Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Unlike most greatest hits albums, this one doesn’t seem to suffer from a lack of cohesion. Sure, it jumps all over the place, from the folk balladry of “Love Is Like A Butterfly” through the crossover pop hits of “Islands In The Stream” and “9 To 5” to the near-funk of “Jolene” and “Two Doors Down,” but I pretty much just think of Dolly Parton as a hits factory, anyway, instead of as somebody who put together 45-minute opuses of albums, so it’s not as jarring. Like most greatest hits albums, though, this does completely crater into awfulness at the end. The ridiculous constraint Legacy Recordings put on themselves by naming the series of greatest hits albums by dozens of stars 16 Biggest Hits is surely going to be the problem in some cases, but Parton must have better hits they could have mined instead of the putrid 90’s tracks “Rockin’ Years” and “Romeo.”

Still, this collection, for pretty much the first 12 tracks, is awesome stacked upon awesome. She’s become a caricature of herself, of course, but back in the day Parton was dropping killer songs non-stop. Okay, she was a caricature of herself even by the time she came into my consciousness in the early 80’s, but still, she had the chops to back it up. And she wrote most of these tunes, which was a complete surprise to me, as she always seemed like more of an “entertainer” than “singer/songwriter” to me. The woman’s the real deal.

“Jolene” and “Two Doors Down” are amazing and the fact that they’re head and shoulders above most everything else here probably pushes some songs that would be mixers on lesser albums down to keeper status. But “9 To 5” is the Best Song Ever. Oh, you think you know it, I can hear the chorus playing in your head right now, but let me tell you that what is playing in your head is nowhere near what the song sounds like. Just go listen to it and tell me I’m wrong. As the bass pumps with heat that only funk and disco bands were hitting it with in 1980 and the typewriter clicks and dings as a percussive instrument, your head will start to bob. As Parton sings “Tumble out of bed, and I stumble to the kitchen/Pour myself a cup of ambition,” you will involuntarily audibly agree because, oh, you know it, Dolly. By the time her “blood starts pumping” and “out on the street the traffic starts jumping,” you will think that going to work in an office in 1980 as a woman was the best thing of all time because never has the glass ceiling sounded so f**king good.

What may be the most amazing thing about this song is the way it song takes aim at sexism in the workplace without ever explicitly calling it out. At first it just seems to be a song about how working eight hour days in a comfortable office is a drag, and I’m purely speculating that since a big portion of Parton’s audience in 1980 were housewives, the idea of grueling days punching a clock might have seemed like a drag. At the same time, though, a lot of her audience was doing backbreaking physical labor and must have wondered what could have been so bad about office work.

So given that, and the content of the accompanying film, this must have been about unequal treatment of women in the workplace, which seems way ahead of its time, or maybe I just wasn’t aware of discussion of such issues when I was five. But back to the amazing part…she seems to do this without ever mentioning women, unequal treatment, sexism, feminism, etc., again a seeming nod to where the mindset of her audience was at. She does mention men a lot but it’s always “boss man” or “rich man,” a convenient twist that also makes the song accessible, on its surface, to men who feel like they’re getting the shaft at work.

Finally, it’s pretty much impossible to hear “I Will Always Love You” without hearing Whitney Houston’s overblown, garish version, so thanks for ruining this song for everybody, Whitney. You’re not talented enough to carry Parton’s panties.

Rating:

Best Song Ever: “9 to 5”
Mixers: “Jolene,” “Two Doors Down”
Non-keepers: “Single Women,” “Love Is Like A Butterfly,” “Rockin’ Years,” “Romeo”

I don’t know if I’ll be back
Or if you’ll want me when I come
But if and when that happens dear
You better let my sweet dream run

– “Broken Man’s Lament” by Mark Germino from All I Intended To Be

Every man on this album is dirt. Whether it’s the narrator of “Broken Man’s Lament” who adhered to tradition only to have it blind him to his wife’s soul, the callous philanderer of “Moon Song,” the bitter, oppressive, insulting ass of “Gold,” or the workaholic of “How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower,” nearly every song tells the story of some man wronging a woman.

And those that don’t aren’t really on the happy end of the spectrum either. There’s Merle Haggard’s “Kern River,” which tells how the river stole a woman’s lover, the empty, staid faith of a woman questioning God’s existence in “Take That Ride” (“Where were you when the world turned black/All those nights you never answered back”), the person barely able to keep themselves together during the recovery from heartbreak in “Hold On,” and the regretful woman who married too young in “All That You Have Is Your Soul.” There hasn’t been such a collection of broken lives and dreams since Springsteen’s Nebraska.

Like that album more than a quarter-century ago, there’s a calming, peaceful feeling here that belies its characters and their enemies and situations. Amidst a series of technical implosions, brutal workloads, apocalyptic news cycles, and stark reminders of time’s unrelenting passage, this causes the heart to beat a little slower, the lungs to open a little more fully, and life to seem a little more right. There’s little, after five listens, to find extraordinary or superlative, but it seeps into you, working its magic, and doesn’t grow on you, but rather grows you where it wants to take you.

The power here is subtle, yet strong. This review isn’t an end…it’s not the final word on this disc. Rather, it’s just a check-in, a reflection, at the beginning of a long relationship.

Rating:

Mixers: “Moon Song,” “Broken Man’s Heart,” “Kern River,” “Sailing Round The Room”
Keepers: everything else