Part 2
And then there is the part most famous people will not say out loud. Even as a little kid, she loved the excitement of getting to sing in front of somebody. She liked the attention of thinking that somebody was looking at her. Doing something someone appreciated made her feel big and special, and she got addicted to that feeling early on - and then she did the smart thing with it. She thought: I have got to get better and better so I can keep doing what I do, because I like that feeling.
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That is the whole engine. Not ego. Maintenance.
Where the belief came from is another answer the Experience hands you, and it is her mama. Dolly was always writing songs about things she had never lived - love songs, people getting killed in the war, whatever she heard the grown-ups talking about - and her mother was genuinely fascinated that this kid could do that. So if anybody came to the house, Mama would say, run and get your guitar. I want you to hear what this little young one has wrote. And everybody would listen, and everybody would say, well, that is really something.
That is an audience being manufactured in a living room. It is also a mother handing her daughter the exact thing she would spend seventy years chasing: a room full of people who want to hear what comes next.
It was also a big family, which meant nobody got much special attention. You fought for every minute of it. Dolly has been honest about that too - attention was scarce, and the songs were how she got some.
She will not oversell her own gift, either. She points out there are plenty of people more talented than her who write better songs, but she does not believe anybody out there loves doing it any more than she does. That, plus enough talent to make a living out of what you love, is the whole formula she claims. Somebody once called her a musical savant in a magazine piece, and she waved it off instantly: the idiot part would be more like it.
But the songwriting part? That is where she draws her line, and it is the turn the whole Experience is quietly building toward. She says she takes herself more serious as a songwriter than anything else. If she had to give up every other part of the business - the stages, the screen, the brand, the park - she would choose to be a writer.
Because the guitar is her friend. Writing is her therapist. Anything she is going through, and anything somebody she loves is going through and cannot put into words, she gets to channel it - theirs and hers both - and she gets to rhyme while she does it. She has been able to rhyme since she was tiny and she brings it up like it is a party trick. It is not a party trick.
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Which is why the next part is worth your time: one of the biggest songs in her catalog just got a second life on a Beyoncé record, and you are going to want the story on how that came together and what it says about the words she was picking fifty years ago. For now, here is what I would say if you were standing next to me in that building, staring up at a screen while Dolly's voice explains that the lyrics just show up and it ain't that smart.
The whole place is a songwriter's confession wearing rhinestones - and the next chapter is the notebook.
Dolly Parton the Lyricist: Beyoncé, Jolene, and Songs Written Between Loads of Laundry
I was sitting in the Dolly Parton Experience, surrounded by wigs and rhinestones and the kind of multimedia overload that makes your eyes tired, when the interviewer said the thing that made Dolly Parton sit up straight. 'I don't think you get enough credit as a lyricist.' And Dolly didn't deflect. She didn't do the aw-shucks thing. She said, 'Thank you for saying that.' Then she laid it out: 'I take myself more serious as a songwriter than anything else. And if I had to give up every other part of the business, I would choose to be a writer.' That's not a casual comment. That's a ranking. That's a woman who has been famous for her voice, her look, her movies, her theme park, her philanthropy, telling you exactly where the writing sits in her heart. It sits at the top. And she didn't stop there. She called songwriting her therapist. She called her guitar her friend. She said she can channel other people's feelings—the ones they don't know how to express—as well as her own. That's a lyricist talking. Not a performer. Not an icon. A writer who uses songs to make sense of the world. She said she can channel their feelings as well as hers. That's empathy. That's craft.
She loves that she can rhyme. 'I was so early on able to rhyme,' she said. 'I can rhyme words good.' But it's not just the rhyming. It's the words she picks. The words she uses. That's what the interviewer told her, and Dolly thanked her for it. Because she knows. She knows that 'Jolene' isn't just a catchy name. It's a whole novel in three minutes. She knows that 'I Will Always Love You' isn't just a goodbye. It's a surrender. She knows that 'Coat of Many Colors' isn't just a story about a coat. It's a story about poverty, love, and dignity. And she wrote that in 1971. She was 25 years old. She wrote 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You' in the same year—1973. Two of the most covered songs in the history of popular music. Written by a woman who was doing laundry. That's not a savant. That's a worker. That's a writer who shows up every day, even when the laundry basket is full. And she's still showing up. She wrote 'Coat of Many Colors' in 1971. She was 25. She wrote 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You' in 1973. She was 27. That's a three-year run that most songwriters would kill for. And she was just getting started.
