Dolly Parton

Here she comes again, that friend you love whom the world loves, too. But the world loves the her she became, not the her from way back when, and it’s heartbreaking, in a way, to see her emphasize all the things she wasn’t at first but perhaps inevitably became: uptown instead of down-home, glitzy instead of bric-a-brac, inviolable pop icon instead of the weird-as-shit girl who wrought “Dumb Blonde” and “I’ll Oil Wells Love You.” This isn’t the mountain girl, but this also isn’t the sexually frank grown-up who, once she’d taught the fellas to touch her right, set them straight for judging her just because she was a woman. No, this Ultimate her is just a little dull, especially after track seven, by which time she’s already hit with the haunted “Jolene” and that bad-advice-for-curious-children classic “Joshua.” She has embraced Porter and left him for good and taken the time to liken love to a butterfly and herself to a bargain store — OK, sometimes she’s still weird as shit. But after that, it’s Dolly as glossy pop, Dolly as bet-hedging duet partner, a simplified Dolly who must be shared with everyone. And maybe that’s OK; maybe everyone needs her, even watered down. Maybe, like she says, it’s all wrong but it’s all right. But, no, that can’t be, there’s much more life to her than you can see here. This comp omits “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” for God’s sake, and even the disco period is poorly cherry-picked — “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” stomps all over the real hits. So come on, people — dig past this for the genius beneath.