For my midterm, I have decided to read “Jolene,” written and performed by Dolly Parton, with some reference to Lil Nas X’s rendition. The song is a first-person recount of the singer begging a woman, Jolene, to not take their man. The singer details the striking beauty of Jolene and how easy it would be for her to take the man away from the singer.
I remember the first time I heard this song. My mom was driving to my almost stepfather’s house and popped in this scratched-up CD album by Dolly Parton: “Jolene” (the song and album have the same name). She listened to the album frequently, but I can’t remember the CD being played before that. After listening to the whir of the CD player reading the disc, the album’s first song started playing: “Jolene.” At the time, it was just a song to me. Just a woman singer asking another woman to not interfere in her relationship because Jolene was more beautiful. Growing up in a southern state, practically every country song I have ever listened to is about some form of alcohol abuse or misogyny, so it’s always hard to explain why I like some country music. A few songs, like “Jolene,” tell a story about just plain, simple living. Except, most country artists frame simple living through the eyes of heteronormativity. Not until about a year ago did I see the song differently. Lil Nas X performed a cover of the song in September 2021, and it was fantastic to see a queer person reinterpret a classic country song in such a beautiful manner.
The intended audience I imagine for my close reading is any queer person who grew up listening to country music. Finding no representation in the songs you listen to day after day can be incredibly isolating. It can feel even worse to feel like you need to be what country songs convey. I hope my close reading of a classic country song like “Jolene” will encourage this audience to find the places where our existence is hidden in the folds. Additionally, I hope it helps a general audience understand that not every country song is terrible (although there are a couple of bad ones out there).
I plan on using “The Only One For Me, Jolene” from Dolly Parton’s America Podcast and ‘Now You’re The Only One For Me Jolene’: Queer Reading and Forging Community in Country Music by James Barker. In the first, the podcast crew speaks with a professor, Nadine Hubbs, who has interpreted Parton’s deviation from the “cheating woman” trope. I simply could not count the number of country songs written about women hating on women for taking their man, but Dolly confronts this paradigm in a new light. As Hubbs suggests, Partons approaches the narrative as women loving women in the homoerotic sense. I plan for this analysis provided by Hubbs to be the first part of my argument: reimaging the lyrics of artists by anyone to fit their queer experience. The second piece informs the second part of my argument. In “Now You’re The Only One For Me Jolene,” Barker explores how queer people, including Nadine Hubbs and Lil Nas X, have reinterpreted the song or even added their lyrics to redefine the country music genre for themselves. I hope this will show that country songs can be interpreted to represent queer identities for any person and provide examples of how queer artists have reimagined country songs. In this way, I believe my midterm essay will overlap course content through identity, queerness, and intersectionality.
As for questions, I am struggling to find sources for my particular topic. I am trying to make a queer interpretation of one country song, so I could only find two sources. Should I try to find more? Should I expand my search past “Jolene?”