![]() It’s not the only way you can envisage Rockstar being approached differently, with more enjoyable results. She absolutely belts out Every Breath You Take, which doesn’t do much for the song’s subtly creepy undercurrent. For some reason, she sounds particularly jarring essaying We Are the Champions. She still has a great voice, but it’s also a hugely distinctive one, and the sense that it doesn’t necessarily fit these songs in these arrangements is hard to avoid. Rockstar might have got away with the obviousness of its material if it had opted to do something interesting with it, but virtually every cover here seems to have been made as close to the original version as possible: listening to it feels like being trapped in a karaoke bar where Dolly Parton, having taken the stage to surprise and general rejoicing, is now drunkenly refusing to let go of the microphone. Rockstar features 30 songs and lasts the best part of two and half hours, which even someone desperate to hear Dolly Parton sing Stairway to Heaven a deux with Lizzo might consider too much of a good thing. It goes on and on like a blockbuster movie’s end credits. But it’s the sheer length of the tracklist that gets you searching for a brown paper bag to breathe into. It looks like a forced march through the results of a Radio 2 poll to find The Nation’s Favourite Rock Anthems: We Are the Champions and We Will Rock You, Stairway to Heaven and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Every Breath You Take, Free Bird, Let It Be, Heart of Glass and – there’s no accounting for taste in these polls, is there? – What’s Up? by 4 Non Blondes. The song selection suggests either Parton has what you might charitably describe as a very basic relationship with rock music, or she’s opted for marquee-name crowd pleasing. One wants to like the results – as the Hall of Fame story, with its cocktail of self-deprecation and can-do attitude underlines, Parton isn’t just hugely talented but immensely likable – yet a distinct sense of panic sets in when you see the tracklist, on which a sprinkling of Parton originals mix with covers often featuring the original artists or big-name latter day substitutes: Elton John, Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Pink. She first declined to be inducted, saying she was a country artist, then reconsidered, announcing she would record a rock album to justify her inclusion. Rockstar came about when Parton was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her 49th solo album attempts to answer this question.
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