Bubbling Over

Album: Bubbling Over (1973)
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Songfacts®:

  • In the title tune from her 12th solo album, Dolly Parton is bubbling over with happiness over being in love. "This is just a cute, upbeat, happy little song, and people are always saying that about me," she explained in her 2020 book, Songteller. "But I'm not happy all the time. I don't deserve to be happy all the time. And I don't want to be because if I was, I couldn't write some of the stuff I do. I make a joke out of it. When people say, 'Oh, you always look so happy,' I say, 'Well, that's the Botox.' But it is true that if I'm happy, I'm happy all over."
  • The album cover features Dolly's face superimposed over the fountain in front of the Country Music Hall Of Fame. "It's an awful picture of me," she lamented in Songteller. "We kept working and working on that picture, trying to make it look right. We needed that fountain, and we kept trying to superimpose my face on it. It's just one of those mistakes you make." Despite her misgivings, the cover art earned photographer Les Leverett the Billboard magazine award for best country album cover of the year.
  • The album yielded one single, a new version of "Traveling Man," which first appeared on Dolly's Coat Of Many Colors album in 1971.
  • Also in 1973, Dolly released the solo album My Tennessee Mountain Home and two duet albums with Porter Wagner: We Found It and Love And Music.

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