QUEEN OF AMERICA
If you went looking for Dolly Parton’s finest musical moment, you might not have to go any further than the opening lines of 9 to 5, the theme tune she wrote for the ground-breaking 1980 comedy movie that later inspired a stage musical. “Tumble outta bed and I stumble to the kitchen/Pour myself a cup of ambition.”
Somehow Parton manages to bring a gritty positivity to the battle of the sexes while also being ironic, all to a thigh-slapping beat.
Talking to the song’s writer, I constantly catch sight of the razor-sharp mind and wry sense of humour, cloaked in those famous perky Southern vowels and big hair that powers this country music icon.
“That’s one of those lines as a songwriter when you just think, thank you, God. When I wrote that song, I was thinking about how you’re getting up and stumbling to the kitchen because that’s what you always do to pour a cup of coffee, and then all of a sudden that line just came to me. I got so excited. It’s all about your first cup trying to wake up, whether it’s coffee or tea or cola, to get you started and motivated. And I said, ‘Oh, my God, a cup of ambition!’”
When she played the song on set for her co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, they were blown away. “Lily and I had goosebumps,” Fonda has said.
“We knew it would become a huge hit and anthem.” It did. Today, 9 to 5 is a feminist anthem, a term Parton doesn’t identify with even though she says she’s “all for women”.
“The Opry is like the song – if you can make it there, you can
