Dolly Parton was the first concert I ever attended. I distinctly remember it because she sang “My Mountains, My Home” and made a joke about the ‘twin mountains on her chest’ and I went red. The Tennessee-born Queen of Country had turned 62 years old that year, and I‘d turned ten, but that didn’t stop my mum driving us up to Wembley Arena in north-west London to see her perform. 

Looking back, that experience is just a small testament to the cross-cultural appeal of Parton’s music. Accumulating no less than 11 Grammy Awards and 25 number one singles across her six-decade career, Parton’s original compositions had a distinct ability to speak across vast distances and communicate something very fundamental about human experience. Tracks like “Jolene” and “Islands in the Stream” have soundtracked countless heartbreaks the world over; the vivid storytelling of “9 to 5”, written for a feature film of the same name, has since spawned a TV series and musical theatre adaptation that ran right up to Parton’s passing last night (August 25); and, “I Will Always Love You”, well… that one needs no introduction whatsoever. 

Outside of music, too, Parton had a striking way of bringing people together. Despite repeatedly insisting on staying out of politics and rejecting the ‘feminist’ label, Parton’s unapologetic personality and self-deprecating humour continue to straddle political divides in a divided America to this day. One recent YouGov poll, for example, found that Parton’s approval rating in the States was a staggering 65 per cent – compared to Donald Trump’s 19 per cent, Barack Obama’s 14 per cent, and Taylor Swift’s three per cent. 

Anyway, Parton’s actions speak for themselves. Her morality wasn’t one based on labels or allegiances, but on an intuitive and universal sense of mutual respect. 

Below, in honour of the universally loved country singer’s passing, we highlight five Dolly Parton quotes that guide us to this day.

1. DON’T ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE RULED BY ‘GOOD TASTE’

In multiple interviews, Parton has spoken about how as a teenager she modelled herself on a woman in her hometown who was known as the “town tramp”. “She was flamboyant. She had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails... short skirts, low-cut tops, and I just thought she was beautiful,” Parton told The Guardian in 2023. “When people would say, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash,’ I would always say, ‘Well, that’s what I’m gonna be when I grow up’.” It’s a sweet story, with an important point behind it: you don’t have to be governed by stifling – and often misogynistic – social conventions around taste or what other people think of as respectable, and your value as a person is not determined by your external appearance. Parton elaborated on this same idea in a different interview: “I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, as a writer, as a professional, as a human being. A rhinestone shines just as good as a diamond.”

2. DON’T JUDGE

The US has always had a puritanical, moralising streak, to say the least, but there is also a countervailing force to that: a blithe attitude of live and let live, and with it the belief that people should be entitled to pursue their own vision of happiness. This, one of the more redemptive aspects of the American character, is embodied in the figure of Dolly Parton as well as anyone. While she rarely spoke about politics directly, she seemed animated by a spirit of goodwill, compassion and kindness to other people.

“I just wanted everybody to be treated good[...],” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2023 in response to anti-trans legislation in her home state of Tennessee. “I try not to get into the politics of everything. I try to get into the human element of it. I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees. I've got transgender people. I've got gays. I've got lesbians. I've got drunks. I've got drug addicts — all within my own family. I know and love them all, and I do not judge."

3. ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

As mentioned above, Dolly Parton wasn’t in the habit of talking about politics, often explaining that didn’t want to offend anybody and saw herself as an entertainer first and foremost. This may bristle against some of our modern sensibilities, when failing to “speak out” is deemed an act of cowardice, but let’s look at what she actually did. To name just a handful of examples, she was an almost lifelong trade union member (the song “9-to-5” was actually inspired by the secretarial trade union); she founded the Imagination Library, which has given  over 200 million free books to young children; she has donated vast amounts of money to disaster relief, healthcare college scholarships and efforts to reduce school drop-out rates in her home county in Tennessee (leading to a reduction from 30 per cent to 6 per cent), and she even introduced something like Universal Basic Income following a devastating wildfire in her home county. 

Over the course of a lifetime, that’s certainly a lot more meaningful than endorsing Hillary Clinton or posting an Instagram story. Even if we don’t all have millions of dollars to donate to the causes we care about, there’s a lesson there: doing stuff is more important than talking about it. 

4. YOU WANNA SEE THE RAINBOW?

Dolly Parton was famous for her warm and sunny demeanor (when the film critic Roger Ebert met her, he felt he had – almost literally – met an angel.) So what does she have to tell us about happiness? As David Brent famously quoted in The Office, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” Deploying another weather-based metaphor, she emphasised this point elsewhere: “Storms make trees make deeper roots.” So next time you’re going through it, remember Dolly Parton’s kind, shining face and remember: it’s all part of the ride. 

5. #BALDRIGHTS

Put down the finasteride and cancel that trip to Turkey. As Dolly put it, “I love bald men. Just because you’ve lost your fuzz, don’t mean you ain't a peach.”