Dolly Parton wrote the song we’ll forever play on repeat

I spent over two decades as a music journalist chasing bylines in Rolling Stone , GQ and many other outlets, and I told every editor who’d listen, “If you ever assign me a Dolly Parton interview, I’ll happily hang up my rock critic shoes.” Her songs have been part of the soundtrack of our lives, and we’ve been hearing them on repeat forever.

Sadly, that assignment never came, and Dolly has always been the one who got away.

So, I write this not as someone who knew or met her, but instead as a fan who adored her, first as a critic with a tape recorder I never got to use, and now as someone who spends my days thinking about what her reputation meant to her legacy.

I’ve watched the news of her passing unfold the way most of you probably have: scrolling, rereading tribute after tribute and appreciating the people she inspired – both personally, like I’d once dreamt of, and from afar.

There’s a particular kind of grief in losing someone who felt like family to millions of people who never met her.

And as it turns out, you didn’t have to own a single Dolly record to feel that loss, because Dolly was far more than a country music icon.

She was an American legend: unapologetically and authentically herself.

Reflecting on her life from both of my vantage points, as music critic and reputation building communications counselor, I’ve noticed that the industry often sorts stars into “artist” or “brand,” as if those are competing categories.

But Dolly broke that mold, spending 70 years steadily proving that it’s not one or the other.

Music press often gets a bad rap for treating “brand” as a slightly dirty word when it’s applied to an artist, as if commercial savvy somehow dilutes creative legitimacy.

But Dolly never bought into that premise, and I’ve come to believe she was right.

She understood something that the communications industry still sometimes struggles with — earlier, and more completely, than almost anyone in entertainment: authenticity isn’t the absence of strategy.

Sometimes authenticity is the strategy.

Consider what she built: ownership of her songwriting catalog at a time when almost no one could ask for that (she famously turned down an Elvis Presley cover because his manager demanded half the publishing).