The Dolly Parton song she said shows off her range: “That one is real special”
In many ways, Dolly Parton is the perfect singer.
She has the sort of technical skill suited to perform any song within her country-pop wheelhouse. A skill that would please the likes of Simon Cowell, or anybody else who believes that good music is limited to nothing more than the sound of a good voice.
But underneath that is a tapestry of emotion that extends beyond the realms of your average performer. She is more than just a voice, she’s a window into the everyday emotion of modern life, telling stories of love, heartache and joy with a nuanced style that anybody could distinctly highlight as nothing other than Parton.
It’s what has made the likes of ‘Jolene’ just timeless hits, and the specificity with which Parton sings encapsulates the listeners, welcoming them into the intimacy of her world, yet doing so with a sense of universality, where flecks of commonality glitter all over the storyline, which feel inherently understandable through the emotive style of her voice, making it a song that both intrigues and connects.
Nevertheless, it’s not the song Parton looks back at as her best vocal performance. There is one song that exists above that in her rankings, for the range it allows her to perform at.
Speaking on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, Parton explained, “As far as a singer, songwriter, all singers love to have a song that you can sing tender, and then you can go big if you want to. You can sing louder, show how much volume you have and how much range and all. So I would think that the ‘I Will Always Love You’ song is really good for that because I can sing it little or I can sing it big. And so not just because I wrote them, but that one is real special.”
Yet again, it’s another classic example of Parton being able to turn the hyper-specific into the universal, because for many, it is the ultimate song of heartbreak, used aptly to soundtrack the moment one lover bids farewell to their next, but the truth is, Parton wrote it as a warm-hearted goodbye to her previous collaborator, Porter Wagoner. It was a sonic way of letting him know that, despite their creative journey, it was time for her to move on to pastures new.
The intimacy of that scenario lends itself to a certain performance for Parton, one that is more muted and introverted. But the universality of the lyrics means that when appropriate, she can dial up the power and perform it as a powerful ballad, used as a grand farewell soundtrack.
Ultimately, Parton’s more intimate and considered performance of the song is the very best. Whitney Houston’s cover of her original provided the power and range that took it off into different contexts, rightly re-adapting it into something that doesn’t interrupt the intimacy of Parton’s original. But there is no doubting that Parton’s version is the very best, and it’s at its very best when she does it with tenderness.
