The worst song Dolly Parton she ever wrote: “I do have some suckers”
There are hardly any people on this planet who would have found anything wrong with the way Dolly Parton writes songs.
While she might be a bit more wholesome than what you would find in a typical rock and roll band, her songs about life in the South and trying to find the simple pleasures every day are what we can all strive to do whenever we live our daily lives. But even if Parton has had some fantastic tunes throughout her career, she could put her hand up and admit when she created an outright stinker as well.
Then again, that’s bound to happen when you have as many tunes as Parton has made over the years. While there have been fantastic songs that she has covered with Porter Wagoner, the fact that she could pump out song after song after song is almost unheard of in most popular music. There’s a good chance that even Paul McCartney hasn’t released as many original tunes as she has, but with that much creative output, some are going to rise to the surface a lot easier than others.
Take a song like ‘Coat of Many Colours’. The tune isn’t exactly the most complicated chord structure in the world or anything like that, but what makes it work is the lyrical content she puts into it. All great country songs are about telling the audience a story every time they come on, and while Parton could sometimes get straight to the point on ‘Jolene’, having a song with themes about believing in yourself and being proud of your roots is the kind of lesson anyone could appreciate.
But if there’s one country song that stands out above any other, it’s usually the tearjerking ones. Parton had already considered ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ by George Jones to be one of her favourite songs of all time, so if she was going to make someone’s heart dance whenever she made a tune, it was going to have to have the same kind of heartache. ‘I Will Always Love You’ certainly fits that bill, but not every heartbreak song has to necessarily be sad every time someone sings.
No, there are more than a few country tunes that can be downright angry when it comes to someone stealing their other half. Whereas ‘Jolene’ is a woman begging someone not to take her man away from her, hearing a song like ‘Fist City’ by Loretta Lynn is a lot more interesting, especially with the loaded threat to this trashy person who was trying to lure her man away from her.
When Parton had first started to make waves with her own music, though, she felt that the song ‘I Don’t Want to Throw Rice’ was a little more cutthroat than it really needed to be, saying, “When you’re a songwriter, you think all your songs are good just like when you think your kids are pretty, but they’re not. [There was one song] saying ‘I Don’t Want to Throw Rice’ saying I want to throw rocks at her. I wanna throw rice but I’m gonna cook it first. Country music was famous for [those songs], but I do have some suckers.”
Parton also singled out the song ‘I’ll Oilwells Love You’ as another goofy song in her catalogue, but really, how could you hate on a song like that? Some of them aren’t the most intelligent songs ever made, but considering what she was going through cutting her teeth as a songwriter, it’s almost cute listening to songs that have that much emotion behind them but don’t quite have the words to express it yet.
And given how modern country has reshaped what many people think lyrics ought to be, Parton’s simple songs almost feel like a historical document in some capacity. It’s nice to revisit if only for how funny they are, but it’s nice to have a country legend that could make songs like ‘Jolene’ and then create a tune that could stand alongside ‘Dropkick Me Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life)’.
