Dolly Parton Chose Her Funeral Song Over A Decade Ago And Left One Final Song To Release In 2046
Dolly Parton planned her final musical farewell more than a decade before she passed away at age 80, telling Entertainment Weekly in 2014 exactly which song she wanted sung at her funeral: "If We Never Meet Again," a country gospel hymn that was her father Lee's favorite and was performed at his own service following his death in 2000. She said she hoped the same song would one day close her final chapter, which it did when she was laid to rest in a private family ceremony, buried in what her nephew Bryan Seaver described as a beautiful bed of plush cotton, just as she had requested. Even then, her musical story was not finished. Inside a locked chestnut box displayed in a glass case at Dollywood's DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, sits a CD recording of an unreleased song called "My Place in History," written by Parton in 2015 the same year the resort opened, with instructions that it remain sealed until what would have been her 100th birthday in January 2046. She included a CD player inside the box alongside the recording because she was fully aware that the technology of 2015 might not survive the next three decades, writing in her 2020 book that there was no telling what music would look like by then and adding, with characteristic warmth, "Hopefully, it will play and the whole thing ain't rotted."
The chestnut box itself was built by her uncle Bill Owens as a tribute to his work preserving the American Chestnut tree, and a placard on its face reads that the box is a repository of Dolly's wishes and memories for the future, describing "My Place in History" as a final tribute she placed there to be released as her last song. She confirmed the vault track's existence in a 2022 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, acknowledging she might not be around for its unveiling and treating the whole thing the way she treated most things in her life: with honesty, humor, and a deep understanding that the things we leave behind say as much about us as the things we do while we are here. Her team confirmed following her passing that a handpicked group of people had been working with her on a roadmap of unreleased music, books, experiences, and projects that she had personally approved, and that fans could be confident anything released through official Dolly Parton channels carried her personal stamp. The song locked in the box at Dollywood will open in 2046. Anyone who has ever loved her work will want to be there.
