Dolly Parton has reimagined her classic 1980 song “9 to 5” as “5 to 9” for a Squarespace commercial celebrating office workers getting their entrepreneurial side hustles going after hours. The minute-long spot, already available for view now, is set to have its broadcast premiere during the Super Bowl telecast on Sunday.
Oscar winning filmmaker Damien Chazelle (“La La Land,” “Whiplash”) directed the minute-long commercial, which features choreography by Tony winner Justin Peck.
Parton does not appear in the commercial. But she did record a full-length version of the reconfigured song that is up on Spotify.
Squarespace, a website building and e-commerce service, says it partnered with Parton to come up with the new lyrics.
The full two-and-a-half-minute version of the song heard on digital streaming services starts off with 45 seconds of the original “9 to 5” lyrics — written to open the 1980 workplace-comedy movie of the same name, and reprised for a Broadway musical in the late 2000s — before kicking into the newly written verses and chorus.
“Well you got dreams and you know they matter / Be your own boss, climb your own ladder,” Parton sings in the re-do, which turns the shared frustration of the original to DIY inspiration. “Working 5 to 9 / Making something of your own now / And it feels so fine, build a business from your know-how / Gonna move ahead and there’s nothing that you can’t do / When you listen to that little voice inside you.”
Squarespace is a Super Bowl regular, having had six previous spots on the annual broadcast, most involving celebrities. The company’s 2020 commercial featured Winona Ryder, preceded by spots that included Keanu Reeves, Jeff Bridges, John Malkovich and Key & Peele.
Parton is the master of the side hustle herself, and is planning to debut her new fragrance, Scent From Above, in conjunction with Squarespace prior to the Super Bowl.
Parton was in the news Monday for revealing in a “Today” interview that she had twice turned down the chance to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Toby Keith and Ricky Skaggs recently stirred controversy for coming to the White House to receive the medal from Donald J. Trump on the day that the president was being impeached; the timing was suspect enough that both singers’ representatives declined to publicize or comment on the presentations.)
“I couldn’t accept it (on first offer) because my husband was ill,” Parton said on the morning show, “and then they asked me again about it and I wouldn’t travel because of the COVID.” The show noted that Barack Obama had admitted last fall he never offered the medal to Parton only because he assumed she already had one, and that he would confer with Joe Biden to rectify the oversight. Parton told “Today” that she had indeed received a feeler from the Biden camp about receiving the award. But “now I feel like if I take it, I’ll be doing politics, so I’m not sure. But I don’t work for those awards. It’d be nice but I’m not sure that I even deserve it. But it’s a nice compliment for people to think that I might deserve it.”
