Dolly Parton's What's up?
Dolly Parton is an amazing person. On "Rockstar", her latest album, she covered a great number of songs, with amazing collaborators, often the original interpreters or writers. In her cover of "What's up?", a song I really love, with Linda Perry, she changed a few lines of the lyrics, as one often does when covering, to make a song their own.
Instead of "Twenty-five years and my life is still...", she's singing "All of these years and my life is still..." - and makes total sense, because unlike Linda Perry she wasn't 25 when she wrote it, she was 77 when she recorded it.
Instead of "I take a deep breath and I get real high", Dolly takes "a deep breath and wonders why", and it makes sense, because, hey, it's Dolly Parton.
But here's the line that hurts, right there when the song reaches its high point:
- "And I pray,
- Oh my God do I pray!
- I pray every. single. day.
- for a revolution!"
She changed one letter in the last word:
- "for a resolution"
And it just breaks my heart. Because it feels so weak. Because it seems to betray the song. Because it seems to betray everything. And also because I might agree with her, and that feels like betrayal too.
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