Remembering Dolly Parton with Jof Owen

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0:33hello everyone uh how are you uh it's been such a long time since we've spoken uh i think the last time i jumped on here to record a podcast was in christmas of last year uh and since then a lot has happened with me which i hope to fill you in on in in good time um but right now i just felt that you know i am planning to come back for sentimental garbage for a full season very soon but it just felt wrong to not mark the passing of Dolly Parton within the universe of this podcast I really do think of her as like one of the faces on Mount Rushmore of what this podcast kind of stands for which is you know a femininity and a silliness but also a sincerity that I really do believe that Dolly Parton represented and like inspired me in so much in so much of what I do and like the longer that passes between now and her death I've kind of realized how much she's informed the way I look at the world and I'm sure you feel exactly the same so please enjoy this conversation with me and my good friend Geoff Owen um we will try and be back very soon I've had quite a knackering year I'm sure you have as well and there's still loads to go but we'll have lots of very soon and in the meantime enjoy

1:57Hello and welcome to Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where our happiness depends on you. My name is Karen O'Donoghue and I'm in the same boat as a lot of my friends in that I'm really sad. And he's looking better than a body has a right to. It's Geoff Owen. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. In these sad times. These sad times? I'm still sad. Yeah, it's actually been, ever since you asked me to come on, I've actually, I've almost like really lent into mourning. in such a, like, watching all the films, re-reading books, listening to all the songs, like, in a way that I probably wouldn't normally have gone quite as heavily on.

2:34But I'm amazed by my own response as well, because, OK, just to bring everybody up to speak, today is Friday. Dolly Parton sadly passed on Wednesday? Tuesday, Tuesday night is when, kind of, the world got the news. I was just outside Skihan's pub in Broccoli about to go in. Oh, nice. It's a lovely pub. Nice pub, yeah, busy. Busy and lovely pub. Yeah. And I remember I was walking in and I just found out on my phone and some girls were walking out and they just found out on their phones. And then they looked up and it also happened to be that they were sentimental garbage listeners. And so we've all had this moment where we all just kind of held hands and we're like, oh, oh, oh, gosh, like, oh, gosh.

3:12And it was the hit, the sudden hit of like, I can't believe this person who has been around our whole lives and before we were born is gone because it felt like she'd always be there. and then after that the feeling of sadness continued far more than I have ever felt for another celebrity passing. I think the closest thing I've probably felt is maybe Robin Williams because just because of the amount of films he's in that are in your childhood and he feels so part of growing up or for my generation it felt really that way. But I think the grief of losing Dolly hit me that night when I was listening to her one of her records at home and I was I was really really crying because it just didn't feel like just be that a person had left or you know a person who's responsible for an amazing body of work had left but that an entire way of living had passed yeah like this is a person who like very famously and who love to speak about you know was born as one of 12 children in like the smoky mountains in Tennessee with no running water if you wanted water you had to run out and get it and no electricity and I grew up in this way that like her her like that way of living was common from like the 15th century up until her birth and then she went from that to being like this country barefoot girl who you know started playing all these instruments at a young age to being on country radio to being a TV star to then you know fast forward 60 years is the helm of not just an empire but an entire sort of lens of looking at the world and realising that that transition, that thing of like, you know, your dad had to pay the doctor in a bag of cornmeal for birthing you because he didn't have any money to like being this, this sort of like to quote madman, to being an astronaut, to like transcending your upbringing so much.

5:09That won't happen again. This way of living won't happen again, you know? No, no. It's what you're saying there about like that spanning that time and that sort of being like a voice from, well, certainly a voice that I grew up with, that voice disappeared. It's quite weird. But you said a lot there. Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been like really wound up for a few days now. Covered the hole. Sorry. I just closed my laptop later. I was like, we're free-balling. That was all your notes. Oh, my God. Just finished it. And then she died. And then she died on Tuesday. And now we're here talking about it. But it's like, she is a voice that we've all grown.

5:48I think like the only other, I think that was why it hit me it's a voice that's always been there the other times it's hit me it's been like when like a celebrity's died although I love celebrities I'm not like invested in them so much that I sort of would like cry a week like Wogan got me because it was like one of those voices that I'd like and Oliver Postgate was another one he did the clangers and stuff like those voices that you sort of when you hear their voices they take you back to some like a younger time or like a time when you were younger and they've always been there. And I think that's what's quite weird about it.

6:22It's like you sort of forget that they're going to die and then you think about your own mortality. But you just think about, oh my God, everyone's going to die. And I think that's why it hits you. And then, yeah, I was out with some friends and we were just in a pub with no reception. But people were trying to ring us. And then we went to see Orville Peck, which is a great artist to go and see. Great artist to go and see. And so it was quite nice that there were so many people there who meant so much to you and then he was I will always love you in that moment we had an hour of quite intense sort of public mourning and then yeah went home and my girlfriend had made a shrine she took apart the George Michael shrine to make it I love that your home is so shrine heavy yeah we shed the flower of the flowers from that and then that was it she was playing it It was really, really sad.

7:20And I don't think I've really been that sad. A lot of people do, celebrities do die, but definitely this one really hit, I don't know. It feels like there's sort of... She was so the opposite of the way the world is at the moment, in terms of her kindness and her philanthropy and just how much she cared for other people. Her being in the world almost felt like stabilising in some way, or hopeful, just like it felt like having a little bit of hope the stabilizing influence i think is like a really important thing and like you're you're dead right in the sense that she does feel like the opposite of how the world is right now it felt like she was like the tentpole pinning down a very very important corner of decency and like that's so i have to sort of like when i was researching for this and sort of preparing what i was going to say i had to keep sort of winding my own neck in a bit because they're so i mean the internet is just flooded with tributes and all the papers and every celebrity has come out and said something and she worked with so many people right up until her much later years and like so that makes sense but like you know this this this kind of language that we're using this like her being this cornerstone of like decency of her being almost like a saint like she kind of glows like something kind of holy something beyond is like then you have to sort of whip yourself back and be like no she was a person who was in many ways as ordinary as all of us in that she had like organs that failed and a body that passed and she was just a person who made a series of choices and those choices involved enormous kindness

9:00I think like there were people in the pub when they were saying oh this reminds me of Diana and actually it feels very different died Diana because Diana's sort of like death we sort of build up to making her a saint at the time when she died she was quite vilified, she was quite divided Diana wasn't loved by the press you think now she was always like the people's princess but actually at the time the tabloids were awful to her and people were kind of I don't know, they definitely weren't like 100 % loving her and then she sort of she dies and she gets made into a sort of by the sort of cultural things that go on around her.

9:39But Dolly's like already, we already think of her as that. So it's like almost, the process is different. Like she's, we already think of her as like. Yeah. Like a complete goodness. Like in a fun way though. In a fun way? Not in a boring way, that's the key. In like a gay way. It's like a really camp fun way. That's the thing. She's good, but not dull. She's the opposite. Like that's an amazing thing to be. is like that nice, that kind, that good. Because niceness and kindness are seen as such boring traits. Yeah. And she managed to make those things really, really fun. And funny. And funny. I know, funny, clever, kind.

10:18I mean, it's just... Okay, let's go back a bit because just your creds for being our guest today is that you are like a country music expert, aficionado, journalist. would you use aficionado? yeah I think so I mean it's all I listen to really I've tried to sort of wean myself off because I felt like I was just getting lost in this alternate universe that actually no one else could talk to me about it was too much but yeah I've been listening to it my whole life ever since I was five I sort of got into country because I wanted to be a cowboy so I was like well this is my soundtrack so Dolly would sort of sneak in there but it was more like the actual songs about cowboys like Johnny Cash and stuff.

11:02But yeah, and then teenage years would have been when Dolly really sort of started to come through in the songs. And then ever since then, I've just... Do you remember like a Dolly moment for you? It was Down From Dover. Do you know the song Down From Dover? Down From Dover, yes. Yeah, yeah. I only know it, to be fair, I only know it's because you made me a playlist. Oh, yeah, it's that song. But I heard like the Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra one and then realized it was a Dolly song. and then I sort of went right back into her catalogue and I knew obviously like the hits and stuff growing up but then it was like oh she had like a way darker side that I didn't realise where she sort of sung about you know poverty in like a very it's just a very unusual way I suppose like she was probably like the great sort of songsmith of poverty which is a weird thing to be but like only sort of rappers come close that's so interesting in terms of like sort of documenting that in such a real way and the sort of heartbreak and the romance of it and also the you know the divorces and the yeah just the honest and all those other things that go into her songs all those things that come with poverty like it's quite she was like the great documentary of that i think in terms of american songwriters and do you think like there's more a question about country music generally but But it does, and I think a lot of people have made this point in various ways, but I think country music, particularly female-led country music, from Dolly Parton to your Crystal Gales or your Reba McEntire's.

12:43You just touched your chest when I said Crystal Gale. I love Crystal, yeah. Or the chicks and everything. it does seem to me that so much of female-led country music is a form of feminism for and about a woman who would never call herself a feminist if you know what I mean totally for a start country music was always music by adults, for adults and about adults which is the thing that makes it different to any other genre really it's like songs for adult women about motherhood, marriage, divorce Adulthood Stillbirth Stillbirth Yeah exactly Like some of Dolly's early ones It's about like Having a daughter Who dies She has so many Songs about stillbirth She has so many Songs about children Dying Like it's Quite unbelievable In her early catalogue Yeah That is something That does affect Adult women So it's quite Amazing that A genre sort of Was able to Document these things Until Taylor Swift Comes along Teenage Teenages aren't Even covered In country music Like she changes Like Taylor changed everything before that everyone's singing adults you know even like 15 year old artists are singing songs for adults they're not singing about going to school and you know so it's quite unusual in that way and that's sort of especially for women that means so they can sing about all these things that are usually ignored by music and by songwriters because they're not covered really anything beyond the age of 21 isn't covered yeah um and what where that's really fascinating the country music is a genre for adults by adults where does that come from what is that i don't know why the way the way it's i don't know why it's i guess it just came down from adults i guess it get priest it must precede rock and roll i suppose and so yeah um and it doesn't ever sort of waver from that so when rock and roll goes after teenagers and sort of that whole idea of the teenage mindset and everything follows that country music sticks to its roots and it's very much like i guess it's grounded in sort of christian conservative like in america must be part of it and but it's weird it doesn't it doesn't change that it stays right about adult themes up until daila swift really yeah and i guess that's like i mean when dolly always credited her kind of her the fact that she was a prodigy do you mean which is and this is like the fast i think about dolly is that like you know i was listening to and i'll probably end up referencing it a lot in this podcast an amazing podcast called Dolly Parton's America where she's being interviewed about all the instruments she can play, she can play the banjo and the dulcimer, she can play her own nails she can play the pan flute, she can play the tin whistle, she can play all these things but there's always this real intense sense of modesty and sort of I don't know, dismissiveness about her own gifts, she's very much like oh you know I'm a good writer and everything her musicianship is incredible and there's this amazing story and I'm sure we'll get to him in a minute of her and Porter Wagner after she wrote Jolene he wanted to show off to the session musicians the opening lick of Jolene and show them how to play it and he couldn't play it because she had written it and only she knew how to do it and it's got that amazing kind of lift I guess in that opening lick and she just like yanked the guitar off him because she was sick of him getting it wrong and did it but she she sort of so she was like a prodigy she was on country radio from the age of 10 she was a family band all that but she credits that from being from where she's from which is from the the smoky mountains in tennessee and appalachia um of this being a tradition of story songs that have come from like i guess irish folk music and english folk music and all the people who emigrated at the turn of the century and then like made that tradition what it was in that part of the world.

16:38And something else fascinating that I learned is that a lot of her songs, a lot of those female vocals that are like story songs about women being wronged by men come from the kind of inverse of these murder ballads. There was all these songs about men essentially killing women that they knocked up or whatever. And then these women artists coming and flipping it and making it from the perspective of the victim. And that's just, sorry, this doesn't mean like... That's really, did you make that up? Or did you actually... No, I've... Because I've never thought of it that way. But that obviously must be why, that must be why they start turning into like, a lot of the songs that sort of, like Kitty Wells, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, it's like an answer song.

17:23Yeah. There were lots of answer songs started coming up, so men would write a sort of chauvinistic song. And then women would be like, oh, rolling. And then write a response song to it. So you get that. And I guess that's the same thing When they're probably just sick of being murdered Sick In song I had it up to In song Sick of back teeth Of being murdered I mean for millennials You might remember our version of this Which was Fuck you And fuck you right back Yeah Yeah exactly Bye I think the guy who wrote the first song Was called Owen Or something Do you know what I'm talking about? I remember the two songs But I don't remember Either artist Frankie And Owen I think let's call them that anyway that'll help explain that that'll help explain that it was invented by country music yeah this idea of like i don't know these gendered lines of and and this is the kind of these what are essentially feminist songs and like as as dolly's career goes on you see this kind of um flip to like a lot of very independent women songs yeah like like nine to five is a version of that of just sort of like picking yourself up and and carrying on and

18:43that all kind of existing under this umbrella of like a changing world where women are getting credit cards and going to work and all this kind of stuff but you know still not really claiming the moniker or feminist or whatever. No, not at all. It's like, the whole way through, she rises at the time, especially when she goes solo, it's like 65, 60. She's like, this women's lib is on the rise and she's, but the way she sees it, it's like she's opposite to intellectual feminism in a way. She's like lived feminism. Yeah. But she would still, all of them, there's only in the last few years that country artists have started saying they are feminist, as a few have said, but all the way through, they just would never, like Loretta Lynn would never say she was you know Dolly would never say she is even though what she's doing is obviously when you look at it explicitly feminism is actually implicitly she's an implicit feminist I suppose because it's more about just like documenting women's lives and working class women's lives in particular and it's it's strange that she would never sort of not strange I don't know but just wouldn't equate herself with what was sort of going on with Gloria Steinem at the same time like they're very they're both coming up at the same time but Gloria's obviously you know interested in in Dolly and writes about her and stuff and can recognise that but Dolly doesn't seem I don't know why why they won't sort of align themselves with like intellectual feminism but she's like a feminist like without ever having read feminist texts yeah I'm sure she had but just like well this is the other question I mean there's there's a couple of things I want to go on there, which is, I think, I think was something I've observed as a very much an outsider of country music.

20:33I'm not a very, very casual listener, but I'm fascinated in particular by the chicks when they were the Dixie chicks. That, that whole thing about alienating their listeners via their comments about George Bush. And which is a whole other story, but how so, much of country music fandom comes from country radio, which there's so much of it. If you've ever driven through the Southern States in the US, it's just like fucking a million stations, all of them with absolutely incredible music on it. And you're like, every time you flip, it's like I had some of the best, some of the best drives of my life driving through like Tennessee.

21:15Just remember when you and Gab sung Sam Hunt's Break Up in a Small Town. Sam Hunt's Breaking Up in a Small Town. incredible performance I was not expecting it when did we sing that for you? we sang it at Jensen McRae and you were like oh you know how deep do you go and I was like I'll go dark you know I like Sam Hunt and you just broke into it because that was the song that was on country radio in 2015 when we did that road trip and but like the kind of the interesting thing about country radio being that from what I observe this is may not be true the thing of relating to a radio audience is that you're relating to people in their cars and trucks and all day right people who have driving jobs people who plan a lot of their day around their car and their drives and their radio and the radio station and that's why we always hear about country music stars coming up through that way but it's it's an interesting thing I guess the the version of it that we'd have more contemporaneously would be like people in their uh social media followings right that this audience that is so easily galvanized but you also can't control who they are or where they are when they hear or see you so if you're this kind of favorite singer songwriter of like a blue collar worker and then suddenly you're kind of speaking in a slightly alienating way like i have no doubt whatsoever that like dolly poverton was probably reading gorya steinham and did find it fascinating but she kept her politics under this veneer of this incredibly warm vibrant funny woman who didn't take herself too seriously and she was like well i can do i can play as well as amanda's and whatever and like but every time she spoke about gender and i've watched so many interviews with her in preparation for this it's her being like well i love all the men in my life and i love my husband i love all my brothers and she's like very even though she'll sing songs that are about men wronging women so frequently, she will never alienate that audience.

23:19And I don't think even for cynical reasons, I think she genuinely does love men. I was going to say, it never feels like she's doing that for commercial reasons. There's definitely a lot of country artists where you know they're toeing the line for commercial reasons. I think she was just like, I want everyone to feel like they're welcome to listen to my music. Yes, exactly. That no one should feel like, shame was a big thing. I don't want anyone to feel ashamed of who they are. I wouldn't judge them. it's not my place to judge them and so she would always sort of skirt around it she would like say something that might upset people and then just do like a great joke afterwards so that we sort of forget that what she said was like yeah it's like when she talks about gay marriage and she's like you know i think um i think you know gay people should get married you know and you're like that's that would have been like quite a big statement you know but instead she follows up and like why shouldn't they be as miserable as straight people like and it's like that's to immediately sort of forget that she said something really for country music controversial she'll because she did a great joke after it it's a great way that she does that all like she's always doing that like she'll say something and then you just forget that she said it because she was made it a joke of it made the light of it you know yeah um country radio country radio so yeah that's a correct assessment that like yeah country radio is a weird is a weird i mean it's there's two things with country radio is one is like the listeners like they're always they're not um there is that that they're often driving around and they're especially in america but um in america because it's a driving country but it's also like the advertisers also have such a have such a hand into that so you have to also appease the advertisers which is why you don't get as many women played on country radio at the moment because um they don't they think the advertisers think people turn off they won't listen to two women back to back so that there was a whole big tomato gate.

25:07Have we talked about tomato gate? No. This isn't really Dolly Parton or something. It's just there was a guy called Keith Hill who was at Radio 719. He was involved in country radio and he said that women on country radio weren't the real salad. They were the tomatoes. The men were the lettuce. What a fucking mental thing. But it's like, I understand the metaphor he's trying to make. Was that the best thing he could come up with? The metaphor doesn't really work. Because obviously if you've got a salad that's just lettuce, like they're so boring. That's just a lettuce. That's just lettuce. Whereas like tomatoes surely is the better part of the salad.

25:43But he was like saying, so it got called tomato gate anyway, because he was saying you can't play them back to back. And like, you know, women were making up like 9 % of... And it'd come out of like the Chicks era and Shania and all that when they dominated. And then there was a backlash that they sort of dressed up as being like, women don't want to hear songs by women, which is so obviously untrue because they'd just come out of a time when they dominated. Yeah. And so Dolly's fitting into that structure as well. Like all the things that like, that's what country radio is as well as being like thinking about people driving around and it being a big sort of, such a vast country that's listening to them.

26:19It's also one that is sort of controlled by conservative Christian advertisers basically. And so you've got that double. So it's even more unimaginable that she would be so huge when she's so like controversial in those terms like so often controversial what she's singing about it's one of those things it's like as we said at the top of the podcast her death does feel like it signals the vanishing of a certain kind of hope the certain kind of class a certain kind of also a lightness do you know what I mean that like somebody could knew exactly what to take seriously and what not to take seriously somebody who could go on Jimmy Carson and make a joke about their tits but also like you know fund child literacy globally like it's just like insane but also but also the death of a certain kind of mass appeal as well yeah like something that felt so tragic was that like oh i i know like a load of girls tonight who um wear doc martin sandals and listen to Phoebe Bridgers are going to be heartbroken.

27:34And I know a lot of men at truck stops who I will never meet will be heartbroken. Do you know what I mean? Like, and people on the left are hope and people on the right, people of all races, creeds and religions will be equally heartbroken at the passing of this person. And what that signals is, I think we live in an amazing place where so many more people get to have fandoms. Like we just, you know, we went to a Jensen McRae concert last year and like, she's absolutely incredible. and she has a niche of incredible fans and that's only going to grow and grow and she's able to have her own space that's inspired by all these different influences and I think we're getting different kinds of artists all the time now but that ability for someone to reach everyone has distilled yeah, like Death of Monoculture Death of Monoculture and that's actually something that came up in the pub that night we were talking about that you could see immediately that everyone knew who she was whether they were like a five-year-old or an 80 or everyone and and had affection for her in some way like didn't just wasn't just no she wasn't just like they knew like they they had a story they had like a connection with her music or like you know a book she'd send them in the post like and i do think that is that is something that is is going to keep happening we're going to lose these people who are sort of who mean this much yeah so many people like because we i think we're gonna have to contend with that like there's there's nothing there's less and less that sort of we we we like or interested in collectively and we've lost so many sort of places where you would find those things like top of the pops or yeah um or just sort of a mainstream but there is it is odd now to think of a world where we would all sort of see the same things i don't know if that's sad i don't know if that's really sad or if it's really nice that I have I'm into really niche things now like is it good that to be niche or is it is it sad that we don't have this shared um culture anymore it's I I mean I guess like so many things in life it's both right it's like it's amazing that more kinds of people and more kinds of art and like even even me making this podcast and it finding its audience and like me able to like tour a theater you know with this podcast is like an example of like things being niche also having value and having communities but it's that the idea of turning on every radio in the world and the same lovely woman being on it you get so few songs now it's like you get so few songs that sort of mean that to as many people that know like that Olivia Rodrigo and Sam Fender song I didn't even know it this song is famously it's one of the longest running UK number ones in recent history and no one can tell you what it sounds like no what does that tell us?

30:28it's so strange it tells you that the charts are being manipulated by the major labels as a sort of internal power play but they sort of took it away from us I don't know why they did that some sort of performance indicator it's weird as those things get taken away from us for various reasons why the charts fell apart we lose those sort of common things where the milkman we still say do we have milkman anymore I don't know but that's those common things and the more of those you lose the more we sort of lose touch with each other I think we have so little in common with people outside of except we have loads in common except we have loads maybe that Olivia Rodrigo song maybe it's good I should have listened to that I haven't heard it but we have less and less that links us I suppose I want to talk a little bit two things well loads of things really but the creation of the image of her I find so fascinating and there's the kind of the line that she said her entire career like literally there's 40 years of Dolly Parton saying this on interviews she literally says the same thing the same thing and it's like it's her 99 people in a room or whatever which is like well there's a lady in my town who I thought was just gorgeous and she was a town tramp.

31:52And I was like, well, I want to be, oh, she was a town trash. That's what I want to be when I grow up, trash. Yeah. And that's the whole explanation. Yeah. And it's like anything that has that kind of legacy and that sort of indelibility, that kind of thing. I mean, Amy Winehouse had it to an extent as well in that like, if you can be drawn by a child, you know you have like reached a level of iconoclasticness that exists outside of you and can exist without you. I think a metaphor that we've used on this podcast a couple of times before is that somebody who's able to create their image to the point where they can shine a hologram of themselves through a laser pointer over their own shoulder while they get on with the business of their own life, you know.

32:40But what I find fascinating is that like, because on a certain level it's just we take her at her word right i thought she was i thought that the town hooker was the most beautiful woman i'd ever seen um so i modeled myself on her kind of thing and that's just her taste and that's like the and like you know you see when you see her on the porter wagner show that was like a which was the country variety show that dolly got her kind of big start on as the girl singer to this huge country star called porter wagner and that was a remarkable show because obviously it was very famous for its time it was completely huge but it was also on color tv and so the way he dressed and like he had these like rhinestone suits that like glowed and everything and like they were that show was made for a form of glorious technicolor that was quite new at the time because it was the mid-60s or whatever and so she her style kind of created itself around that technology and then just kept perfecting and honing itself until it got to a point where a child could draw Dolly Parton.

33:46And what I'm fascinated by is that, like, at what point are you the mask wearer and at what point are you the mask? Yeah, that's it, isn't it? It's like, it gets... She sort of disappears. Exactly, at some point, is how much of Dolly is Dolly and how much of Dolly is... A performance of Dolly. Yeah, and there's always... people say like she'd go out without like her wigs on and people didn't recognize her. So she actually had quite a lot of freedom. She could just like walk around because no one knew her because she'd, because the dolly that everyone knew was so far removed from the dolly that was, it was, was really her, you know?

34:19So it's quite, I mean that whole thing with the sort of the, the backwards Barbie thing, you know, which she's sort of been modeling herself on the town tramp or the, um, strumpets is what her mum calls them. Strumpets. Love. I don't know what that's the crumpets and what's that a trumpet is an oldie word for a whore oh is it I thought it was a mix of two things like a oh no I think it's like a biblical word ah okay so that whole idea and then she's sort of also playing with this idea of sort of pure mountain girl so she sort of mixes the two and by being by both both sides of the binary almost yeah like she's the the virgin and the hall like at the same time like and so she sort of makes both of them she sort of both of them are sort of revealed as as being a construct in a way that's the weird thing like what she's almost like really far ahead she's like a third wave feminist in like a second wave era like that whole idea of like sort of performing like performing femininity or performing yeah that's quite ahead of its time but she was doing it like the late 60s and then 70s she really leans into it and then 80s it's like like you say like who is Dolly and like where is Dolly Dolly is all performance like yeah and even with that thing where she used to always say the same things over and over again in interviews and people wanted to hear them the way you want to hear a good joke so you're like I want you to say the thing about the town trash again it is quite odd when you watched a lot of Dolly Parton you'd see one two years ago, she was still doing that I went to a press conference and she did and she was still doing the same like I always say like you always say yeah you've always been saying this and she always starts with that everyone in this room has heard this story but you kind of wanted her to but it is that way I did it she becomes very unreal and obviously she's always real in her heart and she's always saying like I'm but like she does become a hyper real version of herself in a way Well you said a minute ago I found I find so interesting which is that the construct within the construct in that like there's the the backwards Barbie the kind of like the big rhinestone glitter I love pretty things kind of thing and then then the kind of her coming on stage and strumming her guitar and being like well I'm just a Tennessee girl and no electricity no running water etc so it's like this very interesting thing it's like a performance of a vulnerability behind the other thing because she knows that people need both and yeah but they're both performances they both feel like you kind of like they're both obviously you know all artists like performances but like they're both very obvious constructions you feel like with her like she's the whole sort of Tennessee Mountain Home like she's she really leans into that like all artists have a thing with it but she's like she decides that that's gonna be where she sort of bases her her whole career like in in in the tenant in her childhood basically that's all childhood home in the Smoky Mountains so she goes off for a bit and does pop and disco and stuff and she goes back to it again because it's like that's the safe space for her um and and then like Dollywood yeah the theme park is like a construction of what she's been singing about so after she tries to she goes to Hollywood in 77 to 82 Hollywood years when she's huge and she does huge pop records she does that thing where she says she's not like her detractors are like oh you're leaving country behind and she says I'm not leaving country behind I'm taking it with me great line Great line.

38:24And she does, she obviously has Here I Come Again, Two Doors Down, she has these huge hits. I love those songs. By the way, my favourite era of Dolly is the kind of country rock era. It's so good. Watch coming here looking like that. It's incredible. It's so good. Well, that's her going back to it because she tries that. She tries to do like Hollywood Dolly. She tries to sort of be part of the Hollywood system and sort of be a star. I don't know how happy she was because in 1982 she has like a breakdown around sort of the around the movies sort of like she's done like two or three I guess at that point yeah she takes a long break from the movies yeah and then stops doing it and I think it just wasn't actually and then she decides to do Dollywood yeah after that and it's like she has this breakdown emotional physical like she's ill as well and then she decides to do Dollywood and her accountant is saying don't do Dollywood and she's like the sort of she wants to do something for the ailing economy in sort of that whole area of the smoky mountains and she's like i want to do this for the people that live there and just this is what i want to do like it's almost like she tried to exist in sort of hollywood like a man's world yeah and was just like still was because at that time like she was getting so much so many detractors it was like she was such a joke like in terms of she was on like late night tv but they would just constantly be sort of making jokes i know she made a joke about like she was very first one with the joke obviously but i think she kind of did that all her whole life as a sort of defense mechanism and then it gets to a point where she's just like she's just you know kenny everett's doing that you know all those sort of she's just become a sort of late night tv joke and it just i don't i think maybe that that's why she decides to do dollywood because she's like i need i'm going to go back i want to do something to go back to actually where i'm from and to sort of situate myself back there.

40:17Because she had, when she does those big pop albums, which are incredible, she does sort of lose that connection to where she's from. And so she does Dollywood, and her accountants say don't do it. And she ignores the fire. Yeah, but who's going to advise their client to make a theme park after themselves? I know. It must have felt, we all accept Dollywood as people like, yeah, of course, the most famous theme parks in the world. There's Disneyland, they get six flags, and there's Dollywood. like that's crazy there's no other one of those like where a singer is just like there should be I have noticed the thing I'm like I have noticed that through my years of singing about my Tennessee mountain home and a chair with two stools and all that kind of thing chair with two legs that like people are really into the idea of like the romantic ideal of my childhood so I'm going to create it and like there will be like roller coasters but there will also be like a steaming train I mean maybe she was just like do you know what the pun is so good it's so good we just have to do it for the pun because when she must have delivered that pun imagine you're in the room she's like I've got this plan to do a theme party and she's like we're going to call it Dollywood you would have been like we have to we have to well we have to we have to now and now you know it's huge it's yeah it will continue to be huge 1.5 billion a year for like that area which is insane you know it employs like 4.5 5.5 thousand people or something like that it's just so many people I'm sure most of them are related to her and that's just our brother that's just our brother's sister

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42:29I want to talk about the movies. Yeah. Because I love them. And if I'm really honest, I love Dolly's music the way 99 % of people on earth love them in that there are 10 songs that I know word for word and then the rest is just like and those are our albums I guess but the movies is like I think where I really fell in love with her the most in particular 9 to 5 obviously which is her first film still Magnolia's and one of my favourite films of all time The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas there are so many times where I've almost covered it on this podcast but I haven't because I because I'm very because I'm a freak I'm like I couldn't handle if like the listeners didn't give it a fair shake do you know because it's such like an underloved classic it's like you can get it on Amazon or whatever but like I couldn't handle looking into the analytics of the podcast and seeing like a 20 ,000 dip because people haven't seen it and don't care it would like break my heart the film matters that much to me because you're used to covering things that have like a low Rotten Tomatoes score.

43:41Yeah. So usually you'd think like well you'd just go with it but this is too personal. It's too personal to me. It's got like a 51 % on Rotten Tomatoes which is insane. Okay so you watched it for the first time last night. No I see I watched it ages ago when I saw it but it was like I remember it being a musical. That's all I remembered when it was a musical and so I was like I need to watch this again because you were like this is top, it's a top four letterbox you said. It's in my top four letterbox for sure. but you know what I'm thinking no it wouldn't make my top four but it would be definitely maybe I'd put it in there for a little bit okay yeah it was amazing it's so good it's so good yeah it's an amazing film just to bring people up to speed I really hope that this weekend people give it a look because if everyone remembers that episode of The Simpsons where Bart goes to work at a at a burlesque house and then at the very end like Marge is totally scandalised by the fact that he's been allowed to work in a burlesque house, the Maison Derriere.

44:41And then at the end, she tries to bulldoze it. But everyone sings a song about how much they love it and how much it's good for the community. That is the plot of the best little whorehouse in Texas. And literally, that episode of Simpsons was kind of made in response to that film and is based on a real story about this real whorehouse that was just outside of Austin that even though prostitution was illegal, it was called the Chicken Ranch, the sort of community sort of thought that it was great for their society. And Dolly Parton plays Miss Mona who is the madam of the whorehouse. And she had to do quite a lot of press around that time because she's such a Christian woman and has such a Christian fan base that she wasn't playing this role at all as like her first big starring role because she was part of an ensemble in 9to5, ensemble in Still Magnolias and then Whorehouse was her big number.

45:35and it's just so wonderful and I really do believe I mean everyone has their own version of Dolly that they carry in their hearts and like I think part of her power is that even people who aren't even that familiar with her music have their version of what they believe she was really like and what I believe she was really like was Miss Mona in Best of Lords in Texas I think you're right because I was watching you texted me last night and you said that and I was like it's so true as I watched it I was like this is all the things I've read or watched with Dolly over the years. It feels like that is the truth.

46:11That feels like she's just playing herself. Yeah. She's both, she is like the backwards barber. She's so like both things like gentle and kind and also just like outrageous and, and also steely and tough. Yeah. Yeah. And like has like principles and rules about things. Like there's an amazing song at the very top of the film about basically her being like, here are the rules. if you want to be a whore in my whorehouse. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. One of the rules is beds are made to be, beds are not made to be wallowed in. That's a thing that big fat lazy hogs do. That's a good rule.

46:47Yeah. Don't be tying up my phone bill is one of them. Don't be coming in with no tattoos, no hearts and flowers around your thighs. That's downright tacky. And then my favourite part of that whole song, maybe the whole film is a there's a kind of we have all this big kick line with all these amazing dancers wearing negligees and they're the women of the house or whatever and then she comes at the back door and she just comes to the back door and she's kind of wearing like a shirt and like a cowboy hat slung down low and she goes and as for pimps and as for pimps pimps ain't something you need to get your daily business done are you listening honey and then she goes you know keep those like bloodsuckers off the back porch I know how to use a gun.

47:33And it's so invigorating. So good. It's so good. Even if you don't watch the movie, just watch her telling you the rules of the whorehouse. Because you believe on some level, those are the rules of engagement for working at Dollywood, for whatever, you know, for being in the entourage or whatever. That like, this is like a bright, mesmerizing, wonderful thing to be a part of. But like, there are rules to the universe and you will follow them. So fun as well. it's so fun I haven't been to a whorehouse but it looks so fun the whole thing it looks like a great place to work it's the same thing with Dollywood probably like I imagine actually it's not that great to work at Dollywood like any theme park like any theme park but you're 16 and you shouldn't be in charge of something that could probably kill someone like but yeah you know but yeah it looks fun it's an amazing and I do think it's like it does feel like it's her you're right it does feel like that's, she's not that in 9 to 5.

48:33In this one, it's like, I think she's just playing herself. But weirdly, she's having a hard time at the time in her real life. Yeah, so tell me more about this breakdown because she refers to it in later life as being like, in that podcast I mentioned, Dolly Parton's America, which I really recommend everyone listen to. She talks about sort of having suicidal ideation in the early 80s, about like having trouble with her marriage, trouble with her career, trouble with her weight. She kind of mentions that quite a lot. and that she was just incredibly depressed. What else do you know about it? I think it's just like she feels quite out of place in just everything that's going on.

49:08I guess the films and stuff, it's a very different world for her to be in. She gets ill, she gets endometriosis. She's diagnosed with that, so that's her health generally. I don't know why she's so low, obviously. She doesn't really sort of... you just know that she has these troubles around that time. I'm sort of guessing that it's to do with where she finds herself in life, like making these films in Hollywood, in LA. She's very far away from home. Yeah. That's, but I don't know exactly why. I'm sorry. No, but like, again, because it's the mask wearer and the mask, right? that like the one thing that is very remarkable about dolly's celebrity that exists quite separate from the form of celebrity that we have now is that she never asked for sympathy and i think that sympathy is something that we really is definitely part of a celebrity's arsenal now the kind of sense of like you know going live on social media or having a text post being like well you have to understand like how difficult it is to be me yeah yeah yeah and i think we've gotten an interesting thing i'm reading that book um by rachel cusk the life of m right now you're the one that's kind of theoretically based on natalie portman and what it's been making me think about a lot is that the experience of fame has become so common like for example like if you if you like did a comment on an Instagram post right that got 500 likes and then suddenly great day and suddenly 200 people followed you on Instagram or something and suddenly you you will feel a small version of like I was the spectator but now I'm the spectator do you know what I mean and like so many people will whether it's like you know having a podcast or like having a brief you know thing on come dine with me or any basically we have made celebrity accessible to people on a very general and broad level to the point where it's almost easier to associate yourself or to empathize with the very famous more than it is like a plumber which is like a very backwards way we have started perceiving and telegraphing fame and i think now when a celebrity is like fame is really hard we're like yeah probably it is actually because I should know.

51:35I should know because of that comment I made once on Instagram that got 500 likes. And then someone called me dumb in the comments. And we have started to like over relate and there's a kind of, obviously I have sympathy for how tough it is to be a famous person I'm sure of that level. But there was a real class and a benediction to the way people of Dolly's ilk were like, my life is fucking great. I asked for all of this. This is brilliant. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me because I have a tough moment back there you don't need to hear about it on the go you know yeah that is and it's very her to do that but it's very of that time as well to do that like you know Karen Carpenter wasn't even we didn't even know she was ill like didn't really talk about that like now I think like someone gets that ill you know you'd know more about it you'd talk more about it it's like we didn't really I don't know that's not the same thing at all but it's like it's weird to think the early 80s was probably completely different to now in terms of like our understanding of fame and how we empathise with it.

52:37So she would definitely have... And the whole line was just like, she was blessed and she was lucky to come from where she came from to do what she did. And the way in which she both typifies the American dream in that comes from almost nothing. I was always trying to say, the phrase come from nothing is such a strange one because obviously everyone comes from something and she came from a family that loved her deeply. Rags to riches. Rags to riches. Rags to riches. So she is that, but she's also an inversion of that in that I think almost every version of that that we see is like somebody makes their little empire and then they shut themselves within it.

53:20But it was so motivated by her philanthropy, so motivated by bringing up everyone she knew and people she didn't know. And that's just vanishingly rare. Yeah. and she always goes rags to witches obviously she goes that way but she always does goes witches back to she goes back to rags in a way in like certainly in a symbolic way yeah like she goes back to being a mountain girl you know yeah that thing you know and so after the film she sort of stops really doing the films like is Steel Mind only 85 is it is it yeah so she sort of stops and then and the music she goes back to country and sort of back to what she calls like blue mountain music which is like a mixture of like folk bluegrass and all those sounds of sort of that area, that sort of Appalachian roots music.

54:08And she kind of doesn't really go to disco again, you know, to disco or pop. That's why I sort of think like it's interesting, like not knowing about the breakdown, but like that's her solution to it is to return. Yeah, to retreat. To return to her childhood home or just like her childhood area. Not the actual home, not the one. Not the one-bed shack. But the shack has been recreated. It is recreated. Have you been to Dollywood? No, have you? Yeah. Is it great? It's really weird. It's such a strange place. It's got, like, the museum there is amazing because it's the best Dolly Park museum is in Dollywood.

54:46So it's worth going for that. But it's a very strange place. It's a theme park. But it's, like, loosely based around her life. And there's the chapel. You can go to the chapel. Yeah, yeah. You go to see the shack that's not the shack. Like it's basically an entirely fabricated,

55:06like fabrication of her home. It is, that is really weird. Yeah, it's really weird. It is surreal. But the whole place is odd. Yeah. Because it's a dry county as well. Is it? Yeah, so you can't drink there. In the whole county? Yeah, no one told me that. You could start, I was trying to buy like a bottle of wine, you can't. driving around they were like you could buy a gun buy a gun but not a matter of wine watch a live bear fight but could I get a Sauvignon Blanc though I know no cab south for John that's sad so we've talked a lot about Dolly's life there's a lot we haven't talked about like the the story behind I Will Always Love You for example I think is everyone's favourite right that she wanted to leave her contract with Porter Wagner mirror and she wrote him this song and they became sort of bitter enemies and then friends again and everything there's so much to look into but one of my favorite things that i saw while looking at the tributes to dolly this week was one on eminem's instagram page did you see this i didn't i did see that he'd done one but i didn't click through to see what he'd said what did he say to Marshall brackets Eminem congratulations on your induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame your performance was amazing and everybody said so even though I don't know a lot about rap music I've come to know that you are the very best at it aside from that I hope what I have to say will not seem weird or strange to you but I've always felt some unexplained connection to you like I know you somehow I'd hoped to meet you at the show but you know how nuts these things are and personally I hate them and I miss my chance but maybe someday we'll meet.

56:52In the meantime, sorry. In the meantime, keep doing what you're doing because you do it so well and no matter how complex your world may be, just know you are very special and you touch people in ways that you don't even know. With love and respect, Dolly Parton. That's too bad. I mean, that's... That's... Yeah, that's unbelievable, isn't it? It is unbelievable. Where did she put that? she's texting I don't know I don't know she put it under his door oh that's yeah and he there's so much in that because like you think about obviously you think oh she wrote a letter to Eminem you're like that's hilarious but then you're like well yeah because they both came from poverty I know because he's like also one of the great songwriters in terms of like documenting poverty like he's amazing he's amazing at it and also not a real blonde no also not done and really clever he's you know yeah you know he's not quite as chirpy maybe no he doesn't play well with others no but there's something I think you know there's something that the thing in that that does to say this country star who's all glitter and rhinestones and goodness and to reach out to this like what Eminem will always be at the end of the day which is like a very damaged boy yeah like who who had a really really tough life and a bad relationship with his mother that he has sung horrible and violent songs about and like fantasizing about killing her that like there's almost like maternal presence being like i've come from those same rags that you've come from and those situations very different like we've both transcended something to be here and like what you do is special no and that that line of no matter how complex the inside of you is like you are you are special it's just like if she can see that in someone so opposed to her yeah you would think ideologically in terms of the things he sung about you know and everything yeah but i think that's we all of us what she sort of did through her songs and through the way she behaved like we kind of all have like a her that's like a letter she sent all of us like her songs and like the message she put out and what she did the philanthropy and all the things like every time she sends out a book you kind of get that message from her like she that she believes in you and that she and that she loves you I don't know she loves you and she also has like belief in you like she's like she understands you in some way so maybe we've all got like a letter to Eminem in our heads from Dolly letter to Marshall brackets Eminem Eminem

59:42in case you don't know who you are and also you are Eminem what I love is because she's like because she died when she was 80 years old and has been working since she was 10 insane and working constantly and touring constantly the kind of magical thing about that is that you can meet people who've met Dolly yeah I've got loads of friends I'm sure you do what is your favourite friend of a friend Dolly story it's my friend Balan who's a DJ he has a story interviewed her a few times and he said after he interviewed her the first time when she got up she left a trail of rhinestones because they just came off her her jeans that she was wearing I love the idea that she'd leave a trail of rhinestones everywhere she went, I love that story I once ended up in her hotel room as well what?

1:00:32she doesn't know this so there was like a a press conference so i turned up at like the hilton or something where it was in like tower hill turned up and just said i'm here to see dolly for dolly parton i'm here like a press conference yeah a press conference it would have been just like everyone was going to but i was a bit early because i was quite keen to get to get yeah i'm very excited so i went with my friend um we were both journalists not really journalists but we were both writing at the time um and so they just I was like, yep, floor eight, up you go. So we went up to floor eight and we were like, there's no one else really around.

1:01:08We walked through and there's only one door, so we walked through the door. And then we're just sort of wandering around this hotel room. We're like, what are we doing here? And then this PA comes out and she's like, what are you doing here? What are you doing? What are you doing up here? And we're like, oh, we just got sent up. Oh, you escaped through a glitch in the matrix? She was like, oh, we're here for press conference. She's like, that's on floor two. That's on floor two. This is a bedroom. This is a hotel room. we'd walked into her hotel room because like it's one of those hotels where like you open the lift door and you're just there we were just there oh my god did you see any of her things hanging up I'd like to see anything we saw a shower curtain fuck me enough wow you can't be here so good so that's that was that's my Dolly story and then we went to the press conference which was obviously quite fun but there was other people there I don't work in country music journalism so I don't have that level of connection that you do but I once got two stories of one person who might still follow me on Instagram we did so anyway I was in Washington DC a couple years ago and it was remember when the National Guard just moved into DC for no reason maybe they're still there and it was like a very strange vibe to be visiting DC for the first time when I was there for like a literary conference and I was like I gotta not be where all the National Guard are because it's a massive bummer and a vibe killer.

1:02:33So I just went into like a random gay bar in the middle of the day because I was like, I know for a fact that these people won't be freaks. And I was just sat and it was like, started really raining hard outside and I was sitting at the bar and I started talking to this guy and he was from the same town as Dolly Parton. And I was like, oh my God, do you have any Dolly stories? And he's like, I have two. The first one is my grandma's. and he said when Dolly was very young that she was going door to door with her family because she was a family band and they wanted to participate in some kind of a tour or something.

1:03:09They were raising money events basically and she knocked on his grandma's door and was like, hello ma 'am, my name is Dolly Parton. These are my brothers and sisters and we're really hoping that we're going to get into Nashville and do whatever they were raising money for or whatever and we're just really hoping that you could help us out today kind of thing. Very professional, very sweet. And his grandma was like, well, all right. And just kind of, you know, shuffles back into the house and gets her purse and opens her purse or whatever. She goes, how old are you? She goes, ma 'am, I'm 15. And his grandma looks her up and down and goes, with humps like that, you are not 15.

1:03:49That is amazing. And I just like, the minute I heard that story, I was like, I bet Dolly would love to hear that story. about herself. She probably doesn't remember it at all. No. Oh. God, that's so good. And then the second story. Same person. Same person. I guess if you're from Tennessee and he worked in the media as well. Yeah. And he was like, I went to the table read of the, I think it was the 9 to 5 musical which she was a producer on. Yeah. And she came to the table read and she was like, you know, we didn't speak but you know, she has gloves on and she never, she never doesn't wear her gloves.

1:04:25And I said, why do you think that is and he's like well you know she's very conscious of her image and your hands are on one of the few things that you really can't hide your age I remember saying to him I was like do you think do you think she does that for her and for her vanity or do you think she does that like for us so we don't have to think about her ageing I mean she was like I think she does for us oh yeah because it probably is true I'm sure she knows how old she is I'm sure she's aware she's not like she knows just look at the gloves and forget she's just like she knows how old she is But for us Maybe it was all for us Maybe the whole thing It was all for us I mean I guess The whole thing was for us I mean it was She was making it All her The stories You know the songs The dark songs She still She dressed them up For us You know To make them more Palatable I guess And fun And fun She was so funny We haven't even talked about The funniest bits Like this bit where She was voted worst dressed by the National Enquirer and like which is so mean what era is this?

1:05:31late 80s I think she was incredible white limousine white limousine white limousine L-I-M-O-Z-E-N that's how she thought it was spelled limousine she arrived by limousine and someone like was being a shithead on a talk show and just brandished the worst dressed thing or whatever and she goes well it didn't bother me because you know I bet I'm a lot happier than the man who made that list and I'm just grateful he came out of his closet long enough to look at mine I was like you she left no crumbs so good oh that's so good oh obviously we don't hear sentimental garbage we don't permit homophobic jokes or whatever but that is fucking funny

1:06:19so in terms of like the legacy going forward there can never be another Dolly no but I think there's like the star has exploded and left stardust on a lot of different people and I think different people are taking elements of her forward do you have a what do you think is the bouquet of legacy I feel like now you have like this sort of there's probably like 10 bits of Dolly have made like 10 like Sabrina Carpenter's taken a little bit Casey Musgraves Taylor Swift's obviously got the whole leaving country going to pop but she doesn't come back CMAT CMAT I was thinking CMAT yeah there's so many I guess that's it but no one's sort of put them all together everyone's got like a tenth of her yeah and yeah and also providing this example I think particularly you know people like Taylor Swift that thing of like the example of longevity in a female career yeah I think is a big thing yeah I think I mean country's always been okay with that yeah it's like it's been because it's one again a genre that like even for men and for you're allowed to grow old because you kind of start old so like there's no like you know you start because it doesn't really focus on being young in terms of its songwriting and its stories and what it's about its subject matter you're allowed to grow old so like it's almost expected you know it starts with divorce so you know it starts with like death and divorce it's like where you know so the thing is like listening back as I was putting together a playlist I was like god I loved every single moment of this career which is so wild like to think that she tried so many different things and it still always kind of just I guess went back to the same idea that same there were always just songs about people who were struggling in some way against like to be often against being shamed of something I like those songs and I think that's kind of one of the reasons why she means so much to people in a way she's saying not that just you don't you shouldn't be ashamed not just you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself but also she reminds people that they don't deserve to be ashamed of themselves it's not just like she's saying you've got nothing to be ashamed of and you didn't deserve to feel ashamed that's like so many of her songs are like built around that idea i think and i like that i think that's one of the reasons why she's sort of universally loved it's like that's a nice reminder for people and you know eminem let's remind eminem of that you know yeah i think like all of us i think that's why she means so much to so many different people because even if people don't admit it like people do feel ashamed of like where they're from yeah the sexuality or whatever you know so it's like it's the code of many colors thing yeah yeah one is only poor if one chooses to be oh i mean that yeah that is it isn't it that is the whole thing yeah that is the whole thing yeah oh because she was as rich as so many of those all those songs that are like even the one you know the spotify top five billions of stream songs the jolene's the i will always love you they all do come from this place of profound vulnerability yeah like jolene comes from a place of such weakness of like him going to the bank every day Carl going to the bank every day she's so funny when she talks about it's like after the bank again it's just like you can imagine she must have been so fun to hang out with but obviously yeah she does come like that's the sort of like that's pathetic Julian's a pathetic song like in the most classical sense of the world like it comes from this place of lowliness please please don't take yeah my happiness depends on you I'm begging on you I'm begging I'm begging like yeah that's Maddie it does and I guess most of her songs come from that yeah although there is the quiet strength you know that is her great thing it's like that sort of quiet strength that like yeah they do all come from a place of vulnerability and yet she was always coming from a place of vulnerability and yet felt completely immortal but as we found out this week I know I think that is I think that it was it was a shock because I kind of forgotten that she yeah she wasn't yeah like I thought there'd be like a lead up to it I thought you know you kind of felt like we were shut off from that bit of the story in a life of like she'd always shared so much about her life she'd been very honest about it at least very honest in a protected way yeah and there is that thing I guess which is about her which is that sort of authenticity versus fake which is she especially in country music which is obsessed with authenticity she's quite interesting because she's like both are constructs in that way her authenticity is as much a construct as her yeah her sort of glossy fake mass culture appeal like the two things and the country always has that tension over authenticity it's always going back to like what's real country yeah and she was obviously constantly part of that debate like because she's always pushing it on because she's always moving with like different whatever the production values of music at any particular time she kind of followed it slightly or she would like incorporate it so she's always part of that debate between authenticity and and sort of glossy fake but she again she's like both sides of the binary she puts them both together so you have the authentic mountain girl and on the side the sort of glossy pop star and they're both put into one it's just a weird i think that's what's like so unusual about her is that she often occupies both sides of two opposite things and manages to make them sit together and so and not just that that's so amazing that you did that but that we all got it it's both very simple and very profound and complex at the same time that we're all able to just accept that this woman who looks mad she looks mad on purpose it's so true looks mad on purpose because she wants to be but we also were able to accept that She kind of looks like a children's party entertainer.

1:12:36She's made to a Miss Piggy. Yeah, you know her. She's friends with Kermit. Yeah. She looks like Miss Piggy, but she's not a pig. She kind of has that same vibe. Yeah, same sort of vibe. But she's also like, oh yeah, that woman who looks like that and is like that is also like one of the great chroniclers of the working class. One of the great chroniclers of heartbreak, of vulnerability, of sadness. Yeah, yeah. That we can just like... I remember a friend came over to my house recently and she had been to an exhibition that had Picasso paintings in it. And she was like, it's crazy that Picasso is the most mainstream artist.

1:13:12No. It's crazy. That should be super niche. It's so true. That should be niche interest. And like same with Dolly, it's like, it's crazy. That was the most famous singer in the world. That shit should be niche. Yeah. Oh my God. That's so true. Because what, you know, that's like a song about like, yeah the base the whole lyric like down to Dover it's like down for Dover it's like she's right into her man who's left her after she's left home about a child that has been born stillborn and she's like saying must be because like that's and we're like great that's our pop star that's it that's it or like the song about like singing to her father from an assail asylum because her father has put her in there her husband's put her in there yeah daddy come get me another one another classic when she's writing that it's like but we're like yeah great great that's another one another one in the bank this is gonna get yeah keep looking like that and sounding like that but writing those songs it makes no sense but we all get it for some reason we all get it yeah she's yeah amazing we gotta wrap this up Geoff but this has been a very cleansing wonderful afternoon yeah it's been really nice to think about it's also your birthday today oh my god and Shania's and Shania's yeah and Leanne Rimes wow it's a very country birthday very country birthday yeah my word Leo season is that right Virgo shut up come on me and Schneider classic Virgos no more Virgos no more little September boys but but as a birthday present everyone go follow John Fowen on oh my god imagine if I got that little hit of that little hit that little up the nose on the boy least likely too and also what was your other account again?

1:15:01Legends of Country Legends of Country but you can also listen to our back catalogue where we talk about country some more with our Shania Twain episode which I saw someone comment somewhere that it's one of the most underrated sentimental garbage oh underrated that's nice how do you feel about that? I expect to be underrated on sentimental garbage it's fine it's fine and also we did a back to back our sort of Sergeant Peppers LP really was our more girls episode that's the big one that's not underrated. That was perfectly rated. Everyone went nuts for that animation. I can't believe Shania's underrated.

1:15:35Shania is underrated, yeah. Shania what? So go listen to the Shania episode, go watch The Best of the Horse in Texas and, yeah, go, go, listen to Dolly Parton, I guess.

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