Latest Release
- 10 MAY 2024
- 1 Song
- COWBOY CARTER · 2024
- Rescue Story · 2019
- Jolene · 1974
- Love Is Like a Butterfly · 1974
- Dolly Dolly Dolly · 1980
- Coat of Many Colors · 1971
- 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs · 1980
- Run, Rose, Run · 2022
- Run, Rose, Run · 2022
- When Life Is Good Again - Single · 2020
Essential Albums
- “Jolene” certainly wasn’t country’s first cheating song, nor was it the first country song sung by a female artist to the fabled “other woman”: Loretta Lynn built her career on them (“Fist City”, “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)”), and subsequent generations of artists—from Barbara Mandrell to Sugarland and, more recently, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert—have continued to fuel the form. What made “Jolene” different then—and what remains haunting about it now—is Parton’s empathy: Instead of anger or bitterness, we hear about Jolene’s auburn hair and breath like spring; instead of seeing her as an adversary or abstraction, we see her as a human being with her own desires and complications. In “Jolene”, the other woman finally got a name. Most of the songs here remained anchored by the presence (or absence) of men: “Lonely Comin’ Down”, “When Someone Wants To Leave”, “Highlight of My Life” and so on. But the purity of Parton’s delivery made even ordinary romance sound ethereal, almost timeless. Two years earlier, she’d written “My Tennessee Mountain Home”, a song that imagined her rural upbringing as a state of almost Edenic bliss. Between the joys and sorrows of Jolene’s love songs were persistent metaphors for nature: rivers of happiness, the union of sea and tide (“It Must Be You”), the freedom of butterflies perched on flower petals (“Early Morning Breeze”). The cumulative impression is that our earthly troubles—the other woman, the wayward men—will always exist. But shed yourself of your self-pity and woes, and you can see a state of nature open up where even heartache becomes beautiful and necessary. So if you haven’t heard “I Will Always Love You” in a while, you may be surprised to realise that it’s a breakup song. And if you want to know what kind of roll Dolly Parton was on in the mid-1970s, consider that she wrote it and “Jolene” on the same day.
- Listen to the bell-clear sweetness of 1971’s Coat of Many Colors and you might mistake Dolly Parton for simple. And in important ways, she was: Few artists have rendered optimism with such clarity and heart. Even in the bleakest of scenes, she managed to find beauty—the warmth of the sun flooding a lonely woman’s room (“My Blue Tears”), the look of a mother’s face when she feels like she has nothing left (“If I Lose My Mind”). In another artist’s hands, a story of poverty as stark as the title track might sound bitter or barbed. But in Parton’s, it becomes a parable for the lesson that you can’t always control the circumstances of your life, but you can control whether those circumstances make you a victim. Suddenly, that sweetness seems less like naïveté than the strength of someone who has come through hardship with her resolve—and smile—intact. No wonder she became an icon for feminists, immigrants, the LGTBQ community and anyone else who had to fight for their right to be: Behind each song here is a sense of pride and self-love so radiant that, in listening, your own problems—or the problems you imagine you have—melt away into gratitude. Parton had always had a tender streak. But with Coat of Many Colors, she stepped away from what she later called the “sad-ass songs” of her early career, moving toward music that celebrated our very human potential to find grace in darkness and joy in life as it is. Or, as she put it on the album’s exultant, penultimate track, “Here I am! Oh, here I am! Here I am!”
- 2014
- 2024
- 2024
- 2024
Artist Playlists
- You better not pout: America’s country sweetheart is coming to town.
- The Nashville legend wears a coat of many talents.
- Her unmistakable voice is felt well beyond Nashville.
- The country-pop crossover superstar soaked up honky-tonk, bluegrass and more.
- The most romantic late-night tunes.
- “I am one of those people that enjoyed the giving more than I did the getting.”
Live Albums
Appears On
Radio Shows
- Stories and conversation from a songwriting legend.
More To Hear
- Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris made history.
- Ty celebrates 50 years of Dolly Parton's Jolene.
- The sweet, sweet story behind a timeless country-pop ballad.
- Ty celebrates 50 years of Dolly Parton’s Jolene.
- Dolly enters her rock ’n’ roll era with Rockstar.
- Dolly discusses the importance of giving back.
- Music from the Leeds band.
More To See
- 13:16
About Dolly Parton
Her multimedia dominance notwithstanding, Dolly Parton is first and foremost one of country music's most powerful singer/songwriters. Born to a poverty-stricken family in Tennessee in 1946, she started singing in church, was given a guitar at 8 and performed on regional radio programs as a kid. She moved to Nashville the day after her high school graduation in 1964 and quickly signed with Monument Records. Her first charting single, 1966's "Dumb Blonde", introduced a fun-loving but independent woman confident enough to tweak stereotypes and command her own destiny. In the late ’60s, Parton partnered with Porter Wagoner, enjoying huge success as a regular on his weekly TV show and through a long string of collaborative hits. But she released solo work all along, and after "Jolene"—with its striking minor-key mode and emotional intensity—became a crossover success in 1974, she set out on her own. In 1980, that steady uphill climb culminated in her first No. 1, blue-collar anthem "9 to 5”. She also co-starred in the comedy film of the same name, kicking off a long, successful career on screen that included hosting two variety shows. In 1983, Parton had the biggest smash of her career with "Islands in the Stream", an easy-going romantic duet with Kenny Rogers. Further collaborations—like her albums with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, and cameos on songs by Kesha and Miley Cyrus (her goddaughter)—expanded Parton’s legacy through the end of the 20th century and well into the 21st. Over time, she became involved in everything from the Dollywood theme park to a 9 to 5 Broadway musical. But Parton’s latter-day work, such as her series of stripped-down bluegrass albums, showed she was never less than completely committed to sharing her otherworldly, yet utterly down to earth, musical gift.
- HOMETOWN
- Locust Ridge, TN, United States
- BORN
- 19 January 1946
- GENRE
- Country