Dolly Parton, country music legend who became a national treasure, dies at 80
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Set us as preferred Dolly Parton, the singer and songwriter from Locust Ridge, Tenn., who willed herself into being the very symbol of country music stardom, has died in Nashville.Parton died peacefully Tuesday, her nephew Bryan Seaver announced in a press release shared with The Times.Seaver also announced her death in a video shared to the singer’s Instagram page.
She was 80.The fabled entertainer died after a series of health issues that led her to postpone several performing commitments.In September 2025, she missed the announcement of a Dollywood attraction to recover from a kidney stone.
Later that month she delayed her residency at Caesars Palace — her first residency on the strip in more than 30 years — due to unspecified “health challenges.”Over the course of a flamboyant 50-plus-year career as a songwriter, recording artist, actor and businesswoman, Parton reinvented the American success story through a combination of grit and wit, faith and sex appeal, virtuosity and plainspokenness, empathy for the human condition and plastic surgery.She seized on the roles that American culture allowed for women in the spotlight — waif, trollop, fallen woman, country girl in over her head — and played them to the hilt, achieving artistic and financial heights few female performers have ever reached.
By the time of her death, she was said to be one of the few things that Americans of most every persuasion could agree on.One of the most honored musicians in modern history, Parton earned 10 Grammy Awards, two Academy Award nominations, a Primetime Emmy, 10 Country Music Assn.awards, and in 1999 she was enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In 2005 President George W.Bush presented Parton with the National Medal of the Arts, and a year later she was given a Kennedy Center for the Arts Award for her lifetime c...