Think of Jolene, Here You Come Again, I Will Always Love You, Coat Of Many Colours or countless others – Dolly has always known how to break our hearts and make us blub into our beer. Not this time around, though, because Better Day is almost bursting with uplifting positive vibes.
Parton says the 12 new self-penned songs are meant to be inspirational, though not in a specifically religious sense, because “times are hard all over” and people are in need of undiluted messages of hope. While we can’t fault the gesture, the results prove to be both the album’s strengths and its undoing.
In The Meantime and Country Is As Country Does are splendid, grin-inducing toe-tappers made all the more joyous by Parton’s persuasively familiar voice, while Shine Like The Sun even has a kind of Springsteenesque anthemic vibe. The other side of the coin, however, is that Holding Everything and The Sacrifice veer awkwardly close to by-the-numbers cookie-cutter country mawkishness. Overall, the album is a solid addition to the Parton canon, despite a tendency to indulge her sweet tooth a little too much.
