She put a memorable stamp on the song with resonant vocal flourishes. The “Miley Cyrus is actually talented” meter went off when this video hit the blogosphere. Bonus points for the Nocturnals’ beautiful jam and acoustic breakdown. The rapt audience response, inducing a haunting sing-along, speaks to how intense this must have been to witness live. Grace Potter’s slowed down, dynamic rendition is nothing if not chill-inducing. Here are 10 of the best, or at least most interesting, covers of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” It’s fun to sing and hard to mess up if you have a good voice. Melodically, the song lends itself easily to interpretation. Novices and stars alike have contributed takes on the track. Ultimately, it’s the lowest rung on the ladder of romantic power play: to be humbled before “the next best thing.” Appealing to this universal fear with repetitive pleas and a brilliant hook made the track a hit-earning legend.Ī karaoke favorite and one of Parton’s signature hits, “Jolene” is also her most covered song. Parton’s plea is now legendary: “Please don’t take him just because you can.” It registers with the basest of bitterness we’ve all felt. Lyrically, it’s a simple song, but sometimes the simplest lyrics hit hardest.
The somewhat sinister melody was inspired by a real-life encounter with a little red-headed child named Jolene, as she recounted to NPR Music a few years back. Harper & Row, 1965.Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” is a perfectly digestible ode to jealousy. His texts wasted no words and his delivery wasted no time.
They were all too short and too crowded with facts to permit any excess of generalities and sentimentalities. No speech was more than 20 to 30 minutes in duration. And he did not hesitate to depart from strict rules of English usage when he thought adherence to them (e.g., "Our agenda are long") would grate on the listener's ear. He rarely used words he considered hackneyed: "humble," "dynamic," "glorious." He used none of the customary word fillers (e.g., "And I say to you that is a legitimate question and here is my answer"). He refused to be folksy or to include any phrase or image he considered corny, tasteless or trite. He used little or no slang, dialect, legalistic terms, contractions, clichés, elaborate metaphors or ornate figures of speech. "-but with few other exceptions his sentences were lean and crisp. He had a weakness for one unnecessary phrase: "The harsh facts of the matter are. He wanted his major policy statements to be positive, specific and definite, avoiding the use of "suggest," "perhaps" and "possible alternatives for consideration." At the same time, his emphasis on a course of reason-rejecting the extremes of either side-helped produce the parallel construction and use of contrasts with which he later became identified. He wanted both his message and his language to be plain and unpretentious, but never patronizing. But if the situation required a certain vagueness, he would deliberately choose a word of varying interpretations rather than bury his imprecision in ponderous prose.įor he disliked verbosity and pomposity in his own remarks as much as he disliked them in others. Words were regarded as tools of precision, to be chosen and applied with a craftsman's care to whatever the situation required. His frequent use of dashes was of doubtful grammatical standing-but it simplified the delivery and even the publication of a speech in a manner no comma, parenthesis or semicolon could match.
Sentences began, however incorrect some may have regarded it, with "And" or "But" whenever that simplified and shortened the text. He was fond of alliterative sentences, not solely for reasons of rhetoric but to reinforce the audience's recollection of his reasoning. His best paragraphs, when read aloud, often had a cadence not unlike blank verse-indeed at times key words would rhyme. The test of a text was not how it appeared to the eye, but how it sounded to the ear.
#Ithaca voice jolene series
Our chief criterion was always audience comprehension and comfort, and this meant: (1) short speeches, short clauses and short words, wherever possible (2) a series of points or propositions in numbered or logical sequence wherever appropriate and (3) the construction of sentences, phrases and paragraphs in such a manner as to simplify, clarify and emphasize. Neither of us had any special training in composition, linguistics or semantics. We were not conscious of following the elaborate techniques later ascribed to these speeches by literary analysts. The Kennedy style of speech-writing-our style, I am not reluctant to say, for he never pretended that he had time to prepare first drafts for all his speeches-evolved gradually over the years.
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