Popular music lost one of its greatest icons. Dolly Parton, the famous American singer, songwriter, and actress, died at 80 years old in Nashville.
Through a video posted on his social media, Bryan Seaver, her nephew, confirmed her death. “As her head of security for more than two decades, a position my father, Larry, held before me, I had imagined the weight of this moment, but I hadn’t really felt it until now,” said Cassie Parton’s son, avoiding delving into the causes of her passing.
Parton was born in January 1946 in Tennessee into a poor farming family. Fourth of 12 children, she witnessed her mother making the children’s clothes from scraps. An experience that inspired Coat of many colors, her iconic 1971 song.
The artist began performing at an early age in the Pentecostal Church of God and released her first single (Puppy love) at 13 years old: her fate was not very different from other great icons of American music. After finishing her studies, she moved to Nashville and began a career as a songwriter, a move that would change her life forever. She contributed her craft to radio hits by Kitty Wells, Skeeter Davis, among others.
She signed with Monument Records in 1965, but her rise to fame came a couple of years later when Porter Wagoner invited her to join The Porter Wagoner Show. It was her first contact with the mass audience that would accompany her until her last days.
Moreover, it was a double blow to the establishment: Parton would open country music to more commercial and cross-sectional audiences, and allow female voices to also gain prominence in a southern genre with a clear male inclination. Linda Ronstadt, Kacey Musgraves, and even Taylor Swift owe a lot in this regard.
One of her most emblematic chapters was the composition of I will always love you. Released in 1974 as part of her album Jolene, it exploded worldwide thanks to the version Whitney Houston performed for the movie The Bodyguard (1992). The song was played at Houston’s funeral in February 2012, an episode that deeply marked its author.
“It broke me to hear that song under those circumstances. I thought my heart was going to stop. It pierced me like a knife. It’s just… I can’t explain that feeling, thinking it was so definitive for her, and that those were my words and my feelings… I will always be so connected to it,” Parton told ABC.
The hit itself was coveted by Elvis Presley: he wanted to perform it and replicate its intensity. His manager, Tom Parker, called Parton to ask for permission, but with a small trick: that “the King of Rock” and his people would also keep the copyright.
Parton refused, showing another facet of her legacy and significance: defending her rights as an author.
Over the decades, she accumulated practically every award a figure of her stature can aspire to. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (1999), the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1986), and the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2001). She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005 and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Meanwhile, a year ago she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Oscar given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to personalities for their outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes.
As part of her efforts to expand her empire, the artist bought a theme park in Tennessee and renamed it Dollywood. Covering 60 hectares (and located near her childhood home), it holds many of her childhood memories and also includes a water park, hotels, and historical attractions.
The tourist project is still thriving: it was named the “#1 Theme Park in the USA” by TripAdvisor in 2022, 2024, and 2025.
A legend of country music, Dolly Parton also left her mark on cinema. Her debut was in 9 to 5 (1980), a comedy where she starred alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and performed the film’s main theme, 9 to 5, for which she was nominated for the Oscars and Golden Globes.
Her foray into the big screen had its ups and downs. In one of the biggest setbacks of her career, she joined Sylvester Stallone in Rhinestone (1984), a musical about a country star who hires a taxi driver. On the other hand, Steel Magnolias (1989), the story of six women from a small Louisiana town, was a success.
Parton also appeared in series such as Grace & Frankie, Call me Kat, and Hannah Montana, where she shared the screen with Miley Cyrus, her goddaughter.
Dolly Parton suffered the loss of Carl Dean, her husband of six decades, in March 2025. The reasons for his death were kept private.
Recently, in May, the singer had canceled a series of concerts she was to perform in September at the Caesar’s Palace Coliseum (Las Vegas). The same dates she originally planned for December 2025 and had been forced to reschedule.
A statement published on her social media alluded to her long battle with kidney stones, although it indicated that the star was “responding very well to medications and treatments” and that she “improves every day.”
Although her family did not disclose the cause of her death, People revealed that she was admitted to a hospital on August 21, four days before her passing, for reasons currently unknown.
“Dolly was a farmer, just like her dad. He cultivated the land; she cultivated songs and happiness. Dolly called me and told me she wanted to rest in a beautiful soft cotton bed because, after a life full of sequins, she finally deserved to be comfortable and rest,” concluded Bryan Seaver in the video.
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