How Dolly Parton told her life story through six iconic songs

The much-loved US singer-songwriter, actress and philanthropist Dolly Parton, who has died aged 80, was known as the Queen of Country.

Raised in Tennessee, she rose to fame in the late 1960s with hits that bridged country and pop music.

Her songs covered deeply personal themes around growing up poor, love and loss, as well as female empowerment and spirituality.

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Following Parton's death, here is a look back at her life through the lens of six iconic songs.

Let's start with Dolly Parton's own personal favourite, her 1971 acoustic country-folk ditty, Coat of Many Colors.

The autobiographical track, taken from the album of the same name, tells the heart-stirring tale of how she grew up poor - as one of 12 siblings - but rich in love.

In her book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, Parton described it as a "little story" that covers "a world of things", with teachings about bullying, acceptance, love and good parenting.

The lyrics go: "Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be / In my coat of many colors my momma made for me".

The song has been covered by the likes of Shania Twain and Eva Cassidy, and Rolling Stone magazine put it in second place in its list of Parton's top 50 songs.

"Had it been the only song she'd ever written, the expression of overwhelming pride and crushing anguish... would have secured her indelible legacy," the US magazine wrote in 2023.

Coat of Many Colors is also the title of Parton's own children's book, and a 2015 TV movie based on her life - starring Alyvia Alyn Lind as the precocious young singer dreaming of fame.

Her mother, Avie Lee Parton, even made her daughter a new patchwork coat to put on display at the museum inside the Dollywood theme park in her home state of Tennessee.

Parton penned many songs about all different aspects of her relationship with her devoted husband Carl Dean, who ran an asphalt paving business in Nashville.

This included the fear that she might lose him, specifically to a red-headed bank clerk who had flirted with him early on in their marriage.

We all know her by now, of course, as the infamous Jolene.

With its fast fingerstyle minor riff, the song was nominated for a Grammy in 1974 and gave Parton her second number one single on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and her first foray into the main Hot 100 chart (60).

It also showed Parton at her most vulnerable, making it all the more relatable.

Instead of shedding tears or vowing revenge, we hear the protagonist in the song begging the mistress who holds the power to relinquish it.

"She got this terrible crush on my husband," Parton told US media in 2008. "And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us - I was saying, 'Hell, you're spending a lot of time at the bank. I don't believe we've got that kind of money.'"

Parton had met Dean outside a laundromat on the first day she arrived in Nashville as an 18-year-old aspiring singer. The pair were married for 60 years, until his death in 2025.

A notoriously private man, he was "a little embarrassed" when she wrote Jolene, Parton said in a 2023 interview with BBC's The One Show, adding that "actually, it wasn't as serious [as it sounds]. I was just jealous 'cause she was a beautiful woman and he was just flirting.

"So it gave me a great idea for a song. There's always a Jolene in somebody's life."

She joked that later in life when she saw her, by now, much older husband snoozing in his chair at home, she thought Jolene "can have him now... where's Jolene when you need her?!"

Jolene is her most popular song, having been streamed more than 913 million times on Spotify. Critics from Rolling Stone to the Guardian agree it's her best.

Beyoncé gave it a modern rewrite for her 2024 Cowboy Carter album, changing the lyrics from: "I'm begging of you, please, don't take my man" to "I'm warning you, don't come for my man."

Despite the romantic sounding title, this 1974 song is actually the sound of Parton tenderly asking her musical mentor, Porter Wagoner, to let her go and pursue her solo career.

Parton was 21 when she joined Wagoner's variety TV show. They released a string of duets and toured together, leading fans to think they were an item.

But they had a complicated relationship, with Parton later writing in another book, Star of the Show: My Life on Stage, that she felt Wagoner saw her rise as a "threat".

"I was making my way as an artist, and he was already an established one. It was his show, but I was trying to grow in the business and grow as an artist myself."

On the track we hear her sing: "Bittersweet memories / That is all I'm taking with me".

Rough Trade's music blog once described it as being "heartwarming in its sentiment, crushing in its delivery."

Elvis Presley was set to record a cover of the song in 1974, but Parton made the difficult decision to back out of the deal when his manager demanded half of the songwriting rights.

"I said, 'I can't do that'," she told Howard Stern in 2023. "Of course I cried all night about that."

Parton re-recorded I Will Always Love You in 1982 for her starring role in the musical comedy film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

But arguably the most iconic version comes courtesy of Whitney Houston who can be heard booming it out in another film, 1992's The Bodyguard. Her version remains the biggest-selling US single by a female artist.

Parton said she heard the power ballad version for the first time on the radio, and felt so overwhelmed that she had to pull over to avoid crashing her Cadillac.

Whitney Houston took her "little country song" and made it "so much more", she said.

With Parton's newfound professional freedom came a renewed sense of hope, optimism and spirituality - as heard on her 1977 track, Light of a Clean Blue Morning.

She recalled leaving Wagoner's office after their musical split and driving home in a rainstorm, until the clouds parted, giving way to sunlight and an idea for another new song.

Parton - whose earliest performances were in church as a child - referred to it as her "song of deliverance", helping her on the road to stardom.

The lyrics were reworked for the soundtrack to her 1992 romantic comedy film, Straight Talk.

And in early 2026 she released a new charity version of the song, in aid of pediatric cancer research, featuring her goddaughter Miley Cyrus, Lainey Wilson, Queen Latifah and Reba.

This defiant anthem of female empowerment, released in 1980, was the most transformative of her career.

Already well established as a singer, 9 To 5 brought Parton over into the mainstream popular culture.

She wrote the country-tinged southern soul number as the theme tune for the comedy film of the same name, which saw her make her movie debut alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.

It tells the story of three working women who live out their fantasies of getting even with, and overthrowing, their company's bigot of a boss (played by Dabney Coleman).

The song's distinctive tapping beat at the start is none other than her acrylic nails: "I always play the nails and I'd come up with little things that I would see on the set, like 'I tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen'… And I thought, 'Wow, that sounds like a typewriter,'" she once explained.

Parton won two Grammys for the chart-topping tune, which was also nominated for an Oscar, and later spawned a Broadway musical and a documentary.

A modern day karaoke classic, Parton recorded this hit with fellow US country star Kenny Rogers as the lead single for his 1983 album, Eyes That See in the Dark.

The deep love song sold millions of copies and topped both the country and pop charts at the same time.

It was actually written for them by the Bee Gees, intended as a Motown-inspired duet. The Gibb brothers later recorded their own version and performed it live.

Parton and Rogers' rendition, though, remains one of most popular country-pop duets of all time and a classic of the genre.

Their collaboration was "another thing I'm as proud of as anything I ever did in my musical career," she told Smooth Radio 40 years on, in 2023.

She added: "You want to do well and keeping up with the likes of Barry [Gibb] and Kenny [Rogers], but I just figure I'll just always be me and do me and that seems to work."

Other notable song mentions:

• Down from Dover - the heartbreaking 1970 tale of an abandoned mother giving birth to a stillborn child was controversial and Wagoner warned Parton against releasing it
• The Bargain Store - a moving lyrical account of a lady, experienced in love and loss, comparing herself to a secondhand shop, from 1975
• Here You Come Again - written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and released by Parton in 1977, it saw her skillfully pivot to pop/soft rock to great effect on her first big crossover hit