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Label: Dolly Records
Sound/Style: Mixture of country and contemporary country-pop
By Steve Morley
Dolly Parton’s public persona is as carefully manicured as her long, pointed nails, layered with glitzy polish that adorns but never fully masks the singer’s upbringing in a one-room rural shack in the mountains of East Tennessee. Parton expertly plays the hillbilly card she was dealt, but her multimillion-dollar success makes it clear she’s no fool -- an assertion she made in 1967 on her first Top 30 single, "Dumb Blonde." Four decades later, Dolly is making the same point on Backwoods Barbie, her first mainstream country album since divorcing herself from Nashville’s music machine in the late 1990s, after the country industry handed walking papers to its old guard in favor of a new crop of young stars. If one had to interpret the anger and hurt that burns from within several seemingly garden-variety love songs, it’d be a good guess that this disc is Dolly’s delayed answer to being spurned by Nashville. Her vigorously-sung take on the Smokey Robinson classic "The Tracks of My Tears" pointedly portrays a person hiding heartbreak behind a smiling exterior, while the rich, sports-car-driving character who Parton dismisses as clueless in "Shinola" could just as easily be a fickle young music executive. ("Your attitude stinks and I hate it/ You’re arrogant, cocky and rude/ You’re selfish, conceited and jaded/ Everything’s all about you.")
The title track is a one-two-punch that returns to Dolly’s early ‘70s sound, reaffirming her legendary status as the writer of classics like "Coat of Many Colors." Like that real-life story, "Backwoods Barbie" is also upfront and personal about the pain of being judged-this time, on the basis of her makeup-laden image. Dolly’s partly self-mocking lyrics admit to adopting showbiz trappings while asserting that there’s a thinking, feeling human being underneath the costume. ("I’m just a backwoods Barbie in a push-up bra and heels/ I might look artificial, but where it counts, I’m real/ And I’m all dolled up and hopin’ for a chance to prove my worth/ And even backwoods Barbies get their feelings hurt.")
Parton has written many songs alluding to the faith of her Pentecostal childhood, and while she prefers to describe herself as "spiritual" rather than Christian, the track "Jesus and Gravity" suggests that her faith is a major source of strength, as well as a means of getting grounded when pride causes a fall. ("Something comes along and knocks me right back on my knees/ And I’ve got somethin’ lifting me up, somethin’ holding me down/ Somethin’ to give me wings and keep my feel on the ground/ I’ve got all I need/ Jesus and gravity.")
The album’s first single, "Better Get to Livin’," encapsulates Dolly’s country wisdom and no-nonsense spirit, while also incorporating golden rule values. ("You better get to livin’, givin’/ Don’t forget to throw in a little forgivin’ and love along the way/ You better get to knowin’, showin’/ A little bit more concern about where you’re goin’…")
Dolly’s commercial savvy shows on amped-up nuggets like "Drives Me Crazy," her banjo-meets-rock-guitar remake of the Fine Young Cannibals’ 1989 hit, but she covers soulful country territory as well, spotlighting the versatility that made her an international star. That stylistic range has resulted in a divided Dolly-one who belongs both in Hollywood and the holler. This downtown-meets-down-home dichotomy is, ironically, part of the reason she fights to defend herself from an image she herself created. While Dolly ‘s recent bluegrass albums reconnected the singer to her mountain roots, Backwoods Barbie is a more self-conscious effort, and one that clearly spells out the contradiction that is, and will always be, Dolly Parton.
Audio Clips
"Better Get To Livin'"
"Made Of Stone"
"Drives Me Crazy"
"Backwoods Barbie"
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