Keeping with the theme of the day, over at The Atlantic, some thoughts on mothers and feminism in country music.:

Country’s willingness to consider women as mothers in addition to considering them as (sexually available) daughters isn’t always liberating, by any means. But it is, or at least can be, an alternative that isn’t generally explored or exploited in other parts of the pop landscape. At the least, this means that country is sometimes able to see mothers not just as stock characters, but as people whose experiences may in themselves be worth singing about—as in Loretta Lynn’s glorious 1971 ode for harassed parents, “One’s on the Way.”

That song explicitly distances its narrator from the “girls in New York City [who] all march for women’s lib.” But the ability to see mothers as human beings also makes it possible for country on occasion to have something that starts to look like an honest-to-God feminist vision. “To Daddy,” a hit for Emmylou Harris in 1970, for example, about the emotional aridity and monotony of a stay-at-home mother’s life, sure sounds like songwriter Dolly Parton was channeling Betty Friedan. In any case, it’s hard to imagine Friedan wouldn’t approve of the conclusion.

Fresh Air interviews with two of these great ladies of country, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton.

nprmusic:

I have a guilt complex about being the one that’s so successful when so many of them are so much more talented than me. And so many friends that I know in Nashville that have twice the talent that I’ve had, that I’ve seen them come and go through the years and never see their dream come true.

— Dolly Parton on why some dreams don’t come to fruition in an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

Photo: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

and….The Fresh Air interview with Dolly Parton.

Ken Tucker’s Top Albums of 2011

1. Beastie Boys

2. Middle Brother

3. Adele

4. Raphael Saadiq

5. tUnE-yArDs

6. Pistol Annies

7. Low Cut Connie

8. Dolly Parton

9. Paul Simon

From the archives: Dolly Parton

Since releasing her first solo album in 1967, Parton has become a star in movies and on television. But rock critic Ken Tucker says that her new album,Better Day, returns the focus to Parton’s singing and her frequently underestimated songwriting.

Dolly Parton, on leaving home at 18: “I knew that I had to go. It wasn’t that I wasn’t proud of who I was and where I was from. But I had a dream, and I just couldn’t imagine myself [like my mother]. … I wanted to do something with my music. I knew I was going to leave when I was 18 years old. And I graduated from high school on a Friday night, and I left for Nashville on Saturday morning. I was ready to go.” (Image: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images Entertainment.)

Somehow it seems appropriate that Dolly Parton is our guest on Labor Day.