When Dolly Parton was working on the 2012 film Joyful Noise, co-starring Kris Kristofferson, Queen Latifah, and Keke Palmer, she ended up writing 12 songs for its soundtrack. At one point director Todd Graff (The Abyss, Strange Days), asked Parton to revise one song she had written, and she responded “If you don’t like it, I’ll write another one. It only takes me an hour.”
“I love to write, especially when I’ve got a challenge,” added Parton. “I just need a subject, and I’m off and running, ’cause I know how to rhyme, and I love the music, and I just go for it.”
Joyful Noise follows the story of a Georgia church that has fallen on hard times and focuses on winning a national choir competition to help lift everyone’s spirits. For its soundtrack, Parton ended up using three of her songs and singing on each—”Not Enough,” “He’s Everything,” and a heartfelt ballad she shares with Kristofferson.
“From Here to the Moon and Back”
In the film, Parton plays G. G. Sparrow, who helps lead the direction of the singers after the death of her husband and their choir director Bernard Sparrow, played by Kristofferson. “From Here to the Moon and Back” is a tender love letter to her late husband and how she’ll love him till the end of time. Parton sings the verses solo and the chorus along with Kristofferson.
I could hold out my arms, say “I love you this much”
I could tell you how long I will long for your touch
How much and how far would I go to prove
The depth and the breadth of my love for you?
From here to the moon and back
Who else in this world will love you like that?
Love everlasting, I promise you that
From here to the moon and back
From here to the moon and back
I want you to know you can always depend
On promises made and love without end
No need to wonder how faithful I’ll be
Now and on into eternity
I would blow you a kiss from the star where I sat
I would call out your name to echo through the vast
Thank heaven for you and to God, tip my hat
From here to the moon and back
And I’ll spend forever just proving that fact
From here to the moon and back
From here to the moon and back
‘All the Girls’ and Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson‘s 2014 album To All the Girls…—a nod to his 1982 No. 1 hit with Julio Iglesias “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”—is a collection of duets with female singers, including Parton who joins him on “From Here to the Moon and Back.”
It wasn’t the first collaboration between the two, who collaborated on the 1972 country hit “Everything’s Beautiful (In Its Own Way),” which went to No. 7, and decades later on Parton’s 2020 holiday album A Holly Dolly Christmas with a new rendition of his 1963 song “Pretty Paper,” which became a hit for Roy Orbison in 1964.
“I love Willie,” said Parton of their collaboration. “I love that old funky sound he gets on that guitar. But he’s very hard to sing with because of his phrasing. It was like an exercise of some sort, like trying to catch him with all his little phrases and all. But it was a joy, and I’m glad we did it.”
To All the Girls…, which also features duets with Loretta Lynn, Mavis Staples, Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Alison Krauss, Carrie Underwood, and Miranda Lambert, among others, went to No. 2 on the Country chart, marking Nelson’s highest spot on the chart since 1989 with A Horse Called Music. Parton later featured her version with Nelson on her 2014 box set Blue Smoke.
