Did Dorothy call the “going country” trend?
Speaking to ABC Audio, the “Rest in Peace” rocker remembers telling her producer that she felt country was on the cusp of a comeback while working on her new album, The Way.
“Shortly thereafter, Beyoncé put out Cowboy Carter,” Dorothy says. “We were, like, ‘See? We were right, this is great!’ So we’re like, ‘Let’s ride this wave!'”
The Way does include more country and Southern rock influences, though Dorothy says those sounds have long been part of her music.
“There is some of that influence in my first record, especially,” she says. “There’s a lot of slide guitar and harmonica and swampy blues. So it’s always been there in the DNA, we just decided to embellish it a little more on this record.”
Make no mistake, though: The Way is still very much a rock record. Even one of the album’s honky-tonkiest cuts, the banjo-laden single “Tombstone Town,” features a solo from Guns N’ Roses icon Slash.
“It’s kinda wild and aggressive, and it made me think of ‘Welcome to the Jungle,'” Dorothy says of “Tombstone Town.” “Not that it sounds the same, just that there’s just a lot of energy and crazy, in a good a way. So I think that kind of connection is what made think [Slash] should rip the solo on this.”
Meanwhile, the single “Mud” features the first time Dorothy’s ever screamed on a song.
“I definitely think I branched out and tried some new things,” Dorothy says. “It’s always fun as a vocalist to discover a new aspect of your voice. When you do it, you’re like, ‘Oh, I can do that now, that’s really cool.'”
The Way drops Friday.
