First time together.
[Video][Website]
[5.17]
Megan Harrington: Family trees are so crazy. I don’t even know half of what’s on mine, but I gather it’s about as convoluted as this song’s narrative. The first verse is the worst, but if you can get through it, if you can give up trying to untangle all its knots, Jewel and Dolly sound blissful together. Their voices are like the breeze meeting a tire swing in the front yard. It’s a serenity, just close your eyes.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Any other singer but Jewel would stroke the metaphor about the man “as hard as a mountain” and not sing the line about the accumulation of generations like she was offering dead flowers in a bucket, but Jewel, author of the best-selling volume of poetry in American history, is also her mother’s daughter. Hired for blue tears, Tennessee mountain homes, and her coat of many colors, Dolly Parton stands back and lets the star fall, gently.
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: God, this song is trite. And while Dolly Parton’s voice has lost some of its luster, it also shows that Jewel’s is still colorless and thin.
[3]
Will Adams: When Jewel’s and Parton’s voices meet, it’s like close relatives meeting for the first time, giving what’s otherwise a quiet number some emotional grounding.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Ah, Jewel, she of the unremembered ’90s. Outside the late ’90s, Jewel’s music codes not as pop but as Americana, at least as it’s used as a catch-all for not-quite-country-not-quite-folk music generally made by women; in the interim Jewel’s voice has shed all its breathiness for a crackle, and the arrangement’s slightly more trad, but otherwise this won’t change any minds. My mind is in no need of changing, and increasingly I want to just drop all other music (this generally coincides with wanting to move to some rural porch and be a schoolteacher) and let songs like this waft through my undoubtedly more tranquil life. But I’d slot this somewhere toward the end of the day.
[6]
Dorian Sinclair: “My Father’s Daughter” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t need to. I love the way the repeated lyrical themes shift as the song progresses, highlighting different parts of this familial legacy. Parton was a great choice for a partner on the track; her voice (which really doesn’t seem to age) pairs beautifully with Jewel’s, and the two bring a real depth of feeling.
[7]