Transcript: Culture chat — the unknowable Dolly Parton

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat — the unknowable Dolly Parton’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. Today we are talking about the great Dolly Parton and her new album, which came out today. It’s called Rockstar. This album purports to be Dolly’s first-ever rock album. It is mostly her singing covers of rock songs with the artists that originally performed them. Here she is singing “Let It Be” with Sir Paul McCartney. 

[‘LET IT BE’ BY DOLLY PARTON PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Today we’ll talk about the album and we’ll talk about Dolly, because over recent years we have deified her. She’s larger than life and she’s become a kind of saint. My guests and I have thoughts about what has made her an exception to the rule. Joining me in the New York studio is Anna Nicolaou. She works 9 to 5 as our US media correspondent. (Laughter) And she just got back from a reporting trip to the Country Music Awards in Nashville. What a way to make a living. (Laughter) Hi, Anna.

Anna Nicolaou
Thanks for having me back after I scolded you about Taylor a few weeks ago. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Anytime. It’s encouraged. And from London, her smile is like a breath of spring. Her voice is soft like summer rain. It is not Jolene. It’s FT food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little. 

Harriet Fitch Little
Wow. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Harriet is also . . . (Laughter) 

Anna Nicolaou
I really like this.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Do we like this?

Anna Nicolaou
I like it. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, good.

Harriet Fitch Little
It feels so beautiful to have Dolly’s words applied to me, even though they’re by you, Lilah, they’re, it’s just wonderful. It’s lifted my day. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, good. Harriet, you are our resident Dollyhead, a longtime fan. Welcome and thanks for being here. 

Harriet Fitch Little
Thank you so much. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so as we begin to introduce the album, I will say just a couple of things. One is that it’s long. There are 30 tracks. It is also decisively rock, not country, for which Dolly is normally known. Nine of the songs are new originals, but the majority are these rock covers, which she says are inspired by the musical taste of her husband of 57 years, the mysterious Carl. Let’s talk about the album first and what you make of it. Maybe, Harriet, we’ll start with you. What did you think? 

Harriet Fitch Little
Lilah, I mean, I feel like if you wanted serious opinions on Rockstar, the album, you would have got a music critic on. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s true. (Laughter)

Harriet Fitch Little
Instead, you have me. And the extent to which I can offer serious opinion, I’m not sure. I mean, I think there are lots of things to admire on this, Dolly’s 49th album. So, you know, if you don’t like this one, there’ll be another one along soon enough that you will like.

Lilah Raptopoulos
49, yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little
I mean . . . but I think something that does come through on the album is how Dolly really can connect with songs emotionally. We should say it’s really rare for her to do covers, right? And some of these aren’t covers, but lots of them are. My favourite song on the album was the Miley Cyrus duo on “Wrecking Ball”. (Chuckle) if you remember the cultural moment around that coming out, I think that was not considered an emotional song and that was not sort of what it sort of became known for in popular culture at the time. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
It became known for Miley Cyrus just swinging on a giant wrecking ball, right? 

[‘WRECKING BALL’ BY DOLLY PARTON PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Our producer, Lulu, called “Wrecking Ball” . . . she said it sounded like two screaming cats in a bag. And I resent that. I actually . . . 

Anna Nicolaou
I hated it. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
You hated it? (Laughter)

Anna Nicolaou
I mean, I love the original “Wrecking Ball”. I view it as a pristine work of art. I’m not joking. It sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. Yeah. This was like, “Wrecking Ball” was maybe the only song where I was, like, this is just too much. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Interesting. So what was your thought overall about that? 

Anna Nicolaou
Overall, I mean, the album was absurd. (Chuckle) I think it reflects kind of who she is, though, right? That, like, she’s this prolific songwriter who’s written thousands of songs, obviously knows what she’s doing, but doesn’t take herself very seriously or too seriously. And I think it’s just supposed to be fun. But yeah, I mean, it felt like listening to a karaoke soundtrack or like the Rent soundtrack, which is not a bad thing. But yeah, I mean, it’s a little ridiculous. 

[‘EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE’ BY DOLLY PARTON PLAYING]

Harriet Fitch Little
I think that this album could actually give you quite a false impression of Dolly Parton’s musical output. You know, she’s in her mid-seventies, but I was thinking about why she is so much still a part of popular culture. And obviously, a lot of that is, you know, just things will come on to in terms of her character. But she’s also been incredibly prolific and continues to be prolific. She is actually still putting out a huge amount of new material. You know, last year, she co-wrote a book with James Patterson and decided to put out a whole soundtrack to accompany the book of music, you know, original music related to the book. So, you know, it’d be a pity if anyone listened to this album, or more likely, you know, just listened to this podcast and thought, you know, Dolly’s just, sort of like, washed up doing covers. I think that absolutely isn’t the case. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I feel like I would be a terrible critic because I just think you’re both right. Like, I love that you loved “Wrecking Ball”, Harriet. (Laughter) And I love, it didn’t feel to me like it mattered, I almost didn’t even care about what was on the album. I didn’t care about whether it was, like, technically good. I just wanted to hang out with Dolly. And this was, like, this silly thing that she got to do and she has the power to do, that we are like, with her.

[COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, So let’s talk about who Dolly Parton is before we get into her kind of role in culture. The woman is nearly 80. She’s 77 years old. She’s been performing for 65 of those years. I’ve been thinking about it and really everyone knows at least a few of her songs, even if they don’t realise that they know them. And everyone listening can probably picture her in their mind, right? Even the outline of her figure, like big lips, big smile, big hair, big boobs, little waist. You know, these like, rhinestone outfits. It’s like we all know Dolly. But not everyone knows quite why she’s become the icon that she has. So here’s a few facts. Dolly was born very poor. One of 12 kids in a one-room cabin in rural Tennessee. She started performing at 12, and over the years she’s won 10 Grammys, had 53 nominations. She’s written thousands of songs like the iconic “I Will Always Love You”, many others. Maybe, Anna and Harriet, you can help me? 

Anna Nicolaou
“Here You Come Again” for me . . .  

Harriet Fitch Little
“9 to 5” . . . 

Anna Nicolaou
“Jolene” . . .  

Harriet Fitch Little
“Love Is Like a Butterfly” . . .  

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes. Anna, what did we miss, like, from the industry? How do people see her in the industry? Are there any other facts that we should know? 

Anna Nicolaou
I would say from the industry side, she’s still, I mean, her celebrity has kind of overtaken everything in a sense. She’s like this living legend, but she’s extremely important still in country music. Like, I was in Nashville last week for non-Dolly reasons. And as soon as you get off the plane, her face is everywhere. I would say it’s, maybe Dolly, Elvis and Johnny Cash are the three faces you will see on every T-shirt and mural and hat just throughout the city. So I think she’s still such a big core piece of country music and music in general. And just like, I think it’s quite rare for an artist who has been doing this for so long to still be so relevant in kind of contemporary culture. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, Yeah. And just to add to that, she had an acting career. She was at 9 to 5 that was nominated for an Oscar. And also she’s a philanthropist, she’s an advocate for queer rights . . .

Anna Nicolaou
She has theme park . . .

Lilah Raptopoulos
She has a theme park called Dollywood. 

Harriet Fitch Little
She unites all those things together. And if you work at Dollywood and you want to pursue higher education, it will be fully funded by Dolly Parton. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. So she has sort of like created a web. 

Anna Nicolaou
Yeah, she’s like Disney. That’s how I think of her, honestly in so many ways. I don’t think I’m in contemporary Disney where everyone hates Bob Iger or whoever it might be. But like this, like, American nostalgia and idealism of, like, going to Disneyland when you were a kid. And this concept of this country that may have never even really existed but I think, like, people still want to believe in what, like, they can just come from nothing and have a really big dream and become whatever you want to be, that’s such a, that’s Dolly in a nutshell, right? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, let’s get into it then. You know, at this point, we know who Dolly is as a person, but over the past 10 years or more, she’s become a lot more. Like, she’s cemented herself as what I’ve read described as this kind of secular American saint. And I would love to spend the rest of our time talking about Saint Dolly. Harriet, you’ve been a fan of Dolly Parton for like a decade. Can you tell us why? How did you get inducted into the Cult of Dolly? 

Harriet Fitch Little
Well, you come to the right person, Lilah, because I am wearing a T-shirt that says Saint Dolly on it as we speak. It’s normally a pyjama itself, but I was there ironing it at 6am this morning (laughter) to try and make it vaguely work-appropriate. My boyfriend was ironing his work shirts and just sort of looking at my life (laughter), thinking, is this a joke? 

Anna Nicolaou
I might be ordering one for you. 

Harriet Fitch Little
I felt a bit really wanted to come on this episode, but I also felt a bit nervous talking about Dolly as someone who, you know, I love a lot of her songs, but I don’t have any particular affinity with country music and just . . . I suppose I spent a lot of time this week trying to understand why I find her so interesting. And OK, this is my sort of, like, pitch to you. Imagine you lined up all the celebrities in the world, living or dead, and then you asked them all, and you can have the fans there as well. You also ask all the fans. You say, like, if you could go back and live your life over, you know, when it comes to business decisions, the, like, creative output that you’ve put out when it comes to, like, how you’ve managed your personal life and, like, the fact of your celebrity and what you’ve done with your money, like, if you could go back, like, what would you have done differently? And I really do believe that the person who is sitting at the sort of like shining end of that spectrum is Dolly Parton in terms of all those things. What I suppose I found very, very interesting is that the person who has managed this with the most grace out of anyone in the world is born one of 12 children, child star, while still in, like, immense poverty in an industry controlled by men who never saw her as, you know, a successful solo artist. The fact that, you know, the person who has done everything the best is also that person — I do think that is quite incredible. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. Anna, what do you think? 

Anna Nicolaou
I think it’s an absolute truth she’s enormously accomplished. I think my struggle with Dolly, in the name of my future memoir, is that I don’t feel like I know her. She’s ambitious to the point that I find it hard to relate to, if that makes sense. She just has this, like, extremely fierce persona that she puts on. And I don’t know if it’s literally just who she is, and that’s how she is all the time. But yeah, I think I struggle with feeling like I just still don’t really know who she is. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
But is that a good thing or a bad thing? 

Anna Nicolaou
Neither. I don’t think it’s a good or bad thing. I mean, it’s clearly like how she’s chosen to go about her life and career. But, like, when I . . . I saw her at this event, like this was maybe four or five years ago. It was this whole night honouring her. And she went up to make a speech and she was performing from the first second, like, there was no moment where I felt like she was, you know, choked up or, like, sincere. Do you know what I mean? And it’s not in a bad way. Like, she was just like immediately cracking jokes and she was immediately entertaining us at this event that was supposed to be to honour her. And I think that’s just how she always is. And there’s something with that that I find hard to crack. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, I think it’s funny for that to be sort of an unsettling thing about her that also gives her more power is, like, is she being real or fake? Because I’ve always thought of her as this kind of marketing genius, like, because of course she’s very in control of her image. But the image that she’s sort of chosen or that she has is this, like, delicious kind of sparkly outfit, cute voice, kind of like ideal Americana marketing image. So, like, you would think it has to be fake. But then, like, she somehow found a way to be both fake and real at the same time. And maybe that just means that it’s real. 

Harriet Fitch Little
Yeah. Do you know who she’s like? (Inaudible overlapping speech)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Who?

Harriet Fitch Little
She’s like the Queen of England. (Laughter)

Anna Nicolaou
It all comes back to the Queen. 

Harriet Fitch Little
If you think about the way . . . (Laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. That was the Queen of England.

Harriet Fitch Little
Happens when you get London on the line . . .

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter) Exactly.

Harriet Fitch Little
If you think about the way the queen dressed, it was so weird and sort of outside of any contemporary understanding or even like non-contemporary understanding of fashion. It was just like the queen. She was just the queen. And I think we all believe that probably when she went home in the evenings, it’s not like she was getting changed into a pair of tracksuit bottoms and, you know . . . like, she still probably acted like the queen. And I think Dolly Parton just, yeah, I don’t believe there’s sort of a shell that’s waiting to be cracked open and there’s like, you know, this fully tattooed woman underneath, which is what some people think about her, that she’s covered in tattoos in every part of her body you can’t see. 

Anna Nicolaou
(Laughter) And maybe it’s just her coping mechanism, like, that’s how she dealt with hardship from a very young age, you know. Not even the dressing up, but just like focusing on the good — it seems like that’s very much what she does. And, like, she’s all about things that sound really banal, what do you say them out loud, but like unity and like finding common ground with people and focusing on, like, not taking yourself too seriously and making jokes about things, right? 

But, yeah, no, I mean, there’s something very interesting about her in her ability to kind of, like, walk this tightrope where no, yeah, no one hates Dolly. Or at least I’ve never met anyone who hates Dolly Parton. Like, I mean, she refuses to say anything about Trump, for example. Like, anything political, she just completely changes the subject or makes a joke or whatever it might be. And I feel like for a lot of celebrities, people would be really angry about that. And somehow we’re all just like, well, you know, it’s fine, it’s Dolly. 

Harriet Fitch Little
I also think everyone can love her because she’s so unreal in a way, you know. I am sticking with my metaphor of the Queen because she’s also, she was a unifier for the UK. And there’s something about Dolly that is so otherworldly. Like, even if, you know, we haven’t really talked about her look, but her look actually doesn’t really embody any man or woman’s vision of glamour. It embodies actually a child’s vision of glamour. Famously, like, Dolly’s modeled her look on what she called, like, quote, the town tramp, you know, who was the person she saw when she was like dirt poor and thought, wow, I want to be glamorous like that. So Dolly doesn’t look like anyone or act like anyone who really exists within our world. And maybe that would make it very difficult for her to reveal more or to, you know, be more than she is. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, she is who she is. And we’re constantly sort of, like, surprised by that.

OK, my last question for both of you is just like, what does it say about us that we need a Saint Dolly? (Laughter)

Anna Nicolaou
I mean, I think it’s fairly obvious, you know, everyone’s kind of looking to see themselves in someone else or to see this kind of more positive viewpoint. I think that’s what I like Dolly for personally. It just feels fun and makes it feel like life isn’t that bad. And that, I’m not a super fan. I’m a casual fan. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
What about you?

Harriet Fitch Little
I should say, despite all of this, I would probably describe myself as a casual fan, too. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter) She says in her T-shirt. 

Harriet Fitch Little
When I get on to the topic, I just feel it very strongly. I don’t know. I don’t think I want to see myself in Dolly. I think I want her to be sort of something outside of me and perhaps one of the only figures in popular culture who is outside of me in that way. Yeah, you know, the Queen is dead. Long live the queen. (Laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think for me, like, I just, I miss sort of unknowable stars. Like, she’s not on social media. She has this persona that is hard to separate from the person that she is, and maybe they’re the same. And there’s something old school icon about that that I think is, like, feels good.

Anna and Harriet, this is so great. Thank you both. We will be back in just a minute for a segment called More or Less.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Welcome back for More or Less, the part of the show where each of us gives one thing that we want more of, or less of, culturally. Harriet, let’s start with you. What do you have? 

Harriet Fitch Little
I don’t know if either of you watched a show called Jury Duty, which was out on Amazon last year but has been a sort of like slow-boiling hit ever since. Have you come across it?

Lilah Raptopoulos
No.

Harriet Fitch Little
No . . . Jury Duty is an American candid camera show that goes inside, supposedly the jury process, but in actual fact, there’s only one real juror on there and everyone else is acting and presenting the one real juror with a set of increasingly ridiculous and impossible scenarios. And I absolutely loved it. And the thing that it made me realise I want more of, is shows that follow that format but are essentially about human kindness and brilliance. Because the guy at the centre of the show, Ronald, he just continues to excel himself at every turn, you know. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, he just comes off as a good guy? 

Harriet Fitch Little
He just comes off as the best guy you have ever met and any of the jurors have ever met. So I would like more candid camera comedy that is essentially about the good in humanity rather than embarrassing people. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I love that. Perfect. Anna, what about you? 

Anna Nicolaou
Mine is short and very low-stakes. I hate that . . . do you know this, the grey flooring that looks like fake wood, but it’s grey? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes. 

Anna Nicolaou
It was in my hotel in Nashville. And they made me . . . I was so angry every time I got home. I was like, who would ever do this? Like, how did this even become a thing in the first place? And why is it still a thing? Like, you’ll see, like, ads for new apartments in New York, and I’m just so aghast. So less of that, please. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, that’s great. That’s a very good one. 

Harriet Fitch Little
Lilah, what’s yours? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I have done a restaurant one in honour of our food and drink editor who’s on the line. I want less of, like, the best for restaurants and more just like good and local. I’ve been asked to choose my two favourite new restaurants this year for our insider guide FT Globetrotter, and I’m realising that we’re all seeking out like the best taco in the city or the best-tasting menu ever. But really what I’m looking for are spots with really good food, with details that are considered of course, but also that just feel like local and happy and, like, kind of casual in their goodness and, like, places that you would actually want to become a regular at. And that’s my rec. I want less best-ever ones and more consistently and extremely nice time. 

Harriet Fitch Little
That’s great. And Lilah, if you pick up a copy of the Magazine tomorrow, you’ll find that we’ve done something quite similar in the UK where loads of FT staffers talk about their favourite local cosy pubs that aren’t in London. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Of course you did. 

Harriet Fitch Little
Same motivation. We’re on the same wavelength. I got you.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Amazing. Anna, Harriet, thank you both. 

Anna Nicolaou
Thank you. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
I will always love you, (laughter) in the words of the great Dolly Parton. 

Anna Nicolaou
Same. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
And yeah, this is a total delight. 

Harriet Fitch Little
Thank you, Lilah. 

Anna Nicolaou
Thanks, Lilah. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I highly recommend you check out the show notes. We have links in there to everything that we talked about. You can also get links to Anna and Harriet’s work. The links will get you past the paywall on FT.com. In the show notes, we have discount codes for a subscription to the FT as well, and we have ways to keep in touch with me and with the show on email, X and Instagram.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.