lady and I’d hate to think that her idea of what constitutes essential classic rock is the same as your average hick’s: Aerosmith, REO Speedwagon and Kid Rock make the cut, but there’s no Kinks, no Velvet Underground, Bowie or Ramones. It seems to me that the entire album is a middle finger to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the rockism that inspires all such ventures. This is how rock music sounds to people who hate rock. It’s a near-perfect Case Against Rock; you might think that there’s surprising restraint in omitting Bon Jovi, Red Hot Chili Peppers, or Nickelback from this project, but it’s hard for Dolly Parton to limbo under a bar that low.
To be clear, I think that my feelings about Dolly Parton are about the same as those of most people that I’ve met: that she, like Monroe or Mansfield before her, plays the dumb blonde sexpot rather cannily; can always be counted on to give a pithy quote when you need one; is admirable for her work for numerous charities, including LGBT causes which stands out in the often-homophobic world of country music; that her original “I Will Always Love You” is one of the most passionate and convincing love songs ever written and far more tolerable than Whitney Houston’s melismatic version; and that “Jolene” alone would cement her status as one of the great songwriters. Oh, and “Islands in the Stream” will always be a karaoke classic. That’s about as far as my thoughts on her go.
But I heard, and really liked, her version of “Let It Be”, featuring Paul and Ringo, and decided to give the whole album a spin. “Let It Be”’s never been one of my favourite Beatles songs, and actually serves as quite a good microcosm of everything wrong with rock: the histrionics, the lumbering smacks on the drums (and from the usually so interesting and sympathetic Ringo!), the vague gesturing at an unearned spiritual grandeur, the empty and near-secular invocation of “mother Mary” and stultifying church organ; and, in common with the other Beatles hymnal “Hey Jude”, the endless repetition: “Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be”, and on and on and on with vaguely different intonations. It’s a shame because it’s such a pretty melody and so almost unselfconscious that it cries out to be performed with the restraint of an actual hymn in a real church; and, since Dolly’s version, against the odds – it was originally recorded, for God’s sake, for a 9/11 compilation – is less histrionic than the Beatles’ original, I like it more.
That restraint isn’t evidenced anywhere else on Rockstar. “Stairway to Heaven” and “Free Bird” go on and exhaustingly on as they always have, despite some quite plaintive piano early on in the latter number, and these new versions are near-soundalikes. Even the virtuoso solos are recreated note-for-note. Why bother? Why invite Lizzo of all people to perform with you on “Stairway to Heaven” and, rather than get her to do some crazy Jethro Tull jazz flute, or upset the purists by adding a rap verse, just get her to half-arse some tooting that any session musician could be playing, and that changes nothing about the arrangment, which ends up sounding like one of those recordings cheap movies and karaoke machines use when they can’t licence the original?
Oddly, this isn’t even Dolly’s first time singing “Stairway”; a fine, bluegrass-y rendition with a few new verses closes her 2002 album Halos & Horns; 21 years ago, she could evidently be bothered doing something with the song. The only original thing in 2023’s “Stairway” is the hilarious moment after the penultimate verse when she decides to add a brief chorus to this chorus-less song: “Stairway to Heaven, stairway to Heaven!” Oh wait, no, that added chorus already featured on the 2002 version. Never mind.
For all that, though, there is a certain karaoke-like pleasure to this new “Stairway”, and it’s when Dolly reaches the heavy-rockin’ final verse (“And as we wind on down the road…”) and squeaks and squawks her heart out like she’s doing the best Robert Plant pisstake I’ve ever heard. It’s such a wildly pretentious and absurd song that it’s almost impossible to cover it without a tongue in one’s cheek and a bustle in one’s hedgerow. Rolf Harris did it, the Leningrad Cowboys did it, and now Dolly’s doing it. That’ll teach Plant not to deign to duet with her. Every other living artist she’s covered did. Prince and Freddie Mercury fans should count themselves lucky that their heroes have passed on; they’re spared the embarrassment of hearing their heroes’ forced banter and audibly plastered-on grins:
STEVIE NICKS: Who’s up first?
DOLLY: Well Stevie, you go, it’s your song.
STEVIE: Yeah, but Dolly, it’s your album.
See? No-one involved even wants to be singing. It’s really just like karaoke, only usually there are loads of show-offy stage kids there who just can’t wait to showcase all the showtune routines they’ve memorised or rap verses they’ve forgotten are full of language one doesn’t rap in polite company, and only a few embarrassed party poopers who have to be literally pushed on stage. Dolly can’t even convince one of rock’s great vocalists to sing one of her own songs without pushing.
DOLLY: Hey Joan, don’t you just hate it when you love somebody so much you just let them treat you any way they want to?
JOAN JETT: Sure do, Dolly. Makes me hate myself.
DOLLY: Yeah! And I hate it when I hate myself! Well, you wrote a song about it. Grab your guitar and let me sing along with you.
Yikes. Who writes this crap? I know we’re not meant to really buy that this is off-the-cuff studio banter – modern recording techniques are far too sterile for us to ever again hear the kind of spontaneous wit and creative imperfection that you get on Beatles or early Dylan albums – but Christ, soap operas have less robotic dialogue. So do infomercials. Just imagine:
DOLLY: Hey Joan, don’t you just hate it when you love steaks so much that you just keep eating them, no matter how fatty they are?
JOAN: Sure do, Dolly. Makes me hate eating steaks.
DOLLY: Yeah! And I hate it when I hate steak! Well, you’ve created a lean mean grilling machine to fix that problem. Grab your Joan Jett Grill and tell me all about it.
Ever since 3 Feet High and Rising you can’t listen to a hip-hop album, no matter how great, without sitting through several quickly-tiresome skits, but on occasion you hear one that’s genuinely a creative concept, communicates its ideas meaningfully, and is performed by people who sound like actual humans talking the way humans do. I hope to God some intern with dreams of Hollywood or daytime television scripted these moments, but I fear the worst: opener “Rockstar”, one of a smattering of new songs written in a passable attempt at the cock-rock idiom, credits Parton as its sole writer and, between verses, the dialogue tells a dreary story about a young Dolly wanting to grow up to rock and roll and her dad telling her she’s an idiot. It’s just like the opening of Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, but there’s no wit, no readily apparent irony, and it doesn’t rock hard.
The closest we come to wit anywhere in Rockstar‘s staggering 2hr 21m runtime* is “I Dreamed of Elvis”, a novelty song in which, as promised, Dolly dreams about meeting the King. He tells her that he always wanted to cover “I Will Always Love You”, but, for some reason, just…didn’t get around to it, or something-? Elvis in the song blames Colonel Tom Parker, because it’s easy to blame him for anything you don’t like or wish was different about Elvis’ career. It’s easy to write this off as shameless necromantic self-promotion, and perhaps we should, but then again the whole thing is framed as a dream so it can be read as self-deprecation. I’m sure a lot of songwriters dream of being covered by Elvis, or whoever the equivalent rock god of their era is, but most of them wouldn’t have the good humour to admit to it.
On the other hand, Dolly also works that particular song in elsewhere. Perhaps she’s still sore about Whitney’s version, and how much more widely-heard it is than her original. Just as she’s wrapping up “Wrecking Ball” in duet with her god-daughter Miley Cyrus, “I Will Always Love You” just slips out. She can’t help it. Maybe she was glad of the brief bit of respite from FM radio snooze-rock; there are thirty tracks and as many high-profile guest performers on this album, so the recording sessions must have been sprawling. Singles have been appearing sporadically since May, and the album finally appeared in November. So making “Wrecking Ball” over as the achey country ballad it deserves to be must have felt like walking on familiar ground after swimming through a swamp, a swamp of sludgey, gooey, icky ROCK; her chemistry with Miley Cyrus feels unforced, which is probably the case. Why else include a Miley Cyrus cover on what is ostensibly a RAWK MUSIC collection? She’s done mainstream country, teen pop, dirrty South-lite, weird psychedelia and synthy new wave, among others, but her name has never really conjured up “rock and roll” as an association, even less so than other questionable guest stars here such as Melissa Etheridge, Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes fame, or Sheryl Crow. It’s true, Miley’s gorgeously cracked voice has, in the last few years, proven a perfect match for grungy material like Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?”, Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” and Hole’s “Doll Parts”, but you may notice that all of those are cover versions and most of them aren’t even studio recordings let alone singles. No, I think Dolly just likes spending time with her god-daughter, though her choice of “Wrecking Ball” is mildly frustrating when “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” is such a great song and practically made for a register like Dolly’s.
But then, “Wrecking Ball” is easily the better-known song, and in almost all cases here, it’s a band’s best-known, most sickeningly overplayed song, that has been picked for reworking. Why, when doing a Stones song, does she look past aching country ballads like “Wild Horses”, “Angie” and “Sweet Black Angel” in favour of the primitive “Satisfaction”? Why does she pick the song, out of every Blondie recording in existence, the farthest from rock in “Heart of Glass”? Because these are the ones that have been played to death on American rock radio. Spoiled for choice when it comes to irritating Queen songs, she goes for a medley of “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You”. I think I’d hate rock music too if these were the rock tunes I kept hearing. In fact, I’m listening to some of these tracks for the second, third or fourth time as I compose this, and I think I do hate rock.
This has to be intentional. Dolly is, let’s face it, pretty old these days and her voice is audibly torn and shot, yet still holds power and grace. She has the opportunity to choose material and arrangements that take advantage of the weight of history in that famous voice. Glen Campbell, Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker released their most haunting albums in their final decades. Willie Nelson is currently putting out that very same kind of material; see, for instance, “I Don’t Go to Funerals”.
But the supreme example is Johnny Cash, whose last decade of albums on the American Recordings label featured thoughtfully chosen covers of rock songs by Beck, U2, Soundgarden, Depeche Mode and, most famously, Nine Inch Nails, all of which make the originals more or less redundant. But Cash and his producer Rick Rubin evidently liked rock music, and wanted to imbue these songs with the same gravitas with which Cash covered Hank Williams, Vera Lynn, or old Christian spirituals. Rockstar is directly opposed to American Recordings in its purpose.
But it is successful in that purpose. Yes, I’ve always hated the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but now I hate rock and roll itself, and not only the Peter Framptons, Bob Segers and Pat Benatars that actually feature here. No, I never want to hear Blue Öyster Cult, Bachman-Turner Overdrive or Boston ever again. No, no, it’s more than that. I don’t want to hear Nirvana, T. Rex or The Clash. I don’t even want to hear Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly or Big Mama Thornton. It’s over. I need to hear some George Jones, Porter Waggoner, Loretta Lynn, and most especially, early Dolly Parton: so as a marketing exercise, obviously this is successful. As a satirical statement, it might be worth five stars. But as an actual album of music to listen to, this is one-star stuff, and either way I’ll never play it again.
*Note: This album is longer than The White Album, longer than The Wall, much longer than Exile On Main Street. It’s as long as two Blonde On Blondes, or five-and-a-half Ramoneses.