Welcome back to Remake/Remodel, the column where one of Treble’s editors or contributors takes a classic—if imperfect, to our ears—album, and proposes an alternate tracklist in an effort to provide a different, albeit highly enjoyable listening experience. It might be too new to call it “classic,” but 2023’s Rockstar was massive in terms of goal and protagonist. This was meant to be the first true rock album from country legend Dolly Parton, springing from her 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Parton initially refused enshrinement in the Hall, claiming she wasn’t a rock musician. She eventually bowed to loving public pressure, with one caveat: making good on a self-imposed rock-music IOU for the fans and industry celebrating her. Parton showed up at the RRHOF ceremony with a new song, the deferential “Rockin’ It,” then announced and teased a full-on rock album throughout 2023.
Trading on a cavalcade of guest stars as well as decades of her own performance flair and well-earned goodwill, Rockstar’s release just prior to Thanksgiving was one of her biggest debuts ever—topping Billboard’s rock and country charts, premiering at #3 on their top 200, and dominating iTunes and Amazon rankings as well. Yet the shine seemed to come off the album as quickly as loose sequins. Critics were polite but cool on it overall, and after a brief publicity blitz (including an awesome NFL halftime show) even Parton herself has quietly retreated back to Dollywood. So here we are, wondering what could have been and what can be done regarding this confounding flash in the pan.
The first issue is the collective in-studio decision-making that coats Rockstar in the glossiest of pop-country sheens. It’s Parton’s modern oeuvre, gotta respect the hustle. But some of these performances are so straightforward, and the interactions and exclamations so stilted, as to flirt with parody. Maybe we’ve been spoiled by the gritty later chapters from country music’s old guard over the past three decades, but these seem like the kind of productions that first sent Johnny Cash running into the arms of Rick Rubin. The second issue: boy howdy, are there way too many of them. The proper release holds 30 tracks running almost two-and-a-half hours, with six more songs spread out across special editions. Dolly’s commitment to show off her range and her A-list connections results in an exhausting amount of content, 50 percent more songs than even her 2022 hits anthology Diamonds & Rhinestones.
So how can we solve such problems in our musical multiverse? We need to find the sweet spot between the strongest Parton performances and guest stars who don’t expand to fill available studio space. The covers have to be more than merely competent, rising above rote and on-the-nose, while the originals have to feel honest. Let’s also place this experiment in a vacuum, imagining a world where she didn’t release any singles through 2023 so we’re not automatically committed to them. Our answers ultimately incorporate not just addition by subtraction, but multiplication by division.
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