So, what have you been listening to lately?

[uwe]

I have Dolly's new Rockstar album - it's good fun. Not everything works, but quite a few tracks do. Just see it at what it is, a Country Diva tipping her hat to rock, it's not meant to replace Sgt Pepper or Dark Side Of The Moon in the pantheons of rock music anytime soon.

Of the covers, I think this is the strongest one:



On paper as incongruous as Whitney's version of Dolly's I Will Always Love You, it worked/works in practice.

[Basvarken]

I know Dolly takes great pride in the fact that she's very plastic. (her credo: I spent a fortune to look this cheap)

But this album is too plastic for me.

I skipped through some of the songs. And heard nothing that I like or would be remotely interested in.
It's fake rock.

[uwe]

It's pop music with rock elements sung by an established C&W artist.

It's not exactly a roots album produced by Rick Rubin  , but then Dolly has never been obsessed with that in her country career either. And she's always done pop/middle of the road when she felt like it.







Authenticity is not a standard I would hold Dolly against. She's always been honest about being a crowd pleaser first and foremost. Don't be so severe, Rob!

[westen44]

I first started listening to and watching Dolly Parton on TV when I was a kid.  I never disliked her as a person, but I've never liked her voice much at all.  I felt her best work was with Kenny Rogers, although I was never a fan of him, either.  But Dolly Parton has a major mass appeal which is undeniable.  You've got people she is closely associated with such as Emmylou Harris which I find much more appealing.  But it's Dolly which gets the attention.  People seem to love her.  I've never understood it, but I would never try to stop it.  I doubt if there are too many people you would be able to name who covered a Beatles song and were able to get Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to come over to help them out on it.  And that's just one example among many. One of my favorite sci-fi TV shows "The Orville" had almost an entire episode devoted to Dolly Parton.  Of course, that didn't surprise me.  At this point, nothing about Dolly surprises me.  Her being in the RRHOF doesn't surprise me, either, in spite of the fact that, obviously, she is nowhere close to being a rocker.  Besides that, she isn't the only one to do this sort of thing.

So here is Pat Boone.  BTW, I once saw him in person kind of by accident.  I had a Brazilian friend who had to speak at an event.  Pat Boone, for some reason, was there, too.  My friend got pretty ticked off, though, that Pat Boone thought they spoke Spanish, not Portuguese in Brazil.  That's a mistake that it's way better not to make with Brazilians. 

[Ken]

It's only relatively recent that I learned that Kenny Rogers was a bass player.

[uwe]

Most Spaniards think that people in Portugal speak Spanish too - just very badly and with a horrible accent. 

It really is like Dutch to German, we appreciate the sincere effort of our beloved neighbors in emulating the root language, doomed to failure as it might be. 

I'm with you, Emmylou Harris has a purity of tone that I don't hear with Dolly, there is more 'garbage can on a hot day' to Dolly's voice and I don't mean that negatively. But then Emmylou is perhaps more folk/Bluegrass than "real country", we'd have to ask our resident expert (Now where is Dave when you need him?).

Dolly is a piece of naive art and an artifact of times gone by - I don't think there will be another country star like her in the future so let's enjoy her while she is still around. Weird as it might sound, she is totally credible in all her artificiality, an original. I can understand why Rob Halford is besotted with her, being one himself he has a thing going for Country-, Metal- (Doro) and Pop-Divas (Madonna and Lady Gaga).

[Basvarken]

I have nothing against Dolly. I can laugh about the persona that she has created.
She used to be pretty. And so were some of her songs.

But this is a mediocre album with badly executed rock covers.
It's not just her voice (and speach impediment that has gone real severe because of too many plastic surgeries), but also the butt-ugly guitar sounds. Such as the solo guitar on Magic Man.
The infantile acting in intro of Rockstar and I Hate Myself For Loving
Et cetera

[Dave W]

It's only relatively recent that I learned that Kenny Rogers was a bass player.

Kenny was a session player on bass in Houston as early as the mid-1950s

[Dave W]

[uwe]

I have nothing against Dolly. I can laugh about the persona that she has created.
She used to be pretty. And so were some of her songs.

But this is a mediocre album with badly executed rock covers.
It's not just her voice (and speach impediment that has gone real severe because of too many plastic surgeries), but also the butt-ugly guitar sounds. Such as the solo guitar on Magic Man.
The infantile acting in intro of Rockstar and I Hate Myself For Loving
Et cetera

I think the difference between us is that you see the album as a serious, but failed artistic statement while I see it as a novelty greeting card of a C&W legend to rock music. Measured against that, it’s pleasant. Nobody buys Dolly’s albums to hear organic rock guitar sounds and she’s not Chris Stapleton either. Consider how the album came about: She was slated to be inducted into the RRHF (which should long be called Contemporary Music Hall of Fame), slightly bemused by the fact and then talked into accepting it, at which point she decided "I better do a rock track then!”. And once there at the induction ceremony, she realizes that she has cult appeal for people as diverse as Simon Le Bon and Robert Halford and that rock royalty feels warmly towards her. She didn’t wake up one morning to reinvent herself as a rock singer or to proclaim "I still have that ONE rock album in me!"

The whole thing is by no means a major work, it’s Dolly giving a wink. And if she had been inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, she would have recorded a soul & funk album.

[uwe]

I listen to Police and Purple mostly.

[Dave W]

Dolly has become a parody of her earlier real self. Sort of like the Rolling Stones.

[Basvarken]

Consider how the album came about: She was slated to be inducted into the RRHF (which should long be called Contemporary Music Hall of Fame), slightly bemused by the fact and then talked into accepting it, at which point she decided "I better do a rock track then!”. And once there at the induction ceremony, she realizes that she has cult appeal for people as diverse as Simon Le Bon and Robert Halford and that rock royalty feels warmly towards her.

That's the marketing story they concocted to justify this album. A rather naive one imho. And you fell for it.
Dolly is a smart business woman. She fills big venues all across the world.
I think it was all staged and planned.

[uwe]

Dutch conspiracy theorist! 

She's just giving the people what they want. I don't think that this album will have a greater relevance for her overall career trajectory than, say, another Christmas album. It's a novelty thing.

I relistened to all of it again yesterday, I can't work myself into a state about it. It could have been a lot more awful. Not more cringeworthy than most Blackmore's Night albums really.

"Dolly has become a parody of her earlier real self. Sort of like the Rolling Stones."

Yes, she's in character all the time. Giving the people what they want.

[Rob]

She has always claimed to be an entertainer.