The new Dolly album was the perfect excuse to re-start the PhDolly blog and provide the Dolly take you know you need! Run, Rose, Run is out today (March 4th 2022) and for a swift but in-depth look at why you should listen to it, and listen to it carefully, read on!
Released as part of a transmedia tie-in with a book of the same name with James Patterson out on the 7th March, this transmedia storytelling, as Leigh H. Edwards describes it, is nothing new for Parton. As Edwards has also observed about Parton's post-2000s work; Run, Rose, Run continues Parton's genre eclectism (this album draws on bluegrass, country, and rock) that rearticulates a number of familiar tropes, autobiographical references and Dolly wisdom.
Dolly Parton, 'Big Dreams and Faded Jeans', Lyric video
Run, Rose, Run (and I will only be reviewing the album, not the book) adds some further "dollyisms" (the kind of sappy optimism only she can get away with) such as on album opener 'Run' with lyrics like 'then you'll bloom just like a rose kissed by the sun'. Yet this kind of sentimentality is balanced elsewhere on the album by acknowledgement of reality, whether that's regret in 'Lost and Found': 'lost count of all the countless things I've lost throughout the years'; or the references to personal 'demons' and 'secrets' that we carry around with us wearing us down.
There is still the neoliberal 'self-help' careers advice (hat tip to Leigh Edward's presentation and question to me at the International Country Music Conference last year about Parton and neoliberalism). This often draws on Parton's own autobiography of her journey to Nashville ('Big Dreams and Faded Jeans') to suggest that all we need to do is keep going (or 'running' to keep 'Driven'). However, this is undercut by the representation of struggles and dangers ('Snakes In the Grass' as other reviewers have also pointed out about the country music industry) that prevent a too rose-tinted view from getting overpowering. Whilst Dolly is still encouraging us to 'dream more' (like her self-help book of that title) the critical cynicism or 'working-class fatalism' (as described by Nadine Hubbs) that country music captures so well offers some much-needed resistance to this.
Dolly Parton, 'Blue Bonnet Breeze', Lyric video
Perhaps the album's most interesting song is 'Blue Bonnet Breeze'. The song tells the story of two lovers whose love is forbidden by their parents. The couple decide to hold a marriage ceremony (of sorts) in secret and the lovers crash 'on a field of bluebonnets', suggesting that their love had no place in the world, or at least the class-based social world of their families. This countrified Romeo and Juliet keeps the full tragic scale of Shakespeare's play and is a welcome addition to what Lydia R. Hamessley has identified as Parton's 'songs of tragedy'. Especially when Parton's media image leans on her positive and feel-good persona, this song is a timely reminder of sad-ass Dolly and how exemplary Parton is of country's emotional range.
This emotional and not to mention musical range is on full display in Run, Rose, Run. This does not reinvent the Dolly wheel but does what Emily Lordi describes as reintroducing us to Dolly. So give it a listen, and listen carefully - when we all think we know Dolly, properly listen to her songs, as there are plenty of layers and depth there!
No comments:
Post a Comment