B.D. McClay on Dolly:
A lot of Dolly Parton’s women are jerked around by men, or stuck on no-good guys, or preoccupied by male faithlessness, though she wrote so many songs I’d hesitate to say that these women make up a majority. These women are stock characters of her chosen storytelling mode, in the same way the men of country music are often love’s losers. But I struggle to think of a Parton-penned song that comes from the perspective of a wholly defeated person, like John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” does. A Dolly Parton heroine can lose, and lose, and lose, and lose some more, but her losses are somehow inherently temporary. There are no dead ends, just detours.