Dolly Parton - "Love is Like a Butterfly"

Dolly Parton passed three weeks ago.  She is an icon, a legend, one of the few universally revered artists, and her death marks the ends an era of popular music.  We had hoped to see her in Vegas in December, 2025, but that was postponed until September of 2026, and then in May 2026 it was cancelled.  

I grew up with country music in the house, so there are many of her songs that I know by heart, and could choose to mark her passing.  Look at the all-star line up that performed "Jolene" in 2022 at her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  And one can't not mention Whitney Houston's 1992 blockbuster cover of "I Will Always Love You", which reintroduced Dolly to a whole new audience.  Honorable mention to 1989's upbeat "Why'd You Come In Here".  

Instead, I'm choosing 1974's "Love is Like a Butterfly", which became a personal favorite for Danette's and mine, when she performed this with Stephen Colbert in 2012 on the Colbert Report.  Stephen becomes self-conscious that he's performing with a legend, and his various errors and false-starts are endearing. 

Comedy Central pulled all of the Colbert Reports from the web, presumably when he went to CBS, so the original URL no longer works, and while the page is archived in the Wayback Machine, the embedded video is not.  Fortunately, the Internet Archive has more than just the Wayback Machine, and the broadcast is saved in a completely different collection.*

Dolly is gone, and that makes the world a less kind place.  We are deeply saddened at her passing, and regret that we never got to see her.  

"He's just scared. You calm down now, we'll get through this thing."

Dolly Parton - "Love is Like a Butterfly" (1974 studio, 1976 TV show)

* A serendipitous confluence of my research and entertainment interests.   

Brandi Carlile - "The Story"

Happy birthday Danette!

Last year I broke with tradition and picked out a birthday song for her that she actually liked, instead of my usual manner of picking a song that makes me think of her (which she may or may not like).  This year, I'm returning to form, since I think Danette is mostly ambivalent about Brandi Carlile. 

Despite it being a breakthrough hit in 2007, somehow I was unaware of "The Story", the title track from Brandi Carlile's second LP, until she perfomed it on SNL, December 10, 2022.  I guess I was generally aware of her and her work, enough to know that she was well respected in the folk / alt-country genres, and had worked with legends like Tanya Tucker.   But the SNL version of "The Story" was a revelation for me.  

It begins simply enough as a conventional ballad:

   All of these lines across my face

   Tell you the story of who I am

   So many stories of where I've been

   And how I got to where I am

   But these stories don't mean anything

   When you've got no one to tell them to

   It's true, I was made for you

   I climbed across the mountain tops

Hello, this is where song really interesting.  Carlile breaks from the ballad format, and with a sense of urgency, cranks the "alt-country" knob from "country" to "alt":

   Swam all across the ocean blue

   I crossed all the lines and I broke all the rules

   But baby, I broke them all for you

   Oh, because even when I was flat broke

   You made me feel like a million bucks

   You do, and I was made for you

At the instrumental break, we see her switch from an acoustic to an electric guitar, and the band then proceeds to build tension (1:46 -- 2:10), making me lean forward in my seat, then they knock out a frantic 25 seconds (2:10 -- 2:35) that pays homage to Sonic Youth, before returning to a mostly a cappella stanza:

   You see the smile that's on my mouth

   It's hiding the words that don't come out

   And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed

   They don't know my head is a mess

   No, they don't know who I really am

   And they don't know what I've been through like you do

   And I was made for you

Turning back up the volume and with male back-up vocals providing white noise, they've now set up a loud-quiet-loud progression that would make the Pixies proud:

   All of these lines across my face

   Tell you the story of who I am

   So many stories of where I've been

   And how I got to where I am

   Oh, but these stories don't mean anything

   When you've got no one to tell them to

   It's true, I was made for you

   Oh, yeah, well it's true that I was made for you

I'm a sucker for story telling songs, so how could I not love this poignant meta-story?  Carlile was only 26 when she released this song, which is nearly the amount of time that Danette and I have been together.  Borrowing from what she and I often say about Pink Floyd and "Time" -- at such a young age, how do you write a song with so much insight to lived experience?  

Like Danette, this song has aged well.  Like Danette, my attraction to this song was immediate and visceral. Like Danette, this song reflects the story of who I am. 

The Story: live on SNL 2022-12-10, studio version, cover by Dolly Parton

Bonus link: the backstory on the "The Story"

Previous birthday songs:
2022: Plastic Bertrand - "Ça plane pour moi" 
2021: Adam and the Ants - "Christian D'or" 
2020: Walk Off The Earth - "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
2019: Nicki Minaj - "Monster"
2018: Bear Hands - "Giants" 
2017: Alvvays - "Archie, Marry Me" 
2016: Molly Hatchet - "Flirtin' With Disaster" 
2015: Avett Brothers - "Kick Drum Heart"
2014: Ani DiFranco - "32 Flavors" 
2013: The Green Pajamas - "Kim the Waitress"
2012: The Cure - "High"
2011: Blink 182 - "Josie"
2010:  Dead Milkmen - "Punk Rock Girl"