Dolly Parton - Backwoods Barbie

Backwoods Barbie is everything you would expect in an album from a 62 year-old high-haired, big-bosomed pop star trying to make a comeback into popular music. It is a little bit like Cher, but with even bigger hair and an acid-washed denim jacket. Now, Parton is not trying to reinvent herself or reach a fresh audience like Johnny Cash did with his later albums. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is the same sequined seventies gold we’ve come to expect from the Iron Butterfly, repackaged and resealed for the new millennium.

The album begins with the ever so inspirational tune “Better Get to Livin,’” which includes the such priceless nuggets of wisdom as “I ain’t the Dalai Lama but I have some good advice/Ya better get to living, giving, throw a little forgiving on the way.” It is like taking a slow and twangy walk through the Self-Help aisle of Barnes & Noble.

Barbie is also a chance for Dolly to share her heart and lyrical mind with the world (nine of the 12 songs are written by Parton). “Jesus and Gravity” tells of the spiritual journey of Dolly in her career as a popular figure and entertainer. In “Backwoods Barbie” Dolly lets it all hang loose, sits us down and tells us all about herself and makes no apologies. The lyrics of this album are pointlessly personal, painfully repetitive (“The Lonesomes” lets us know that she indeed has the “Lonesomes” at then end of every verse and chorus, and “Cologne” includes the phrase, “You ask me not to wear cologne” in almost every line), overly simplified, and just downright boring.

The album includes two unlikely covers, deep-fried and given a pop country twist. First, the ’80s electro jam “Drive Me Crazy” by the Fine Young Cannibals, and the Smokey Robinson’s classic, “The Tracks of My Tears.”

The problem with these covers, and the whole album for that matter, is the intense Over-Nashville-ization. Oh, you aren’t aware of the cause, signs, and effects of the Nashville-ization? Allow me to explain. It is the thing that happens to every aspiring vocal artist/singer-songwriter who wants to give their street-corner guitar sound some pop flair and full musical backing. Nashville-ization is the process of adding a mediocre studio band, a high-school-choir-star vocal accompaniment, and ciphering every bit of life and originality from the original music.

It is my primary beef with all of pop country rock—taking the folk music of our nation, plugging in a Casio, putting a pretty voice and an even prettier face behind it and whoring it out to the masses. You may not think that Dolly Parton is a principal contributor to the problem, but Backwoods Barbie is concrete proof that she has no part in the solution.

In fact, the only time Dolly resisted a glam overload was the brief moment that I actually enjoyed listening. “Only Dreamin’” involves only Dolly, her guitar, and a distant, ghostly fiddle. It is the only song on the album in which I could sense some genuine heart in her voice, in her words, and in the minimal musical backing. It is the only song on the album that didn’t seem like a sales item at Wal-Mart and the only time I didn’t want to tear my fingernails out one by one.

I did my best to keep an open mind when reviewing a pop country album—a country album that not even my mother would give the time of day. But I couldn’t look myself in the face and consider myself a respectable human being and say that Backwoods Barbie is even a decent album, because it isn’t.

I listened to and analyzed this album out of service to the Burnside community of readers, and it is in that same spirit of service that I tell that community to stay far, far away from Backwoods Barbie. Unless you have a teenage daughter who listens to pop country radio—by now, it may already be too late.