Dolly Parton BEYOND COMPARE
There’s a fantastic opening two lines to 9 to 5, the theme tune Dolly Parton wrote for the ground-breaking 1980 comic movie which Dolly later transformed into a stage musical, that always stop me in my tracks. “Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen/ Pour myself a cup of ambition.” It’s genius!
Somehow Dolly manages to bring a gritty positivity to the battle of sexes while also being ironic, all to a thigh-slapping beat. And as I talk to the global sensation that is Dolly Parton, I constantly catch sight of the razor-sharp mind and wry sense of humour, cloaked in those famous perky Southern vowels and big hair, that power this country music icon.
“That’s one of those lines as a songwriter when you just think, thank you, God,” Dolly explains. “When I wrote that song, I was thinking about how you’re getting up and stumbling to the kitchen because that’s what you always do to pour a cup of coffee, and then all of a sudden that line just came to me. I got so excited. It’s all about your first cup trying to wake up, whether it’s coffee or tea or cola, to get you started and motivated. And I said, ‘oh my God, a cup of ambition!’”
When she played the song on set for her co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, they were blown away. “Lily and I had goosebumps,” Jane has said since. “We knew it would become a huge hit and anthem.” It did. Today 9 to 5 is a feminist anthem, a term Dolly doesn’t identify with even though she says she’s “all for women”.
Since the film is about three female employees who plot to get even with their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot of a boss”, who in Dolly’s words later in the song is one of those executives who, “just
