“I think [‘Can’t Be That Wrong’] is the ultimate cheating song,” she exclaims. “‘Anything that feels this right can’t be that wrong.’ I based that on someone’s relationship that’s very close to me, someone that was very in love with their family, but they fell in love with somebody else and that was just as real to them, and they could not give either up. I saw how they were suffering with that whole thing and it would hurt me because I knew that person so well. I thought, ‘Wow, I know this is real. This is major, to go through this.’ My favorite line as a songwriter is the tag on that song, ‘Well to hell with heaven if it means I lose you.’ I thought, ‘Yes! That’s one of the best lines I ever wrote!’”
“I’m Sixteen” is a more lighthearted take on romance, and is Parton’s favorite song on the album. She was inspired to write the song, a playful jaunt that features lines like “You love me, and what could be more rejuvenating? I’m young again” after witnessing her sister find a late-in-life romance that had her grinning like a teenager. “I’m going to send that to AARP!” she laughs. “I think that would be the perfect song for them.”
It’s a fun song, sure, but in an industry dominated by youthful portrayals of romance (often from the perspective of a male artist), it feels — despite its happy-go-lucky melody — subversive. The song is one of several on the album that celebrates love at any age, reminding listeners that it’s not just hot young twenty-somethings who, as tongue-in-cheek single “Outside Your Door” suggests, “just can’t keep [their] minds and [their] hands” off one another.
“You never feel old,” Parton says. “And I know that I’m old, but you never feel old. You never change inside. Your body changes, and certain things change, but that’s why you see people in old-age homes, nursing homes, falling in love with somebody. You’re always like a child. At all ages, we feel exactly the same. I remember my first little boyfriend from when I was just a kid. And I’m married [now] but I ain’t dead and I ain’t blind, so you still see people that move you and you get your little flirtatious things going. That keeps you alive and keeps you going.”
“I’m Sixteen” isn’t Parton’s only progressive take on love. She’s long been an outspoken advocate of LGBT rights, a rarity in a genre long dominated by conservatism. In an interview with PrideSource.com earlier this year, Parton shared that she had served as a confidante to a number of gay and lesbian family members and friends over the years. She also voiced her support for the transgender community (“I have a couple of transgender people in my company who are on salary with me, so I am totally open for that.”). “I have a huge gay and lesbian following and I’m proud of ‘em, I love ‘em and I think everybody should be themselves and be allowed to be themselves whoever they are, whatever they are,” she tells PrideSource.
Parton’s openness to love in all its forms has no doubt played a role in the longevity of her own marriage. She also attributes their lasting connection to their mutual respect for freedom and their own senses of self. “A lot of people ask me about how we made it so long,” she says. “I really do think that there’s a lot to be said about respect and trust, that you’re going to trust that that person is always going to be there. Freedom has been great for us, to have the freedom to be who we are, and the freedom to love each other the way we do.”
Compared to Parton’s ubiquity, Dean’s public persona is almost nonexistent, his quiet privacy the yin to Parton’s rhinestone-studded yang. It’s clear that when it comes to her career, she’s steering the ship, with Dean happily along for the ride.
“I like to wait until they get it packaged to give him the record,” she says of her husband. “I’ll play it for him, then he can take it home and listen if he wants to. He’s not my biggest fan. He is as a person, but musically I have to sit him down. I don’t just sing him every song I write. Singers like to do that. In the early days when I wanted him to listen he said, ‘I ain’t got time to listen to every song you write. That’s all I’d ever get done, as much as you write.’ So I just do it on special occasions, like if he listens to an album.”
Another love of Parton’s that hasn’t diminished with time is her love for songwriting and for performing. Forty-three albums later and she sounds, both on her album and in conversation, as excited as ever to share new music with her fans.
“I love it as much as I ever did,” she says. “It’s easy for me to write. I’ve never been one of those writers that had writer’s block, mostly because I never worried about that. I never wrote for a living. I never wrote for money. I never sang for money. I wanted to be rich and I wanted to do things, I wanted to be successful. But that was not what motivated me. My music was what drove me. I’d still be doing it today if I was a waitress. I’d still be spending any money I could to do demos of my songs and still be making records and selling them out of the trunk of my car if I had to, that’s how much I love the music.”
At times, Parton sounds like she still experiences the occasional feeling of surprise when considering her unprecedented success as an entertainer and a businesswoman. Born the fourth of 12 children to poor parents in east Tennessee, Parton has never forgotten her humble roots, as seen in classic songs like “Coat Of Many Colors” and its 2015 TV movie adaptation, which memorializes the coat her mother made for her when she was a young child.
“I think that because I’ve had to do so many different things, my writing has developed. I can write bigger,” she explains. “But I can also, because of who I am and who I’ve stayed, all I have to do is go back and write those country mountain songs. I picture Mama and Daddy and I can pull it right together from my memories. I can be right there in that little cabin, in that little area and feel those feelings. It’s easy for me to write those, easier than anything, really.”
The Coat Of Many Colors film is the first of several collaborations between Parton and NBC. The second, Dolly Parton’s Christmas Of Many Colors: Circle Of Love, debuts this fall and provides greater insight into her meager beginnings.