Dolly Parton, Queen of Country, Dies at Age 80

Dolly Parton, queen of country music and prolific philanthropist, passed away at age 80. A statement shared with the press by Parton’s reps confirms that the beloved singer died peacefully in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 25. Her nephew, Bryan Seaver, announced the news in a video posted to her Instagram account. Parton had been open about her health issues in recent months, canceling a Las Vegas residency in September 2025. No cause of death has been given.

Born in 1946, Parton was raised with her eleven siblings in a one-room cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee. Parton began performing and singing on local radio and television programs as a child, and she often credited her musicality to her mother, who entertained the children with traditional Appalachian songs passed down through generations from her Welsh ancestors. Parton has described her childhood as loving, but the circumstances as “dirt poor,” topics she wrote about in many of her early songs, like “Coat of Many Colors” and “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad).”

Parton pursued music right after graduating high school, moving to Nashville and finding early success as a songwriter—a skill that would become the bedrock of her talent and influence over the course of her life as she penned massive hits like 1973’s “I Will Always Love You,” made famous by Whitney Houston, and classic country tune “Jolene,” covered by everyone from Parton’s goddaughter Miley Cyrus to The White Stripes to Beyoncé for 2024’s Cowboy Carter. Her breakthrough came in 1967, when Porter Wagoner hired her as the "girl singer" on his syndicated television show. The pair recorded a string of hit duets over seven years, and she wrote "I Will Always Love You" as her farewell to him when she left to go solo.

Her first solo single, 1967’s “Dumb Blonde,” set the stage for the style of music Parton would become known for: personality-driven, first-person lyrics written for a gutsy, high soprano voice. In 1974, “Jolene” and Parton’s version of “I Will Always Love You” dominated the country charts (she has said she wrote the two hits during the same session). She declined Elvis Presley’s bid to cover the song under the condition that she sign over half the publishing rights—standard procedure at the time, but unacceptable to Parton nonetheless. That decision led to her earning millions in royalties from the song over the years, especially Houston’s version, released in 1992 on The Bodyguard soundtrack.

In the following years, Parton gained significant influence with a string of country hits and many mainstream artists—including Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt—covering her songs. With 1977's "Here You Come Again," she began a successful crossover to pop, topping the Hot 100 with "9 to 5" in 1981 and again in 1983 with "Islands in the Stream," her duet with Kenny Rogers. In 1987, she, Ronstadt, and Harris released Trio, a Grammy-winning collaboration that remains a benchmark of the genre.

By the end of her career, Parton had released 49 studio albums (not including collaborative, soundtrack, live albums, and EPs) and won 11 Grammys out of 50 nominations, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006, and, after initially asking to withdraw her nomination, saying she hadn't earned it, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. She declined the Presidential Medal of Freedom more than once.

She also had a decades-long acting career, most famously starring in 1980’s 9 to 5 with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, for which Parton also wrote the titular song. The role and song earned her three Golden Globe nominations and an Oscar nod (the song won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song). She also went on to star in 1989's Steel Magnolias alongside Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, and Julia Roberts. Parton was nominated for a second Oscar for writing “Travelin’ Thru” for 2005’s Transamerica, part of a lifelong pattern of championing marginalized groups (especially LGBTQ+ rights) despite public criticism.

Parton has also been both celebrated and criticized for her personal style, which she described as being influenced by the glamorous “town tramp.” With an exaggerated silhouette, bleach-blonde wigs, sky-high heels, long acrylic nails, and no shortage of rhinestones, Parton also said her look was based on a young girl’s idea of a country star. When pressed on her image during a 1977 interview with Barbara Walters, Parton famously said, "I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable, that's the easiest thing in the world to do.”

Parton was married for 58 years to her husband Carl Thomas Dean, who died in 2025. Dean avoided publicity, running an asphalt road and driveway-paving business in Nashville for many decades and quietly supporting Parton’s life in the limelight. She has said that he only saw her perform once. The couple had no children. In 1986, Parton opened Dollywood, the theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, that grew into one of the most-visited attractions in the country. Through her Dollywood Foundation, Parton has been known as a prolific philanthropist, especially supporting the cause of literacy through her Imagination Library program. In 2020, her $1 million donation to Vanderbilt University Medical Center helped fund early research on Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.

Even as she got older, Parton wasn’t one to slow down. In 2021, she won her first Primetime Emmy for executive producing Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square; just this summer, she was appearing in TikTok videos to promote her new My Life of Many Colors Museum, which opens this fall. In a 2021 cover story, Parton told W: I always say, I’m as old as yesterday, but I’m as new as tomorrow.” She is survived by six of her eleven siblings.