A FUNNY THING HAPPENED LAST year when country music legend Dolly Parton was nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: She said no. While “extremely flattered,” she said in a Twitter statement, “I don’t feel that I have earned that right.” Instead, Parton said, the nomination had inspired her to start work on a rock ‘n’ roll album of her own, something she’d long wanted to do—a record, she hoped, that would make her worthy of the honor in the future.
In other words, thanks but no thanks. The upshot? The Rock Hall respectfully rejected Parton’s rejection, formally accepting her into its ranks a year ago. And the singer also kept to her word. Rockstar, the rock album Parton pledged to make, drops on November 17—a 30-track extravaganza of nine original songs and 21 covers of classic rock tunes, many performed with the original artists, including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Debbie Harry and Melissa Etheridge. Other artists who sing along with Dolly include Steven Tyler, Stevie Nicks, Pink, Sting, Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, Brandi Carlile and Lizzo.
“I’M MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES, BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON UNBEKNOWNST TO ME, I’M STILL HOT.”
“I think this is some of my best work,” Parton tells Newsweek, in an exclusive interview ahead of the album’s release later this month. “I just wanted to be true to the songs and true to the art form.”
The album is certainly a departure from Parton’s usual country fare, but departures from the norm are actually nothing new for the singer-songwriter. Parton has made a career of crossing genres, breaking barriers and disrupting traditional ideas about what a country artist, particularly a female one, can be. She pioneered the country-pop crossover with hits like “9 to 5” and “Here You Come Again,” and has also ventured into bluegrass, Christian music, disco and now, rock, with musical storytelling often focused on women and female empowerment. In addition to her musical career, she is an actor, a business mogul and a philanthropist. And she’s done it all while insisting, despite industry pressure to change, on staying true to who she is and her personal vision of her career, executed with steely determination encased in rhinestones, big hair, heels, humor and plenty of country charm.
In the process, Parton has paved the way for other country singers, especially women, from Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood to Taylor Swift and her goddaughter Miley Cyrus (who joins “Aunt Dolly” for a moving performance of her signature hit “Wrecking Ball” on the new album), to also venture into other musical genres, to try their hand at acting, to build their business brands and to generally take charge of their own career destinies.
“We’re all just trying to be Dolly,” Underwood said in a Country Music Television tribute to Parton in 2020. “She is somebody who has set an incredible example for us and paved such a path for us. If there was no Dolly, there would be no us.”
Humble but not falsely modest, her goal when she first moved to Nashville in 1964 at age, was “to be extraordinary.” Numbers help show just how well she succeeded. At her core, Parton is a songwriter: She’s written more than 3,000 songs, of which 26 have hit No. 1 on the country charts, a record for a female artist. She’s sold 100 million records worldwide. This June she was presented with three more Guinness World Records, making 10 in all, for the longest span of No. 1 hits on the U.S. country albums chart for a female singer, the most studio albums released by a female country music singer (65) and the most top-10 entries on the U.S. country albums chart for a female singer (48). She’s also won numerous awards and accolades including 11 Grammy Awards out of 51 nominations and twice been up for an Oscar.
