Dolly Parton has sung disco, pop, bluegrass and even metal – but for all her genre-hopping, she has always come back to country. From the disco bop of Baby I’m Burnin’ to the metal-influenced Bygones, featuring Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Parton’s career has repeatedly pushed beyond country’s boundaries while remaining firmly rooted in it.

Although some of her country fan-base waned as she became a pop star, Parton ultimately belonged to country music. She had 25 number one singles in the Billboard’s country music charts, ten Academy of Country Music Awards and her 1999 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame to prove it.

Country music has had something of a revival in recent years. This has been accompanied by a revaluation of its cultural contributions, partly driven by the popularity of artists such as Parton. But country music can be a hard sell. The oft-repeated response of “anything except rap or country” to questions of musical taste speak to how it has appeared as an example of bad music, widely disliked outside a core audience. If everyone loves Parton, it does not follow that everyone loves country music.

Frequently conservative in its aesthetics and politics, country music is associated with particular people, tropes and values. Many of these associations can be traced to the early years of its invention. What would come to be called country music (the term came........

© The Conversation