Debbie vs Dolly

Dolly Parton

Born 19 January 1946 (age 68)
Home town Sevierville, Sevier County, Tennessee, US Genres Country, pop, bluegrass, gospel
Years active 1955 to present
Labels she has worked with Goldband, Mercury, Monument, RCA, Warner Bros, Columbia, Rising Tide, Decca, Sugar Hill, Dolly Records
Occupations Singersongwriter, record producer, actress, author, musician, business executive

• Since the age of seven, Dolly Parton has composed more than 3,000 songs.
• By the age of nine she was regularly appearing on The Cas Walker Show, a local variety programme on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• Her first singles as a child performer included Puppy Love in 1959 and It’s Sure Gonna Hurt in 1962. These did not receive sufficient recognition, however, to reach the charts at the time.
• After graduating from Sevier County High School in 1964, she moved to Nashville, where she formed a partnership with her uncle, Bill Owen. Her talents as a songwriter began to gain attention when the two were signed to Combine Publishing. She had many charting singles in America during this time, including two Top 10 US hits: Bill Phillips’s 1966 record Put It Offž Until Tomorrow, and Skeeter Davis’s 1967 hit Fuel To The Flame. However, Dolly’s first UK Top 10 hit was Jolene, which reached No 7 in 1973.
• Johnny Cash told her to pursue a career in music when she met him at her ‚ rst label-signing in her late teens. She claimed she ‘loved everything Johnny did’. Dolly also claimed that he was her ‚ rst crush, because he made her ‘feel something inside’.
• Her fame escalated in 1967 after she began appearing as a featured performer on Porter Wagoner’s weekly television programme. Dumb Blonde and Something Fishy were the standout tracks on her ‚ rst solo full-length album, Hello, I’m Dolly, which she recorded during her partnership with Wagoner in 1967.
• Her single Here You Come Again topped the US country singles chart in 1977 and won Dolly a Grammy Award in 1979.
• A number of hits followed, the most successful being 9 To 5 in 1981 and her 1983 duet with Kenny Rogers, Islands In The Stream, which reached No 7 in the UK singles chart. 
• Dolly has achieved 25 RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) certi‚ ed gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards, and had 25 songs reach No 1 on the Billboard country charts. This is a world record for a female country artist. Her 25th RIAA award was bestowed this year for selling more than 100 million copies of her recordings worldwide.
• During the past 40 years she has released 42 albums worldwide and 110 charted singles in the US.
• She has received seven Grammy Awards, 10 Country Music Association Awards, ‚ ve Academy of Country Music Awards and three American Music Awards. She is one of only ‚ ve female artists to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award, which she received in 1978.
• She has the joint highest number of Grammy Award nominations for a woman (tied with Beyoncé), with 46, and is in eighth place for the most Grammy nominations overall. 
• In 1999, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She said: ‘I owe a lot of folks a lot of thanks, but I give the praise and honour to God for whatever talent and good luck that I’ve had.’
• She refused to sell Elvis Presley the full publishing rights to her hit I Will Always Love You. She said: ‘This is the stuffž I’m leaving for my family when I’m dead and gone.’ However, she did allow Whitney Houston to cover the song for the ‚ lm The Bodyguard, which made Dolly ‘enough money to buy Graceland’.
• She has also starred in ‚ lms such as 9 To 5 (1980), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. She was nominated again two years later for the ‚ lm The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.
• During her recent performance at Glastonbury she said: ‘My boobs are fake, my hair’s fake, but what is real is my voice and my heart.’
• Her current net worth is $450m (£260m).

Debbie Harry

Born 1 July 1945 (age 69)
Home town Miami, Florida, US
Genres Rock, new wave, disco, pop Years active 1968 to present
Labels she has worked with Chrysalis, Geffen, Sire, Eleven Seven
Occupations Singer-songwriter, actress

• Debbie Harry graduated from Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey, with an Associate of Arts degree in 1965.
• Almost immediately after her graduation she moved to New York to pursue a career in the arts. She started o by working as a secretary at BBC Radio’s o ce for a year to gain more experience in music production.
• She began her vocal career as a backing singer for a folk-rock band called The Wind In The Willows in the late 1960s.
• She then joined The Stilettos, where she met future music partner and eventual boyfriend Chris Stein, who was the guitarist. Debbie and Stein left The Stilettos to form a band originally called Angel & The Snake. However, they soon changed their name to Blondie, the term men frequently addressed Debbie by after she bleached her hair.
• Their self-titled debut album, released in 1976, received little recognition. However, the album was re-released in 1977 to much greater success. 
• Parallel Lines (released in 1978) reached No 1 in the UK. The global hit single Heart Of Glass was named one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2010, and is ranked No 56 on the UK’s o cial list of biggest-selling singles, with sales of 1.28 million copies.
• Californian pop band The Nerves originally performed the song Hanging On The Telephone. Their recording was unsuccessful, however, so the publishing rights were passed on to Blondie, who turned it into a hit single that reached No 5 in the UK charts in November 1978.
• In June 1979, Blondie appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine – photographed by Annie Leibovitz – and Debbie became a fashion icon.
• Later that year, platinumselling Eat To The Beat became a UK No 1 album. More hits followed, including Dreaming, Atomic and three more US No 1 singles – The Tide Is High, Rapture and Call Me, from the soundtrack of the ¡ lm American Gigolo, which became Billboard’s No 1 song of 1980.
• The song’s producer, Giorgio Moroder, had originally approached Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks. However, Blondie ended up recording it and it became another UK No 1 for the band.
• Blondie split after releasing their sixth studio album, The Hunter, in 1982, which was relatively poorly received. Chris Stein had also been diagnosed with the life-threatening illness pemphigus, an autoimmune disorder.
• After the split, Debbie began a solo career. She said: ‘I do know the e ect that music still has on me – I’m completely vulnerable to it. I’m seduced by it.’
• Blondie reformed in 1997. In 1999, Debbie became the oldest female singer to achieve a No 1 hit in the UK, with Blondie’s Maria.
• The band have been nominated for two Grammy Awards, and won the Juno Award for Best Selling Single (Heart Of Glass) in 1980, the Q Music Inspiration Award in 1998, and the NME Godlike Genius Award in 2014.
• In 2006, Blondie were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• Debbie is ranked No 12 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll, and she was also ranked No 18 on VH1’s 100 Sexiest Artists list in 2002, which she takes pride in. As she has said: ‘Being hot never hurts!’
• Her current net worth is $16m (£9m).