Country music superstar, Dolly Parton, has passed away at the age of 80, the bereaved family has confirmed.
“Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longer for her to meet them in the heavens,” the head of security said in a post on Instagram.
The cause of death is yet to be announced. In September last year, Dolly told her fans about her health challenges and her decision to focus on improving her health following the advice from health experts. The late Dolly Parton lost her husband, Carl Dean, of nearly 60 years in March 2025.
On social media platforms, many fans have expressed their deepest condolences and are sympathising with the bereaved family. “We will see you again in heaven dear Dolly❤️🕊️ Thank you for making the world a more loving place,” “One of the greatest people of on earth. RIP Dolly,” some fans wrote on Instagram.
Who was Dolly?
Dolly Parton turned success as a country songwriter and singer into not only pop music stardom but also work as an actor, a successful businesswoman, and a philanthropist.
With their strong feminine stances in the 1960s and 1970s, Parton and fellow pioneers Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette revolutionized the world of country music for women performers. Then Parton took her crusade a step further by crossing over to the pop world—landing on the cover of Rolling Stone, achieving pop hits, and starring in a series of Hollywood movies.
Along the way, Parton lost much of her core country audience, to the point that she dissolved her fan club, which had been one of the staunchest in country music, in 1997. But her career—and her appeal to fans of hard country—was far from over. Beginning in 1999, she returned to the music of her youth and began rebuilding a tradition-minded fan base with a series of critically acclaimed bluegrass albums.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born into a large family, the fourth of twelve children, on January 19, 1946, in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. She came from deep in Appalachia, where music was an integral part of life for those who, like the Partons, struggled to make a hard living. Her mother was a singer who taught Dolly both church music and the Elizabethan ballads her ancestors brought to America. Dolly’s grandfather was a fiddling preacher who wrote “Singing His Praise,” which was recorded by Kitty Wells. Several of Dolly’s eleven siblings have been active in music, and some worked for a time in her family band.
Parton’s childhood figured strongly in her ambition to escape her circumstances and in the many frank, unromantic songs she wrote about her experience and life in Appalachia. For example, 1971’s “Coat of Many Colors” (#4 country hit) was a straight-ahead account of a humiliating experience Parton suffered at school when classmates made fun of her homemade patchwork coat.