Dolly Parton’s Discography: Rockstar (2023)

After being nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Dolly Parton at first refused, not believing her music fit the genre, before deciding that if she was going to be voted in then she might as well prove herself to be worthy of the accolade by recording her first full rock album.

My problem with the ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ has always been the name. Just what is rock and roll anyway? If it had simply called itself the ‘Music Hall of Fame’ none of these eligibility arguments would ever have occurred.

The original inductees were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. From the start there was a wide umbrella which allowed any artist who had cultural impact to be inducted. Nothing about any of those artists was the same, or indeed fit any kind of standard idea to help us define what ‘rock’ music means then or now.

Dolly, like the Rock Hall itself, also seems somewhat confused about the meaning of the genre. If this album had been more inspired by those original pioneers then she might have an interesting record. But sadly what ‘Rockstar’ reflects is what rock and roll came to be at the end of the 1980s – ridiculous, over blown, over produced, over made up, occasionally entertaining but mostly bloated performances with a hell of a lot of electric guitar.

Now Dolly’s fashion style has always been about tight clothing and bad make-up so on the surface levels the aesthetics of the era actually make sense for her. The opening track here ‘Rockstar’ lays out a kind of teenage dream of playing guitar and becoming something larger than life which isn’t too far a stretch from her own story. It’s a pantomime, a performance, nothing to be taken that seriously. If rock and roll is about not giving a fuck and having fun then Dolly really has taken that to heart. Whether the listeners enjoy the results doesn’t seem to be taken into account.

The problem she has is that this rock and roll rebel spirit often sounds brittle and harsh coming out of her mouth. ‘World on Fire’ is like getting in trouble from your favourite teacher. I would have loved to see Dolly do an album like Neil Young’s ‘World Record’ – something personal, beautiful and unifying rather than doom mongering. We need hope and healing from Dolly not fire and brimstone.

The rest of the record reads like a line up for rock and roll’s funeral. Dolly has always loved to collaborate but over twenty guest artists on a thirty song album is stretching the limit. It’s transparently clear she’s trying to game the streaming algorithms and using other artists for promotion. Having so many big stars do little more than back up vocals on standard cover versions just isn’t that interesting – take the boring ‘Every Breath You Take’ with Sting hovering around in the background like a bad smell.

‘Open Arms’ featuring Journey’s Steve Perry begins by sounding like one of those schmaltzy over-produced cover songs that appeared on Dolly’s late 80s / early 90s albums before becoming an overwrought power ballad.

Dolly’s then sticks closely to this 80s era on ‘Magic Man’ with Ann Wilson of Heart guesting. She goes back to the 70s with John Fogerty from CCR joining her for a middling version of ‘Long As I Can See the Light’. So far, so average.

Then we move into two songs which really should have been cut from this record. You wonder if Dolly is so clueless about rock music that she just decided to call up Kid Rock because he has the word ‘rock’ in his name. ‘Either Or’ is a murky mess that sounds like a bad bar band.

And then we move from the problematic to the even worse. The appearance of Steven Tyler on this album, considering his pending court cases, just doesn’t sit right with me. Dolly is doing her best in interviews to dismiss the criticism and to be all ‘I don’t judge’ but I just don’t see why would she want to associate herself with someone like this in the post Me-Too era. It’s disappointing to me that’s she’s put herself in the position of having to defend these men.

To me herein lies the problem with the history of rock and roll – it’s damaged women and how they see themselves, it’s promoted excess to the extreme that seems self-destructive at best and nihilistic at worst and here we have Dolly singing along with those men who’ve perpetuated this nonsense.

So when she sings ‘What has Rock and Roll Ever Done for You?’ with Stevie Nicks you can’t help but feel relieved that a lighter, more fun, camp version of Dolly is also on this album. Wouldn’t it have been cool if the whole record had just been Dolly singing with women and celebrating a different side of the rock genre?

Then we have the one song that I’ve actually seen fans responding well to – her version of ‘Purple Rain’. Honestly I think that’s just because it’s such a great song rather than anything particularly special about this version even though Dolly takes it seriously and sings it with heart and soul. The tone of the rock guitars and epic choirs sound good here.

In stark contrast ‘Baby I Love Your Way’ has the worst sounding keyboards I’ve heard since I listened to her 1980s records. This is the kind of MOR nonsense that real rock and roll wanted to set fire to. So when she sings with a real rock star like Joan Jett on ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ it sounds even more refreshing and this song comes closest to capturing the spirit of what rock and roll was about.

‘Night Moves’ sonically is the most country sounding arrangement and adding Chris Stapleton is always going to bring a touch of soulful class to any song. This one clearly appealed to Dolly’s naughty sense of humour and nostalgic heart.

Bringing Miley in to do a rocking version of ‘Wrecking Ball’ is also pretty passable, a great song that holds up well even if Dolly’s voice struggles at times. Her version of ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ adds Brandi Carlile and P!nk and while it lacks any kind of subtlety, there’s something quite cool about hearing women sing the hell out of these old man rock songs.

One of my favourite Dolly cover versions is her bluegrass arrangement of REO Speedwagon’s ‘Time For Me to Fly’ so I was looking forward to ‘Keep On Loving You’ and Kevin Cronin’s appearance. Unfortunately it’s a let down – mainly because Dolly sticks so closely to the original versions of these songs. How come bluegrass sounds timeless to me but these 80s rock songs sound eternally stuck in the past?

Interesting then that she brings Debbie Harry in for ‘Heart of Glass’, a song more in keeping with Dolly’s disco music history. The narrow idea of rock and roll is thrown away for a little moment and that’s a good thing.

Dolly sings well on ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ but unfortunately Elton John is not at his best and the end result is a little painful.

One of the better songs on here is ‘Tried to Rock and Roll Me’ which is an original Dolly song with Melissa Etheridge guesting. This song works surprisingly well because it’s more in her natural wheelhouse in terms of the lyrics, which are about taking down arrogant men. It’s classic rock with a Dolly spin and it works. Why the whole album couldn’t have been like this, I don’t know.

Back in the 70s Dolly recorded a song called ‘We Used To’ which basically ripped off ‘Stairway to Heaven’ – it appeared on one of her worst records and hasn’t much been remembered since. She has also recorded a bluegrass version of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on her Halos and Horns album. So it seems kind of redundant to cover this song again, even with Lizzo on flute. It’s over seven minutes long, totally overblown and painful to listen to by the end.

In comparison ‘We are the Champions / We Will Will Rock You’ doesn’t sound too bad and at least the lyrics are about bringing people together through positivity and uplifting tunes.

I had to google Rob Halford (sorry Judas Priest fans) and here is something I never thought I’d ever write – on ‘Bygones’ Dolly does heavy metal and it kind of works? I mean it’s not the worst thing on this record anyway.

‘My Blue Tears’ is one of her great songs from the Coat of Many Colors album, sung here in a truly awful style with Simon Le Bon (she really is pushing the definition of rock music with this one).

As much as I love Linda Perry and the song ‘What’s Up?’ it unfortunately does not suit Dolly’s voice at all. Her delivery lacks any joy or conviction and when she changes the word from ‘revolution’ to ‘resolution’ you realise how many of these songs just don’t fit Dolly’s worldview at all.

‘You’re No Good’ is nicely sung here with Emmylou and Sheryl Crow sits in for the sadly silenced Linda Ronstadt who once had a hit with the song. It’s a fine enough version but it just makes you long to listen to Linda’s smooth velvet tones.

After that we’re back to the 80s with Pat Benatar and ‘Heartbreaker’ which is as noisy and silly as it should be. Following that is the MOR ballad ‘Bittersweet’, an original written by Dolly but badly sung by Michael McDonald from the Doobie Brothers.

The other original song ‘I Dreamed About Elvis’ is the one I was actually looking forward to hearing and I’m happy to report that it’s truly off the scale BATSHIT INSANE. I laughed for five minutes straight after hearing it and had to listen to it again to just make sure I hadn’t gone mad. Only Dolly Parton could pull off a song where she’s flirting with the ghost of Elvis. Fair play to her old friend Ronnie McDowell for hamming it up on this one. This has to go down as one of her tackiest songs of all time and yet it’s got more personality than the rest of the album put together.

‘Let it Be’ is a sweet moment with the two remaining Beatles. The only problem is that a dumb electric guitar solo comes in and tries to ruin it. Still even then it’s quite lovely and I would’ve been happy to hear her do a whole album of Beatles covers rather than what we’ve got here.

Finishing this ridiculous album with a ten minute version of ‘Free Bird’ feels like the final punishment. I couldn’t even make it to the end but well done if you had the stomach for it.

My only conclusion after listening to this album? Thank god rock and roll is dead. At least Dolly and friends had fun dancing on its grave.