Dorothy

When Dolly’s identity didn’t match the plans pop culture had for her, she chose her roots, and was rewarded every time. Even her look was defiantly southern. A 1991 issue of Vanity Fair described Dolly as “every down-home virtue wrapped up in a sizzling blonde bombshell.” That’s the thing that drew me to Dolly all those years ago—she seemed to be the only woman in the South who could present as so sexy and be read as so wholesome. Most women who wore Daisy Dukes were whispered about in church pews and grocery lines, but Dolly wasn’t just loved in spite of it; she was lauded for it.

They may be scripted lines, but she was just as funny in real life: Dolly was strong and feminine in equal measure, confident and larger than life but never abrasive or mannish. She was spunky but always warm, fiercely independent but always making people feel needed. She shied away from letting people label her a feminist, once retorting indignantly that she loved men. Her career was nothing short of revolutionary, but she never acted like she had something to prove. She just loved being a woman, and her iconic wigs, makeup, and cup size were all part of the way she cheekily reminded the world of it. When a young fan asked if she ever wished she’d been born a man, she laughed and said if she had, she would have ended up a drag queen.

In a TIME magazine piece, Dolly detailed how she came to craft her look, never falling for the dated feminist tropes that high glamour, sparkle, and a big bouffant will make you the clown in a man’s world. Instead, she embraced her own caricature.

The over-the-top, rhinestoned style of the late Dolly Parton transformed the country music scene forever and has had much broader implications on American culture.

Parton's legend was secured in 1973, when she released "Jolene," a song that transcended its moment by perfectly capturing the primal intensity of insecure romantic desire. With a melody redolent of a century of folk ballads and, as Parton told NPR in 2008, a chorus "even a first-grader or a baby could sing," this true-ish tale of rivalry among women is fluid enough that a man could take it on, as Jack White did in The White Stripes' 2001 version. "Jolene" is a murder ballad whose victims all survive, a cry of revenge in the face of betrayal that puts a woman in charge and unexpectedly creates a bond between two rivals.

With that in mind, listen anew to “Jolene.” It’s got all of Parton’s fabulous contradiction in it, the arch-femininity paired with command. What a mistake to take the song’s traditional “please don’t take my man” superficial pleading as weakness. Trumping the lyrics is Parton’s soaring voice and that galloping triplet rhythm. It might be her most deceptively powerful song.

Parton's style helped her get noticed but her musical gifts made her unforgettable. She wrote and recorded many of country and pop's most enduring songs, including the hits "Jolene," "Coat of Many Colors" – added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2011 – "Here You Come Again," "Love Is Like a Butterfly," "9 to 5" and more.

Parton's biggest hit, however, was inarguably "I Will Always Love You," which topped the charts three times, most notably when Whitney Houston's 1992 cover became a global smash. Houston's performance remains the best-selling song by a female artist of all time.

"I Will Always Love You" was a hit for her in 1974 and again in 1983, as part of the soundtrack to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, where it served as a lament about the forbidden (though ultimately triumphant) romance between the madam played by Parton and Burt Reynolds' local sheriff. The song reached its full potential, of course, in the hands of Whitney Houston, whose sublime 1992 version exposed the damage done by arbitrary divisions between Black and white radio formats, crossing into every corner of pop to become the definitive expression of the era's blockbuster-besotted grandeur. "I Will Always Love You" is the musical equivalent of Star Wars, an epic that encompasses many epochs.

Her rise to fame began when she was hired by the rhinestone-adorned country singer Porter Wagoner as a “girl singer” in his act. Parton quickly demonstrated that she had more than an attractive face and voice, writing a string of successful songs, such as “Jolene” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” One indication of her songwriting talent was that her most famous song was a bigger hit for another singer. Parton had initially hoped that Elvis Presley would record “I Will Always Love You,” but she refused his manager’s demand to give Presley songwriting credit, and she cut the song herself. It topped the country charts twice, but after Whitney Houston re-recorded the song for The Bodyguard’s soundtrack in 1992, it was a No. 1 pop hit for weeks.

In 2014, the Record Industry Association of America recognized Parton for sales of over 100 million units worldwide, including 19 RIAA-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums out of the more than 100 studio, live and compilation albums she released during her six-decade-plus recording career.

Continually taken up by would-be protégés to whom she was characteristically generous, she kept winning hearts on stages with the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Lainey Wilson and Post Malone. Her final album, Rockstar, celebrated a 2022 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that Parton had greeted, at first, with great skepticism. In the end, though, America's sweetheart took on that quintessentially American musical form with the same let's-get-it-done energy she'd applied to every challenge she'd faced. "I just went for it," she told NPR. Luckily for every last American, we could always follow wherever she went.

Today, little separation exists between country music and the mainstream, but the genre garnered much less respect when Parton’s career began. She helped tear down old prejudices in an era when many music listeners might have professed to like “anything other than country.” Her success helped pave a path for later crossover stars such as Shania Twain and Taylor Swift. She pursued her own genre experimentation, too, collaborating with a range of artists. When she was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, she protested that she wasn’t a rock musician and tried to withdraw from consideration.

After moving to Nashville, Parton notched her very first Top 40 hit with her song "Dumb Blonde" in 1967, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

In her middle age, during a perhaps less enlightened time in American society, Parton was often a punch line. Her voluptuous chest and many plastic surgeries were frequent fodder for jokes, and Parton perfected the trick of playing along with the gags while also subverting them. One of her earliest singles is titled “Dumb Blonde,” but it warns, “This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.” In a 2002 New York Times interview, she said, “Hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there’s a brain, beneath the boobs to know there’s a heart, and behind all the other stuff to know there’s some talent.”

Dolly Parton spent decades singing about love, heartbreak, faith and working "9 to 5," but there was one arena the country music legend repeatedly resisted entering: partisan politics.

On her marriage to Carl Dean Parton told Walters in a 1982 interview that her nearly 60-year marriage to Carl Dean, who died in 2025, gave her a "very special kind of sacred freedom."

"Dolly opened doors not just for me, but for her entire family to reach the potential we didn't even know was possible," he said. "Dolly also opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life and across every continent. By her example, we believed that anything was possible. She never saw a door she couldn't open, and the doors she opened made and changed history."