Sure, plenty of folks don’t like Country music, but everyone loves Dolly Parton, and if there’s anyone who doesn’t, I don’t want to know them. She has always been a beloved figure, but the past few years have seemed to amplify the love people have for her and the goodwill she generates outward to the world.
She was MusiCares Person of the Year 2019, which was before she donated $1 million dollars to Vanderbilt University Medical Center – a chunk of which was used to research Covid and led to funding Moderna’s promising Covid-19 vaccine.
Even though she was the first Country artist to ever receive the honor (and, by the way, I would strongly argue that in her latter years, her music has transcended any one genre) it still came as no surprise that the recording Academy named her MusiCares “Person of the Year” in 2019.
The concert from that night featured an all-star lineup and it’s been edited down to a one-hour, great sounding show that you can now stream on Netflix.
The stable of performers was full to the brim. All doing their own takes on Dolly’s greatest
Highlights:
Lauren Daigle (who I had not heard of before) crushed it. CRUSHED it!
Chris Stapleton made me enjoy a song I have never liked: 9 to 5. I think it was the New Orleans vibe.
Miley Cyrus, annoying in so many ways, sang her ass off.
Mavis – that’s just always
Kacey Musgraves, for my money one of the best singers of the past 20 years, did an amazing job with her portion of a duet on Here You Come Again. She is just so damned good.
Lowlights:
Katy Perry was so camped up with her portion of the duet that she seemed like she was in a Drag show. I don’t know how Kacey kept side-eye glances to a minimum. Perry was bad.
Willie, god bless him, has been so frail in his past few televised appearances. I worry about the soon-to-be 88 year old legend. In the parts where he was harmonizing with Brandi Carlile, though, all was right with the world.
Shawn Mendes felt out of place. Yolanda Adams has great pipes – but if you use Whitney’s arrangement of the song, people will compare your performance to Whitney’s…and that isn’t fair to mere mortals.
As is customary for tributes, the honoree is mostly seen blowing kisses in cutaways, but the Queen does take the stage at the end and really does her thing. She still hits every note.
I recently asked my friends in the Music Nerds Facebook group if they could ever just have music on in the background without letting their sophisticated ears force them into really listening to every channel, every instrument. Most could not.
I bring that up because this concert film is the kind of thing you can listen to without necessarily watching it. You can also enjoy it more than once. For me, having watched it once, I can now have it playing while I’m working on…well, on something like this!
Dolly Parton: A MusiCares Tribute is now streaming on Netflix. 3 out of 4 Stars | Reviewed by Kyle Osborne
