I’ll grab anything to write down a song title. If I don’t have an actual pencil, I’ll grab an eyebrow pencil or a lipstick tube, and I’ll write on a napkin. I’ll let them think I’m just making notes from the meeting. I’ll grab a piece of paper and scoot it over to me, not letting somebody think I’m writing a song title. When I get an idea for a song, it can be right in the middle of a business meeting. Why didn’t I pursue this?” Then if I grab it out again, I’ll usually finish it pretty quick. I’ll look back and I’ll sometimes think, “Oh, that was a great idea. I’ll even look through a book I’ve got of unfinished songs. I’ve got hundreds of song titles and song ideas that I’m always dragging out. But then I move onto other things, forgetting that I’ve written down some of these ideas. When I sit down to really write, if I’ve taken the time to start a song, I’ll usually finish it. ![]() I have great ideas and maybe get a verse or two, but then don’t have the time to do anything else. Lord, I have hundreds of unfinished songs. It always stalls me a little bit, but I’m proud I’m able to do it. I’m not working on my own as much as I’m having to do what other people asked me and then carry a story and all that. When I have to write things I’ve been commissioned to do, it takes me longer because I have to put more thought into it. Maybe I didn’t have the time to finish it and I’ll go off and on again. Sometimes I’ll go back to a song I’ve started. For the most part, my songs - even my classic ones, like “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” - come pretty quick for me. I enjoyed doing it, but because of all the different personalities and characters, that whole process was the longest time I’ve ever taken to write songs. Hart, when I had to be a male-chauvinist pig. Some of the songs from the musical 9 to 5, because I was writing for all of those characters. Song that took the longest journey to finish I feel that way about it because when I write a song, I’ve left something in the world today that wasn’t there yesterday. My songs are like my kids, and I expect them to support me when I’m old - and some of them are. But, I mean, they’re all important to me. “My Tennessee Mountain Home” was one of my first big songs early on in my country-music career. I realized in my teenage years how seriously I was taking myself as a songwriter. But as the years went by, I realized when other people recorded my songs that I was more excited about having them sing songs I wrote than I was about singing those songs myself. I love to sing them, of course, because I’m from a musical family, so it was always natural to sing. I learned how to play the guitar when I was 7 years old, so after I started writing very serious songs. I was born with the gift of rhyme, so I knew early on that I was going to love making up songs and doing rhymes and all that. My first story of “Little Tiny Tasseltop” goes, “You’re the only friend I got, I hope you never go away, I want you to stay.” It was my little cob doll. I started making songs before I was able to write them down. “A lot of people can sing,” she says, “but not everybody can write and make up stuff for other people to sing.” And while her succinct Dollyisms might make us smile - as does her exaggerated style, favoring rhinestones and sky-high hair - when it comes to the craft, Parton knows how much of a prolific storyteller she really is. I’m all in, wound and woven in and out of my songs.” This ethos has affected every stage of Parton’s career, dating back to her 1967 Nashville debut, Hello, I’m Dolly her late-’70s crossover to Hollywood stardom and now her arrival at Rockstar. “I always write a little bit of something about me without realizing, because it is me. “If you want to know about me and my life, you’ll find every piece of me in a song,” she explains. Rather, the country legend and entrepreneur prefers to channel most of her emotions and beliefs through her songwriting. But her sprawling, decades-long career doesn’t mean we know everything. The new album is also, somehow, the 49th in Parton’s discography. That opus, Rockstar, features 21 covers and nine original songs with just about every name in the classic canon. However, she would go on to warmly accept her induction at the annual ceremony, which culminated in the promise of recording a rock album to affirm her acrylics-on-electric-guitar finesse. It began last year, when she held a contrarian view of her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination: Parton rejected it - a very Sex Pistols move - believing she wasn’t worthy of the honor. Photo: Vulture Photo: Paul Natkin/Getty Imagesĭolly Parton has always been a rock star, even if it took her a bit of time to weave that title into her coat of many colors. “I’ll grab anything to write down a song title.
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