While Dolly worked to honor the genre’s foundational sounds, we witnessed the concurrent mainstream rise of a new generation of pop country stars, women for whom Dolly had long been laying the foundation throughout her whole career: Carrie Underwood, The Chicks, Miranda Lambert, Shania Twain. And by February in 2008, Dolly Parton made a return to pop country.
If there was ever any debate as to whether our rhinestone-encrusted pop country monarch was going to return to the realm she practically invented, Backwoods Barbie was here to clear that right up.
