Dolly Parton cautiously wades into politics on new rock album
Dolly Parton is used to people staring at her — it comes with the territory as one of the world’s most beloved celebrities. But long before she was a cultural icon, she caught a lot of looks with her signature style: big hair, tight skirts, high heels, long nails, heavy makeup. The aesthetic was patterned after a woman in her rural Tennessee hometown to whom everyone referred as the “town tramp” but who Parton thought was absolutely beautiful.
As a result, Parton repeatedly was told as she tried to launch her career as a country singer-songwriter: No one will ever take you seriously if you dress like that.
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“I came here when I was 18, and so I guess everybody was probably thinking they were trying to protect me. I was a country girl, too, and they thought I didn’t know any better,” Parton, 77, told The Washington Post in a recent video interview from Nashville. “And truth is, I didn’t. But the greater truth was, I didn’t care.”
Parton dismissed the critics and doubled down on the flamboyant fashions, now as much a part of her empire’s origin story as her legendary singing (more than 100 million records sold; the first female country singer to sell 1 million copies of an album) and songwriting (she has confirmed that she wrote “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” within the same short time period). This week, Parton released a photo-centric book that traces her fashion journey and career called “Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones,” written with Holly George-Warren and curated by her niece Rebecca Seaver, the director of her archive.
End of carouselIn the book, she describes a powerful country music executive, Chet Atkins, who was concerned that her “big hair and all those gaudy clothes” would hold her back. A few years later, when she became a star, she said, he dryly asked, “Ain’t you glad that you listened to me back then?” and promised he wouldn’t give her any more advice.
“Behind the Seams” delves into Parton’s denim and jumpsuits and sparkles as a rising country star in the 1970s, her elaborate gowns and sparkles as a rising Hollywood star in the 1980s, and a mix of it all — plus more sparkles — in the 1990s through the present day. But Parton’s main idea is stated plainly at the end of the book, when she emphasizes the lesson that helped propel her into superstardom: “You can’t live your life trying to please other people.” Wear what makes you feel best, she advises, and it will have a positive effect on everything else, no matter whether others think that your clothes are embedded with too many jewels.
“I just perform better when I shine,” Parton said. “When the light hits me, I like to feel the light, I like to walk in the light, whether I’m onstage or not.”
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She uses the book to answer questions that people may have always wondered: Does she ever re-wear outfits? (Of course.) How does she walk in those high heels? (They’re custom-made, but the real answer is “very carefully and very often.”) Does she ever wear flats? (That was our question, and she confirmed that she occasionally does if she’s doing a workout, but she wished they made high-heeled sneakers, because it feels “very strange.”) Who are her style icons? (RuPaul is one of them, and she loves seeing the drag queens dressing as Dolly Parton on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”)
Parton also spends a great deal of time giving credit to anyone who has helped craft her style over the years, such as her mother; her earliest makeup artist; and her longtime creative director, Steve Summers. “Seeing this book all laid out like that, it gave me a whole new appreciation for them, actually,” she said. At one point, her hairstylist started making charts to keep up with her hundreds of wigs that she began wearing when all of the “bleaching, perming, sitting under a hair dryer, and teasing” on TV and on tour became too much for her real hair.
Parton is one of our culture’s most outspoken celebrities about undergoing cosmetic surgery. (“I’ll look as young as my plastic surgeons will allow me,” she told Oprah Winfrey a few years ago, though she has been addressing the topic in interviews for decades.) Still, she doesn’t talk much about aging in the book, aside from a mention of how she doesn’t love the way her hands now look, so she wears a lot of gloves. But she’s completely open about addressing the long-stigmatized subject.
“I’ve always talked openly about anything that I’ve ever had done or might do. I say, ‘I’m a workhorse that looks like a show horse,’” she said. “So I think as long as you’re on camera, you got to make the most of everything. And if you can afford it, and you’ve got a desire to do it and you’re not scared to do it, if it makes you feel better about yourself, I’m for you doing anything.”
She’s so famous for her candor that it almost seems like a law that, if Parton is a presenter or host of an awards show, there must be a reference to her breasts. At the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she joked about security confusing her ID with her “double D’s”; at the 2019 Country Music Association Awards, the hosts noted that there were “racks” of clothing backstage, but Parton had “the biggest”; and the 2022 Academy of Country Music Awards made sure to include an Energizer Bunny-Playboy Bunny bit.
Parton reiterated that she’s very much in on the joke, and the only thing that bothers her is if someone dwells on the topic for too long. “We can’t very well ignore them, can we?” she said, before making a crack about the “elephants in the room.”
“That’s also a part of my persona and just part of what makes me, me. And I tell better jokes about them than anybody else.”
Recently, Parton has experienced something of a Dolly-ssaince. She’s always been supremely famous, but all of a sudden, there was a Netflix series and TV special and podcast and buzz about her Imagination Library and charity work and everyone realized they were absolutely obsessed with her. (Just a scan of the headlines from around 2020 and 2021: “How Dolly Parton became the world’s best-loved celebrity”; “How Dolly Parton became a secular American saint”; “Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.”)
So it was not shocking last year when she received a nomination to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; it was, however, somewhat shocking that she publicly (though kindly) asked that the nomination be revoked, because she didn’t feel she had earned it. The Rock Hall refused; ultimately, she was inducted into the 2022 class.
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Parton said she truly didn’t feel as if she deserved the honor until she learned that the nomination wasn’t only for artists categorized as “rock” singers, but also for those who had an impact on many genres, such as fellow country legend Willie Nelson, who will be inducted this year.
“They often put them in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because they made that much of an influence. And when you’re as old as me and Willie Nelson, you think, ‘Well, I guess we have kind of influenced a lot of people,’” she said. “So then I thought: ‘Well, I’m not going to act ugly about it. And if they’re going to put me in there, I will accept it gracefully.’ And I did.”
Her induction directly inspired her first rock album, “Rockstar,” which will drop Nov. 17 — along with some of her new rockstar-themed ensembles, which she said reflect her rebellious attitude. The release features a few original songs and loads of famed covers and collaborations, such as “Let It Be” with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Frampton and Mick Fleetwood; “Night Moves” with Chris Stapleton; “What’s Up?” with Linda Perry; and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” with Pink and Brandi Carlile.
“Everybody that I asked did say yes,” she said of the long list of celebrity features. She would have loved to include Cher, but although they tried to make it work, they didn’t have enough time.
One track she wrote herself was “World on Fire,” which includes the lyrics: “Don’t get me started on politics./ Now how are we to live in a world like this?/ Greedy politicians, present and past,/ they wouldn’t know the truth if it bit ’em in the ass.” Many were surprised to even hear her utter “politics,” as one theory about her universal appeal is that she refuses to elaborate on anything political. Even now, Parton says the song was about no one in particular.
“I wasn’t talking about Biden and Trump any more than I was talking about all the leaders of the world when I said that line. … I might as well have said, ‘Leaders of the world, present and past, we better make a change and we better make it fast,’” she said, adding that world leaders “are just not doing what we need to do to have a world that we can be happy in.” This wasn’t political, she insisted; this was her as a concerned citizen.
The album also briefly sparked the rare Parton backlash, as Parton — a longtime advocate of the LGBTQ+ community — received criticism online for a duet on her album with Kid Rock, who recently filmed himself shooting cases of Bud Light after the brand collaborated with transgender actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
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“Well, first of all, I had already done that song with Kid Rock before that controversy even started. But I am the kind of person — I accept people for who they are. I try not to criticize, condemn things as much as I just accept people,” Parton said. “So I can’t speak for Kid Rock. I can’t speak for you. I can only speak for me. I try to love people. … All I can do is love everybody. And if they need to change, that’s between them and God.”
Parton knows a lot of people are watching her every move. She hears it all the time from the younger generation who discovered her through her appearance on her goddaughter Miley Cyrus’s show, “Hannah Montana,” or the new singer-songwriters who were inspired by her to move to Nashville.
While she remains flattered that they feel as if they can learn from her journey, she also wants them to be themselves. “Nobody should be like somebody else. Don’t try to be me,” she said. “And I never tried to be anybody else. You be you.”
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