Two Doors Down

There's a party going on in this upbeat tune and a lonesome Dolly Parton decides to join in to cheer herself up. She hits it off with one of the partygoers and invites him back to her apartment, two doors down, where they have their own private celebration. Dolly wrote this during a similar situation, although she didn't get a man out of the ordeal. She and her band were staying at a Howard Johnson's Motor Inn and while the rest of the group was sitting down to dinner, a dieting Dolly was alone in her room trying to stave off hunger with a disgusting protein shake. "The band was down there in the restaurant. I could hear them laughing and talking," she recalled in her 2020 book, Songteller. "I was in my room, because I couldn't go down there and eat. I remember just feeling so sorry for myself in this lonely-ass room while they were having a party. I thought, 'Well, I can't eat. I can't just sit here and feel sorry for myself. Why don't I just write a song?'"

Although she wrote the lyrics on stationery from a Pennsylvania Holiday Inn, Dolly is certain she wrote the song at a Howard Johnson's because she distinctly remembers her hankering for the motel's fried clams.

Before Dolly's version even hit the radio, Hee Haw regular Zella Lehr released a cover version that went to #7 on the Country chart. In the meantime, Dolly achieved her pop breakthrough with the album's lead single, "Here You Come Again," and, not wanting to compete with Lehr's countrified take, she re-recorded "Two Doors Down" with a disco-pop feel. It peaked at #19 on the Hot 100 and notched a #12 entry on the Adult Contemporary chart. The new version also replaced the original on subsequent pressings of the album.