Dolly Parton, who died this week aged 80, had made it clear she would not return using technology after she was gone, vowing never to use AI because she was artificial enough already.
The country legend had contemplated what might happen after her death and was not a fan of the current trend of using holograms or recreating an artist's likeness to keep them performing.
A couple of years ago, while in London promoting her Rockstar album, she confirmed she had no intention of using computer technology to make music or tour after she had passed away.
'I don't want to leave my soul here'
Dolly quipped: “Everything I have is artificial. I’ve left a great body of work behind I don’t know how they’ll keep me around (when I’m gone) but hopefully with my albums. I have to decide how much of that high tech stuff I leave on this earth but I don’t want to leave my soul here.”
The secret to her youthful looks was simple: “Good doctors, good make up and good lighting,” she laughed. “I keep trying to stay young in spirit. I’ll never be as old as I am.”
Dolly still looked incredible until the end, turning up to London in thigh high glitter boots which meant: “I’m a rockstar who can’t bend her knees”.
Recordings and collaborations
She worked with just about every popstar on the planet, even teaming with Sabrina Carpenter and Beyonce in recent years. Dolly's mammoth Rockstar album featured every legend going from Paul McCartney and Sting to P!nk and Lizzo, and it was recorded for her husband Carl, who himself passed away just last year.
She explained: “I chose songs that he loved, I made him sit down and listen to the whole thing. At the end he said, ‘that’s really good’. To me that’s like somebody else jumping up and down. I like to please him more than anyone else.”
Her pal Elton John featured on the LP: “We are similar in our gaudyness. “Anywhere we wind up together we wind up singing together. Elton John just asked me to sing on his next album so I said, ‘you sing on mine and I’ll sing on yours’.”
No more tours and future plans
But even a couple of years ago she warned fans that she had no plans to tour again: “The reason I don’t tour now I don’t want to be away from home, we are getting old my husband and I.”
But she still had loads of music planned, though whether she ever got to record them remains to be seen. She revealed: “I do have one more big album I want to do to feel I accomplished. I want to do a great gospel album as spectacular as this one is. I’m about uplifting. I’m not gonna be around that long. so I want to leave some messages someone to lean on.”
And there had been many rumours of a big Dolly biopic over the years, but she was more excited about theatre with a new show due soon: “I was thinking of doing a biopic but I decided to go back to Broadway to do it as a musical. I’m working hard on it and hoping next year it stays there for a while and eventually becomes a movie.”
That autobiographical stage musical about her life and career, called Dolly: A True Original Musical, is due to preview later this year.
