Happy 70th Birthday, Dolly Parton!

Today, Dolly Parton is celebrating her 70th birthday, and music has been in her life for pretty much all of those years. Growing up as a singer in church, she started playing a homemade guitar at the age of seven, performing on TV and radio at ten, and signed to her first label when she graduated school at eighteen. From there, nothing was going to stop her.

Of the 3,000 songs that she has composed throughout her career, there have been some exceptional stand-outs – 9 to 5, Jolene, and of course, I Will Always Love You, which hit No.1 when she released it in 1974 and of course again in 1992 when Whitney Houston did her own version. Parton reportedly turned down Elvis’ request to record the song, as his manager wanted half the publishing rights. It’s been said that the decision to refuse this deal is what has helped Dolly make her millions in royalties from the song ever since.

This isn’t, however, millions that she's kept to herself. Dolly Parton has used her money to build foundations, a theme park, restaurants, become co-owner of a film and television production company and also a literacy program which provides a book a month for children from the time of birth until kindergarten in over 1600 communities across the world. That’s almost 850,000 children supported every month, and more than 10 million free books given away every a year.

Whatever your opinion on country music, no one can deny that this woman is queen of her empire. I can’t admit that I’m a big fan of the genre myself, but when I hear her sing or watch footage her perform, be it on video or live, I can’t help but smile. Dolly Parton beams goodwill and sweetness with every note she sings.

A tribute to David Bowie, 1947-2016

A week ago today, on the morning of the 11th January English time, not only did the world lose a superstar, but this girl lost her idol. Bowie has been in my life from the word go, my interests in his music stemming solely from my mother. 

In 1972, at the age of 13, my mum was sitting in front of the TV watching Top Of The Pops when suddenly, as she puts it, her whole life changed. There, on stage, was David Bowie, dressed in a jumpsuit, platforms and glitter, with a flash of orange hair, oozing not only glamour but unbelievable masculinity. It was a shock to so many when he and Mick Ronson put their arms around each other to belt out the chorus of Starman through a shared microphone; it wasn't that they were saying they were gay, but they were certainly letting the world know that they were in charge of their lifestyles, their fashion and their sexuality, whatever they might choose that to be. As an early teen, feeling abandoned and alone in a gloomy boarding school, David Bowie taught my mum that it was ok to be an outsider... In fact, it looked pretty damn good indeed.

Flash forward 41 years and she's watching the footage again - at the David Bowie Is retrospective, held at the V&A. She has one arm around me and one around Suzy, a friend of hers from boarding school days who had a mutual love of Bowie (the two of them used to go into town at the weekends, with little lightning bolts drawn over their eyelids with liner). All three of us are transfixed to the screen and bawling our eyes out as we watch it.

I may not have been born until 1991, but that song and that man still have to ability to draw that kind of emotion out of me. I'd been hearing his songs my whole life, it's true, but it wasn't until I turned 13 that I "found" Bowie (I'd like to point out that the age was coincidentally the same as my mother's, although I would wholly approve of this kind of coming-of-age family ritual...).

The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. I listen to that album from start to finish and it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It connected to me in a way that no other music had done previously and I got it! I got what Bowie was saying! Except... What is it that he's actually talking about?! The world's ending? Is Ziggy a guitarist or an alien? It took a few more tries and some reading of the lyrics until it all started to sink in.

But that's the wonderful thing about Bowie. Only one man can actually be him, so even as a mega fan, it's alright to get it a little bit wrong. His lyrics can change everything for you, without you actually being 100% sure what they are! I was witness to a brilliant debate between my mum and a friend of hers, who had been adamant most of his life that in Diamond Dogs, Bowie was singing about a "tennis pump". Really, it's all about the feeling - the feeling of the lyrics and music, and the fashion too.

I was in awe of Bowie's looks, which has sparked a lifelong love for all things Glam Rock for me. How could it be that I thought David and Marc Bolan were the sexiest men I'd ever seen, but at the same time I wanted to look like them too? Again, it's all about being in control of yourself.

I've said in a previous post that if given the choice of only listening to one artist for the rest of my life, picking Bowie would kind of be cheating, as you get all the versions of Bowie along with him. Unlike other artists who are a bit more black and white, with Bowie you're allowed to like folk, psychedelic rock, glam rock, blues, soul, even techno, if you're that way inclined... Listen to Pin Ups and Bowie's technically saying "Hey, these are my mates' songs, and they're pretty good!”.

I was going to spend this blog post talking about the day that Bowie died. How it felt getting the news just after I woke up, right the way through to the end of the day, standing on a street corner in Brixton, singing Rebel Rebel at the top of my lungs with two guitars, a violin, a tuba, and a crowd full of people who felt kind of like family, although nearly all complete strangers. I say nearly all because my friend Sally was there, singing along too and, of course, my mum. I can’t tell you how weird the sensation was, phoning her that morning and telling her what had happened. As for the sensation that I have even today regarding his passing, I think all Bowie fans will know what I mean when I say that I feel a part of me has left. 

David Bowie, the megastar, lived his entire stage life as an actor, playing out different scenes across six different decades, and in true Bowie fashion, his final act, Blackstar, is everything we could hope it to be - the perfect goodbye.

So, belt Heroes out with pride, look up to the night sky and sing Starman and, as I read this week, “if you’re ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie."