Even after her final bow, Dolly Parton still has an encore in store — we’ll all just have to wait a little while.
Years before her death on Tuesday at age 80, Parton recorded a never-before-heard song and sealed it inside a “Dream Box” at Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, with the instruction that it should remain locked until 2045. The year will mark the resort’s 30th anniversary and would have found Parton just shy of her 100th birthday.
Parton created the box while preparing for the resort’s 2015 opening. Alongside the recording are items connected to her life and family, including a copy of her book Dream More, a piece of wood from the front porch of her childhood Tennessee home, and a sealed chestnut box honoring her uncle and early musical mentor Bill Owens. According to Dollywood, the mystery song was written specifically for the future and shares Parton’s “hopes and dreams” for what lies ahead.
The only problem was that Parton wanted the song back almost immediately. Speaking about the idea years later, she repeatedly joked that knowing a perfectly good song was sitting unheard inside a box drove her crazy. “You have no idea how that has bothered me,” she told Kelly Clarkson in 2022, adding that she wanted to dig it up because “it’s a really good song.”
She had similar second thoughts while talking to Jimmy Fallon, joking that she wanted permission to replace the recording with something worse. Parton had even prepared for one particularly 2045 problem: she reportedly included instructions explaining how to play the CD in case the format had become hopelessly obsolete by the time the box was opened.
Parton’s death gives the time-capsule experiment an unintended finality. What was once a joke about whether she’d still be around in 2045 is now a promise that, 19 years from now, there will still be one more Dolly Parton song left to hear. As for whoever gets to open the box, Parton’s request was characteristically sweet: she just hoped they’d enjoy it.
In the meantime, tributes to Parton have continued pouring in, with Reba McEntire, Carole King, Miley Cyrus and countless others remembering the country icon following her death at 80. Revisit our November 2023 cover story featuring Parton in conversation with Paramore’s Hayley Williams.
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