Dolly Parton died at 80, and the tribute Taylor Swift wrote for her reaches all the way back to why Swift started chasing music in the first place.
Swift called Parton “the gift that kept on giving,” crediting her with showing young artists they could be themselves. “Dolly gave us someone to look up to while encouraging us to be who we are as individuals,” she said, praising the way Parton taught “gently and honestly, simultaneously, and oftentimes hilariously.”
She described Parton as “true grace and true grit, all in one dazzling person,” someone with “the softest heart when it came to the struggles of others, and a backbone of steel to defend her own self worth as an artist.”
The connection runs deeper than admiration. Weeks before Parton died, Swift and Travis Kelce gave $2 million to her Imagination Library, the program that has mailed free books to children since 1995, part of a $26 million pre-wedding donation the couple split across about 20 charities. Swift nodded to that legacy in her statement, thanking Parton “for the millions of books she provided children all over the world.”
She closed the way a fan closes a letter to the person who made the dream feel possible: “For the tightropes she walked so that young girls like me could grow up dreaming of joining the circus too. Dolly, I’ll think of you each step of the way.”
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