Dolly Parton: The Time Capsule She Wants To ‘Dig up’

Back in the mid-1980s, when Dolly Parton first opened her Dollywood theme park in East Tennessee mountain home, she buried a time capsule, and ever since, she has wanted to dig that thing up.

Dolly told Kelly Clarkson how she wrote a song and put a recording in the capsule. She notes that no one has ever heard it. She said on Kelly's show recently, "That has driven me crazy," Clarkson asked, "Because people keep bringing it up?" Parton replied, "Yeah, because people keep bringing it up, but because I had written a song that nobody's gonna hear till I'm 99 years old, and I might be there, I might not, but, it's when we did Dollywood, we reworked that and we put it in a time capsule to be opened."

She continued, "I put all the things that had to with the times, I put a cassette player, and I put a CD player and stuff all in this box if it would preserve it how we played those at the time. I put that in the box, and I had to write this song that nobody was gonna hear til then, and I tell you, you have no idea how that has bothered me. I want to go dig that up so bad."

The Kelly Clarkson Show posted the clip to Instagram, writing, "T-minus 23 years til we can hear @DollyParton's secret song!!"

Many fans of the show responded to the post, including one who wrote, "Everyone needs to send Dolly a shovel for Christmas!!" Another fan commented, "Dolly Parton is an American treasure that we probably don't deserve." One more fan predicted, "I bet ya, she will get the song out before 99 yrs old."

Earlier this month, Dolly announced that she would publish a new picture book about her God-dog, Billy the Kid, on April 25, 2023. Dolly said in a press release, "I am so proud to bring this book and the message it conveys to life." She added, "Years back, I wrote a song 'Makin' Fun Ain't Funny' for my children's album 'I Believe In You.' I wanted kids to understand how harmful bullying can be to someone. I hope this is the first of many books with Billy."

Dolly Parton's Christmas music has been a part of my life since I was a young teenager. Not a Christmas goes by since that I have not listened to her many Christmas albums, starting with my favorite holiday album of all time, her 1984 project with Kenny Rogers, Once Upon A Christmas. I first bought that on vinyl with babysitting money. I saved up just for it. Since then, I have purchased the album as a cassette, then a CD, and then digitally through Apple Music. It has always been a part of Christmas for my family and me.

I have been so fortunate in my career to have interviewed Dolly many times. Often, we talked about Christmas and the holidays. In an interview from 2016, I believe she said it best about Christmastime and family. Dolly told me then, "I just want families to feel closer together because we've just kind of scattered so much as a family because of all the new age and new technology, which is wonderful to have all these great things available to us, but I think we lose a lot and have lost a lot about family." She added, "So, more than anything, I just want people to feel the joy of Christmas and what Christmas is really about, which is Jesus and about just that love of family and just feeling happy."

Without further ado, here are Dolly's 20 best Christmas songs.