Dolly Parton has always known her own mind, said Rhys Blakely in The Times (U.K.). One of 11 children raised in dire poverty in the Great Smoky Mountains backwoods in Tennessee, she wrote her first song at the age of 5. “I decided that I was going to do that forever and I was going to make a business of it,” she says. Her decisiveness and steely ambition have paid off: She has had 41 top 10 country albums, and is worth an estimated $450 million. She now sees similar character traits in her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus—the former Disney ingenue whose scantily clad, highly sexualized performances have caused a media conniption. “The girl can write, the girl can sing, the girl is smart,” says Parton. “But no one would let her grow up, so she thought, ‘Drastic times call for desperate measures.’” Far from being manipulated by record executives, she insists, Cyrus is in “complete control. It was all her own idea. She paid out of her own money for the costumes. She knew exactly what she was doing.” Parton is proud of her strong-minded goddaughter. “People tell me I need to help Miley, and I say, ‘What? Help her count all her money? I’d be glad to.’”
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