With Jolene, Dolly Parton Stopped Playing the “Girl Singer” and Became a Songwriting Legend
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The post With Jolene, Dolly Parton Stopped Playing the “Girl Singer” and Became a Songwriting Legend appeared first on Consequence.
Our feature series Dusting ‘Em Off looks at how classic albums found an enduring place in pop culture. Today, we dive into Dolly Parton’s Jolene.
Legend has it that Dolly Parton did something superhuman when working on her 1974 solo album, which was sit down and write “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in the same day. It’s a mind-boggling idea, yet at the same time feels totally in line with the almost mythic figure we know Parton to be. Notoriously kind and philanthropic, witty, inclusive, and welcoming, Parton is also one of the most gifted songwriters the country music world has ever seen.
Her reputation in the songwriting space crystalized with her 1974 effort, Jolene, already her thirteenth solo LP, but one that saw her stepping into the spotlight on her own terms. Then in her late 20s, Parton was still calling herself the “girl singer” in her duo with Porter Wagoner, the more established MC, artist, and Grand Ole Opry member. As Dolly’s star continued to rise, she contemplated a major change.
It arrived most vividly in the form of “I Will Always Love You,” nearly two decades before Whitney Houston would immortalize the song in the soundtrack for The Bodyguard. In true Dolly fashion, ending her professional relationship with Wagoner couldn’t be done without one last song: “Bittersweet memories/ That is all I’m taking with me/ So goodbye, please, don’t cry/ We both know I’m not what you need,” she sang. Rarely has a musical breakup sounded so kind, or so honest.
If “I Will Always Love You” was the emotional centerpiece of the album, “Jolene” was the commercial smash. Upon release, the pre-album single became Parton’s second solo number-one hit on the country charts; inspired by a red-headed bank clerk flirting with her husband, “Jolene” has remained a genre staple for all the right reasons. The deep-rooted emotion is simply structured, relying almost entirely on the brisk pace of the hand-picked guitar. Parton sings with passion and desperation as she implores this exaggerated villain to use her powers for good. It speaks to Parton’s savviness that, for all the ways she seemed too perfect to be relatable — always decked in intentionally magnified glamour, no matter the day or event — she tapped into a fear familiar to women of all walks of life.
Her solo breakout came as country started to move away from the “Nashville sound,” which had dominated radio through the 50s and 60s. First coined in 1958 in Music Reporter and expanded after a mention in Time in 1960, the term referred to a fusion of the rougher honky-tonk sounds with some of the hallmarks of jazz, pop, and bossa nova that were found in other popular genres at the time. Afterwards radio morphed into “countrypolitan,” where artists like Charley Pride and Glen Campbell welcomed lush strings and rich orchestration into their work. Into the 70s, many artists were leaning into more pop aesthetics than ever before.
Dolly Parton, though, stayed true to her East Tennessee roots and dropped a comparatively understated album. While onstage and in society she was already epitomizing the drama and intrigue of a true pop star, this album is gentle and largely acoustic, carried by the storytelling. Never to be boxed in, she found balance in the extremes with Jolene, embracing her growing stardom with increasingly intimate writing.
In the fall of 1973, Parton had released Bubbling Over, a record that swung between the kind of upbeat tracks such a title would suggest and heartbreak ballads. Jolene, meanwhile, is even more tenderhearted, and often forlorn. On “Lonely Coming Down,” she questions “where the love had gone that we had found.” During “When Someone Wants to Leave,” she confronts a difficult truth of diminishing relationships, asking, “What do you do, what do you say/ When you know they want to leave as bad as you want them to stay?” You could read this in the context of her professional breakup with Porter Wagoner — “of course” she was thinking about leaving — but Parton didn’t limit her imagination, and we shouldn’t do it for her. As a deeply empathetic songwriter, the female protagonists in her music get to be fleshed-out, messy, and comforting, depending on the tune.
In the scope of her career, Dolly of 1974 was just beginning to find her own voice. She’s credited as the sole writer on eight of the ten tracks here — and sure, they’re not all as memorable as “I Will Always Love You” or “Jolene,” but when she’s in that sweet spot, it’s visceral. Following the success of Jolene, all but one of the tracks on her next project — 1974’s Love Is Like a Butterfly — were written by Dolly and Dolly alone. Then, in 1975, Dolly was the result of her pen exclusively. With Jolene, she’d made the subtext explicit: She’s no one’s “girl singer.” She’s Dolly Parton, and that’s more than enough.
With Jolene, Dolly Parton Stopped Playing the “Girl Singer” and Became a Songwriting Legend
Mary Siroky
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