Dolly Parton‘s brand new album Pure & Simple (the 43rd studio album of her legendary career) has a very interesting creation story. It started with Dolly planning a tour, and it was a tour that was more about getting back to the basics than amping things up, so with the idea of a pure and simple tour, that became its name. Dolly figured that if she had a tour called Pure & Simple, she might as well have an album to go along with the tour, which she’d also call Pure & Simple…and of course, if you have a tour and an album named Pure & Simple, you definitely need a song called “Pure and Simple!” After deciding that an album was needed, Dolly started to come up with song ideas–and sparked by own own marriage, and the recent celebration of it reaching the 50 year mark back in May, Dolly decided to focus the music on the subject of love. Dolly cover the spectrum of love, she says “I think I touched on every kind of love there ever was on this album. Sweet love, precious love, cheatin’ love, friends-with-benefits love, oh…any kind of love you wanna talk about, or know about or think about…I think I got it in this album.” Dolly joked–with a nob to her famous holiday song–that she “just tried to write these songs that I thought would fit everybody…it’s like an album with love of many colors.” Dolly’s album Pure & Simple is available now, and if you want to check out if her tour Pure & Simple is headed to your town, just check out Dolly Parton dot com, or just click right HERE
Dolly Parton describes how a tour idea sparked an idea for an album and a song called “Pure and Simple.” (:25)
“I really didn’t know what I was going to do. I knew we were gong on tour, and I knew I needed a CD, and I thought well, I’m calling like the tour Pure and Simple, because we were actually…had broken down the show to where we don’t have a lot of music, and a lot a big production things at all, and so that was a reason to call it Pure and Simple, I thought, well I need a CD so I need to call it Pure and Simple, I thought well now, if I’m going to have a CD called Pure and Simple, I’m going to need a song called ‘Pure and Simple’.”
Dolly Parton shares how her 50th wedding anniversary inspired the music on Pure and Simple. (:17)
“I started just writing a song and it turned out to be a sweet love song called ‘Pure and Simple’. And I thought, well what’s this album going to be, what’s the rest of it going to be? And I thought, well, this is my 50th year married, I’m just gonna write a whole album of love songs, all different kinds of love, and so I did.”
Dolly Parton says that she included all kinds of love in her love songs on her new album Pure and Simple. (:13)
“I think I touched on every kind of love there ever was on this album. Sweet love, precious love, cheatin’ love, friends-with-benefits love, oh…any kind of love you wanna talk about, or know about or think about…I think I got it in this album.”
Dolly Parton tried not to leave anyone out when it came to making music for Pure and Simple. (:07)
“I just tried to write these songs that I thought would fit everybody…it’s like an album with love of many colors.”