Country music legend Dolly Parton, who wrote hit songs Jolene and I Will Always Love You, has died aged 80, her family announced on social media.
Dolly Parton would say songwriting was her therapy. “There are pieces of me, of course, in everything I write.”
For the Queen of Country, the songs came before anything else.
A born storyteller, Parton’s gift was finding poetry in the everyday.
In Jolene, released in 1973, she captured perfectly the indelible sadness of heartbreak and insecurity, helpless as her man is tempted by a rival whose beauty is “beyond compare”. So much so, the name Jolene became society’s shorthand for the “other woman”.
It is her most covered and most analysed work, studied today for its role in shaping feminist discourse. Remarkably, it was said to have been written on the very same night she came up with another monumental hit – one that would become one of the biggest-selling songs of all time.
An elegant break-up track, acknowledging both an everlasting bond and painful realisation of an ending that has to be, it is to many, the ultimate love song. However, I Will Always Love You was no goodbye to a romantic partner, but rather to Parton’s then-mentor and manager Porter Wagoner.
The singer released it to moderate success in 1974, but those tender words were elevated to stratospheric heights by Whitney Houston’s soaring power ballad cover for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, her big screen debut, in 1992.
If not for its writer’s business savvy, things could have turned out very differently. Because following Parton’s own success with the song, topping the US country chart, none other than Elvis Presley saw its potential and wanted to cover it.
This was “the greatest thing” that ever happened to her as a songwriter, she thought at the time. But when she was asked to hand over half of the songwriting rights, she knew she had to refuse: “Of course, I cried all night about that.”
Like many she made throughout her life, it turned out to be the right decision.
Dolly Parton lost her husband Carl Dean after nearly 60 years of marriage in 2025.
Dean, who was famously private throughout his marriage to Parton, died in Nashville, Tennessee, according to a statement she posted on social media.
“Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy,” the statement read.
Parton met Dean outside a laundromat on the first day she arrived in Nashville as an 18-year-old aspiring singer.
She recalled their first meeting, saying: “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me). He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”
Two years later, on 30 May 1966, the couple exchanged vows at a private ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia. He later inspired her classic hit, Jolene.
Throughout their marriage, Dean remained out of the public eye, choosing instead to focus on his asphalt-paving business in Nashville.
Parton dedicated a new song, If You Hadn’t Been There, to Dean’s memory.
By Sky News
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