Pretender takes a leisurely tour of the intermediate areas of Ms. Additional layers of homosexual longing, convoluted ménages à trois and double identities are revealed in a vortex of androgyny as one switches, verse to verse, between the two standard playback speeds. In this transposed tempo ‘Jolene’ reveals the singer to be a handsome tenor. As many consumers have inadvertently discovered, especially since the reemergence of 12’ 45rpm records of which this present disc is a peculiar subset, it is not uncommon to find oneself playing 45rpm sides at the LP standard speed of 331/3. The first inklings of this story came from fans of Ms.Parton’s earlier hit single ‘Jolene’. Pretender (based on ‘The Great Pretender’ written by Buck Ram) features the opportunity for a dramatic gender change, suggesting a hypothesis concerning the singer, Ms.Parton, perhaps worthy of headlines in the National Enquirer. This is from Oswald’s liner notes on the Plunderphonics EP: Track 2 of the Plunderphonics EP is “Pretender,” in which Dolly Parton’s rendition of “The Great Pretender” is manipulated to sound more like a man’s voice. Tracks 1, 3, and 4 mess with Igor Stravinsky, Count Basie, and Elvis Presley, respectively. The Plunderphonics EP has four tracks, each of which aggressively reworks a famous bit of music. (Oswald generally avoided charging money for his reconstituted works in the hopes of avoiding copyright infringement suits, but also withdrew and destroyed existing stock in the face of legal challenges.) In 1989 he distributed the Plunderphonics EP with four tracks to media outlets and radio stations. Oswald was a self-proclaimed “Plunderphonic” who argued for the necessity of (basically) fucking with famous pieces of music. It’s unclear whether “goodlittlebuddy” knew this or not, but either way Oswald deserves some of the credit here. Not a lot of people discussing “Slow Ass Jolene” took the opportunity to credit John Oswald for the insight about “Jolene”-but Oswald realized the exact same thing as early as 1988 (to be fair, a sprinkling of YouTube users did make the connection). The main YouTube video, originally uploaded by YouTube user “goodlittlebuddy” in April 2012, has now been viewed 1.75 million times. Many, many listeners expressed astonishment that Dolly’s phrasing and even vibrato were so finely expressed that hardly any flaws showed up, even at such a slow speed. The premise was that if you played that single not at the correct 45-rpm speed but at the 33-rpm speed, a reduction of about 25%, the resultant version was quite startling, as if “a soulful male ballad singer” ( The New Yorker) were covering it (and, incidentally, fucking with the gender dynamics of the song). Give it a listen.Last month a slowed-down video of Dolly Parton’s classic song “Jolene” made the rounds on the Internet. The effects are haunting and transform her voice into one that sounds unmistakably male. Listen to the “Jolene” slowed down below.ĭolly Parton’s classic song “Jolene” has been slowed down from 45 RPM to 33 RPM. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money,’ ” she jokingly recalled. “It was kinda like a running joke between us - when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. In Parton’s telling, there was a red-haired bank teller who gave her husband a lot of attention every time he went there. The gender-bending effect is now a song about a man begging Jolene to have mercy on him as his partner is likely to stray.Īlthough the subject matter of “Jolene” sounds “dreadful” (in Parton’s words), the song was written as an inside joke between the singer and her husband. In the original “Jolene,” the catchy chorus invites a fierce soprano sing-along as Parton appeals to another woman not to “take her man.” But at 33 RPMs, the same lyrics become sad and mournful, and most notably, Parton’s haunting vocals sound unmistakably male. While not all songs can handle this drastic change in tempo, “Jolene” is transformed in more ways than one. Many years ago, Dolly Parton’s 1973 hit “Jolene” was slowed down from the original 45 RPM record to just 33 RPM. Most of the time, this is done when another musician performs it as a cover song, but its recreation can be even simpler than that. It’s not unusual for a classic tune to be reimagined. (Photo: RCA Records (eBayfrontback), via Wikimedia Commons)
Dolly Parton in 1977, just several years after “Jolene” was a hit.
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