girl gossip verge woman

I’ve always loved Dolly Parton. There’s the voice, the face, old and new (before all the plastic surgery it was beautiful, now it’s fascinating), the strength, the outlandish outfits, the glitz and the glamour, the cartoon body, invisible husband, rumoured affairs, intelligence, the giddy laugh like a yelping pup, and that bizarre mix of downright dirty talk and god-fearing wholesomeness.
And, of course, there are her songs. Like all the true country greats, Parton can sum up situations and emotions with brilliant economy. Take Jolene, one of her classics and a staple of any karaoke night. “Please don’t take him, just because you can,” the singer pleads to her rival in love, Jolene. Eight words, and you have everything - the desperation, the sense of inferiority, the appeal to Jolene’s better nature, or possibly even to her sense of sisterhood. Jolene is a beautifully crafted short story; one that could have been written by Carson McCullers. The song is a hymn to her rival’s beauty (the ivory skin, the flaming locks, the smile like a breath of spring), a humiliating confession (”He talks about you in his sleep/There’s nothing I can do to keep/From crying when he calls your name”) and, ultimately, a plea for compassion addressed straight to Jolene. At a first listening, the song may appear to be about a weak woman, but her honesty, her fighting spirit, the power of her love and her words make her anything but a victim.
Parton often turns traditional country on its head. The title and melancholia of I Will Always Love You suggests a woman clinging to her man, but, in fact, it’s about a woman walking away. She sings, “I will always love you”, not as a wail of grief but as parting solace to the weeping man she leaves behind. Typically, her songs, with their ecstatic crescendos, extol the positive - domestic idylls, the work ethic, God and self-assertion. She can be horribly saccharine, cheesy as Brie, but her powers of description are awesome. By the end of My Tennessee Mountain Home, you can see not only the junebugs and glowing fireflies, but you can hear the crickets and smell the honeysuckle of her childhood, too.

music.guardian.co.uk


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