Dolly Parton’s had an eventful month. Friday, November 17, marks the release of her 49th studio album — and the first rock ’n’ roll album in her 60-year career — Rockstar. And last month, she published Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, a coffee-table book featuring some of her iconic outfits from throughout her career. She’s also hard at work on a Broadway musical about her life.

So, why is now the right time for a rock album after a storied discography in country music?

“Why not?” Parton tells Shondaland. “When they put me in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, I thought the timing was pretty good. If I was ever going to think about doing a rock album, it should be now. I want to earn my keep.”

The 30-track album features songs by Prince, the Beatles, Stevie Nicks, Queen, Joan Jett, and Blondie, some of whom duet with Parton. “If I could get Paul McCartney and Ringo on ‘Let It Be’ — that’s the Beatles — how good would that be?” she exclaims about indulging her Beatlemania fantasies for a day. She opened her star Rolodex, and many of the people she called who don’t perform much these days, including Elton John and Steve Perry of Journey, made an exception for Parton. “It was a natural progression, the way that it all fell into place,” she says.

Parton chose songs that she and her husband of 57 years, Carl Dean, who’s a rock ’n’ roll fan, liked, but also ones that fit her voice and vocal range. “We recorded 30 [songs], but there were many more I wish I could have done,” she says, adding that the couple’s anniversary is “in a few months.”

One song on the new album is a Dolly Parton original called “I Dreamed About Elvis.” While one could be forgiven for thinking artificial intelligence was employed on the song (Parton expressed her disdain for A.I. in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter), singer Ronnie McDowell actually performs as the voice of Presley. Parton had always wanted to work with Presley but regrettably refused his request to record perhaps her most famous song, “I Will Always Love You,” due to Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, insisting that Presley retain half the publishing rights to it.

“It’s important, if you can, to own your own things,” Parton says. It’s poignant, then, that “I Will Always Love You” plays over the closing scene of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, a movie that attempts to put the spotlight on Presley’s wife rather than the King.

It’s for this reason that she admires Taylor Swift’s business savvy, for example, in rerecording her masters.

“I just love to see young women taking hold of their own careers,” Parton says. “I’m at the age now that I really love watching young people coming up and being smart.”

Parton also mentions that she was happy about the success of Barbie, helmed by two young women, director Greta Gerwig and producer and star Margot Robbie, and featuring a cameo by costume designer and longtime Parton collaborator Ann Roth as the old woman at the bus stop whom Barbie calls beautiful, who designed the costumes for 9 to 5, amongst other Parton projects. Parton has called herself “Backwoods Barbie” (which is also the title of her 2008 album), and the cover of Behind the Seams is full Barbiecore. “Everybody loves being able to dress Barbie because they [are], in truth, dressing themselves and imagining what they would look like,” Parton says.

The singer carries the power of clothes and image into her real life. “I look like I’m ready to go onstage at any time! I always wear too much makeup, too much hair, and my clothes are always a little outrageous. But that’s my personality; [that’s how] I feel comfortable,” she says.

In Behind the Seams, Parton writes that people were always trying to get her to tone it down, but, she says, “Even if you think, ‘I wouldn’t wear that if my life depended on it,’ but if I’ve got it on, and you feel a comfort or an easiness within me, you’re going to relate more to that.” I certainly felt at ease with Parton during our interview, for which she was outfitted in a cream silk dress with black lace overlay and black bow detailing around the hem of her skirt.

Her fashion advice for others? “Learn every little thing about yourself that makes you feel better about you,” Parton says. “It’s important to feel comfortable in your own skin — and in your own clothes, whatever they may be!”

---

Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris.

Get Shondaland directly in your inbox: SUBSCRIBE TODAY