Dolly Parton: Better Day

Dolly Parton
Better Day
(Dolly Records)

How could anyone not like Dolly Parton?  Such a tiny woman with big blonde hair, big personality and big… voice!  (What else did you think I was going to say?)  She has a wonderful sense of humor about herself (“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap”), owns her own theme park, and always seems eternally optimistic. 

This sense of optimism really shines through on her new, 41^st studio album, Better Day.  (Forty-one albums—Now take a second and wrap your brain around that.)  “It seemed that with everything being so doomsday—terrorists and bad weather and unemployment, we need a little sunshine,” she explained in a recent interview with Billboard magazine. 

This “sunshine” consists of 12 tracks, all of which she wrote herself and released on her Dolly Records label.  Of these 12 tracks, five are completely new.  Four tracks were written for the Broadway adaptation of 9 to 5, and the others were written for and recorded by other artists in recent years.

The songs range from the catchy, pop-country opener, “In the Meantime,” and the gospel title track, to “Shine Like Sun,” which is quite possibly the happiest song I’ve ever heard in my life.  The songs are all of quality, nicely produced, and showcase her beautiful voice, which seems, especially in comparison to many of her contemporaries, completely unchanged over the last 40 years. 

Even with forty Top 10 albums, 110 charted singles, countless awards and nominations for music and film, and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Dolly shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.  And based on Better Day, I’m more than ok by that.

Now let’s go chase some rainbows with Dolly!