A few years ago, during a 2022 performance at ACL Live at the Moody Theater during SXSW, I personally witnessed someone in the audience yell out, “I love you, Dolly!” while she was on stage.

Without missing a beat, she shot back: “I love you too, but I thought I told you to wait in the truck!”

It was the perfect Dolly Parton joke. Flirty, kinda funny, and delivered like this was the first time she had ever been catcalled on stage. Dolly always seemed to understand exactly what people saw when they looked at her, because she spent a lifetime creating it.

If you haven’t listened to the WNYC podcast Dolly Parton’s America, do yourself a favour and give it a spin. But in it, you learn that she got the whole Dolly look from a woman she saw around her Tennessee hometown as a kid: peroxide hair, tight skirts, red lipstick, high heels. The adults called her trash. Dolly thought she was beautiful, so she grew up and became her, only bigger. And somewhere along the way Parton effectively turned herself into a cartoon or caricature of sorts, all while hiding one of America’s sharpest songwriters, savviest businesspeople, and most emotionally perceptive artists in plain sight.

Parton died Tuesday at 80, her family announced.

Born in rural East Tennessee in 1946, the fourth of 12 children in a family she routinely described as dirt poor, Parton started writing songs as a child and essentially never stopped. Eventually there would be more than 100 million records sold, 11 Grammys, 25 Billboard country No. 1s and thousands of songs written. There were movies (9 to 5 4 evr), television shows, Dollywood and induction into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But the songs were always the thing. “Coat of Many Colors” turned childhood poverty into dignity. It’s also a bedtime story I now read to my eight-month-old baby before bed each night. “Jolene” transformed jealousy into a desperate act of empathy and is probably one of the greatest diss tracks of all time. “9 to 5” channeled working-class rage into one of the catchiest songs ever played over an office radio.

And “I Will Always Love You” might be the most Dolly story of them all. She wrote it for Porter Wagoner, her longtime duet partner and television co-star, when she decided it was time to leave their professional relationship. Years later, Elvis Presley wanted to record it, but his team wanted Parton to surrender half the publishing rights. She refused, despite later admitting she cried over losing the opportunity. Then Whitney Houston recorded it, of course. You could teach an entire music-business course with that sequence of events.

Dolly Parton could belong to seemingly everybody without ever becoming generic. Country music purists claimed her. Queer audiences adored her. Rock musicians covered her. Drag queens amplified her. Kids received books from her Imagination Library. When COVID-19 arrived, she donated $1 million to research that helped support work behind a vaccine.

Through all of it, she kept returning to songwriting as the thing she wanted to be remembered for, and she definitely got her wish. Parton spent a lifetime constructing one of the most gloriously artificial images pop culture has ever produced, but behind it was something considerably harder to manufacture.

Dolly Parton was a great fucking songwriter.