Dolly Parton's narration of her audiobook, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, is nominated for a Grammy.
This year the nominees in the audiobook, narration and storytelling category include Jimmy Carter, George Clinton and the Beatles.
Among the dozens of awards to be presented at the 2025 Grammys on February 2 (February 3, NZ time) is one for best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording. An exceedingly miscellaneous category, over the years it has covered movie soundtracks, plays, interviews, speeches, documentaries, reflections - and audiobooks. As the popularity of audiobooks has soared, they have come to dominate the category. Perhaps audiobooks represent the last hurrah of the spoken word, an ancient, outmoded form of communication increasingly replaced by graphics, videos and emojis.
READ MORE: Everything to know about the 2025 Grammy Awards
Let us begin with the late Jimmy Carter (1924-2024), who has been nominated for a Grammy 10 times and, though he lost to Barack Obama in 2008, has three of the awards to his name. At a mere 52 minutes, his Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration (Virgin Music/Tiger Turn) is an inventive mix of words and music, orchestrated by Kabir Sehgal. It consists of excerpts from Carter’s final Sunday school lessons delivered at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where he combines reflections on personal responsibility and duty to others with spiritual teaching and prayer. The lessons are enlivened by the former president’s droll sense of humour and interspersed with stirring musical performances by Keb’ Mo’, LeAnn Rimes, Darius Rucker, Jon Batiste and Nicole Zuraitis.
The longest entry by far is Barbra Streisand reading My Name is Barbra (Penguin Audio), a stupefying production of more than 48 hours in which it seems no detail of her 82 years has been left out - hair, clothes, furniture, transportation, meals, and paeans to her talent and beauty. Where was the blue pencil? The answer must lie in Streisand’s lifelong insistence on complete artistic control of her work. In this case it’s a pity, for buried in the welter of words and self-devotion are good stories of her tussles with people who attempted to bend her to their will (good luck with that) and revelatory discussions of how she gets to the right place artistically, of her process of creating mood in song and character on stage and screen. Streisand’s voice remains strong, limber and a powerful conduit of emotion. In this way the audiobook outshines the silent 992 pages of the print version.
All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words (Macmillan, 9¾ hours) by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines is a collection of excerpts from transcriptions of interviews the pair conducted for The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles. The audiobook is a sprawling attempt to answer two central questions: Why the group broke up and why the members ended up hating one another. More than three dozen people weigh in, including Paul, George, Ringo, Yoko Ono and a variety of less-central players, such as Cynthia Lennon and “Magic Alex” Mardas. The book is voiced by 10 actors: Adam Stevens, Anthony Howell, Ben Jacobson, Emma Gregory, Todd Kramer, Philip Stewart, Robert G. Slade, ShinFei Chen, Stefan Menaul and Mickey Knighton. Stand-ins though they may be, they capture the personalities, the prevarications and the air of “who me?” innocence of everyone involved. As it happens, the accounts of intrigue and backstabbing are so relentless and vivid that “All You Need Is a Dagger” would seem a more fitting title.
At a fast-paced 1 hour and 21 minutes, … And Your Ass Will Follow (Audible Originals) is George Clinton’s boisterous, freewheeling tale of his life and music. He tells of his first music group, formed in grade school in Plainfield, New Jersey, which in time became Parliament. As Clinton has it, the group scored its first smash hit over their junior high’s public-address system. To make money, he and his friends worked at a Hula-Hoop factory, passed counterfeit $20 bills and started a barbershop. Soon enough the phoney bills began to appear in their own business - along with the police, putting an end to that branch of their operations. Musically, Clinton moved from doo-wop to funk, and finally departed the known world for a techno-ornate dimension of weirdness, funkadelic and intergalactic funk. Supported by substantial passages of his music and lyrics, the production and Clinton’s storytelling brio are irresistible. “Free your mind,” is his sage advice, “and your ass will follow.”
Dolly Parton, author of many books, has been nominated for Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones (Random House, 4⅓ hours), a memoir of her wardrobe - in her case no trivial matter. From an early age she embraced a “trashy” look, despite early and later efforts to tame her. No dice. As a young woman with no money, she improvised her clothes; among her early creations was a push-up bra made with her grandmother’s shoulder pads. Appropriately, Parton’s idol is Mae West, not least for her independence and a shared business savvy. The audio version’s accompanying PDF includes far fewer photographs of Parton’s extraordinary outfits than the printed book, though that version bears as much resemblance to the audio as dressage does to rodeo. What we have here is a wild, often impromptu outpouring of Dolly - fast-talking, exuberant, effervescent in humour and magnificently outrageous. This wonderful performance is, for me, the winner.
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