Dolly Parton left behind a secret song that will not be released until 2045

Dolly Parton may have died at 80, but her music will continue to reach listeners for years to come. One of her songs, however, is already waiting for a very specific audience: a track called “My Place in History”, recorded years ago and sealed inside a time capsule at Dollywood. It is not scheduled to be heard until 2045.

Parton died on Tuesday, August 25, following what her representatives described as a brief battle with cancer. She was 80.

The country music legend leaves behind an extraordinary body of work. A multiple Grammy winner, Parton recorded dozens of studio albums and hundreds of songs during a career that stretched across generations. Her work in entertainment extended beyond music, while her charitable efforts, particularly through her Imagination Library, helped put books into the hands of children around the world.

Her final released song was “If You Hadn’t Been There,” which came out in March 2025 as a tribute to her husband, Carl Dean, after his death at 82 earlier that week.

But that was not necessarily the end of Parton’s recorded music.

The song locked away at Dollywood

Parton revealed the existence of “My Place in History” in her 2020 memoir, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. She had written and recorded the song and placed it in a time capsule at her Dollywood theme park in Tennessee.

The plan was for the recording to remain sealed until 2045, when it would be opened around what would have been Parton’s 99th birthday on January 19.

The unusual arrangement was not always easy for Parton to live with. In a 2022 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, she admitted that knowing a song she considered good was sitting locked away had become increasingly frustrating.

“I had to write this song that nobody was going to hear ’til then,” Parton said. “I want to go dig that up so bad.”

She even questioned the wisdom of the original idea, joking: “I don’t know whose damn idea that was.”

Despite her impatience, Parton remained proud of the song. She described “My Place in History” as “a really good song” and said she hoped it would eventually prove special to the people who heard it.

Parton also acknowledged that writing something specifically for a distant future audience was a strange experience.

“It was an odd feeling to be asked to write a song that was not going to be heard ’til [2045],” she said. “But it’s a good song.”

The existence of the time capsule was also discussed during Parton’s 2022 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. There, she joked about whether she would still be alive when the recording was finally released.

“I won’t be around to hear it,” she said. “I’ll be dead and gone—well I might not be, ’cause I’ll be 99.”

Then came the characteristic Parton optimism: “You know me, I might still be hoppin’ around.”

The secret song has since taken on a different significance following her death. Parton will not be there to hear the recording when the time comes, but the music she deliberately saved for the future will still have its moment.

.@dollyparton confirms she has a secret song locked away in Dollywood. 👀 #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/KLQmNEHlpM

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) December 1, 2022

A career that stretched across generations

The locked-away recording is fitting for an artist whose career lasted for more than six decades.

Parton recorded her first song in 1959, when she was just 13 years old. Over the decades that followed, she became one of country music’s most recognizable figures, while also building successful careers in acting, songwriting and business.

Her catalog includes some of the most enduring songs in popular music, among them “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.” The latter later became an enormous international hit for Whitney Houston after being featured in The Bodyguard.

Parton’s songwriting output was equally remarkable. She continued creating and recording music well into her later years, maintaining a large global audience even after decades in the spotlight.

That makes the existence of “My Place in History” particularly intriguing. Unlike a song discovered after an artist’s death, this one was deliberately created with a future release in mind. Parton knew exactly when she wanted people to hear it and had made arrangements for it long before her death.

Did she really write “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” on the same day?

Another enduring story from Parton’s career concerns two of her best-known songs: “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.”

For years, the story has circulated that Parton wrote both songs on the same day in 1972.

Parton herself once seemed to embrace the story. During an appearance on The Bobby Bones Show in 2018, she responded to the claim by saying: “That was a good writing day!”

But when she revisited the story in 2022, Parton offered a more cautious version.

Speaking to TED, she explained that the two songs had been found on the same cassette tape, which may have contributed to the belief that they were written on the same night.

“When we found an old tape, they were on the same cassette,” she said. “That could have been a few days apart.”

What she could say with confidence was that the songs were written within a very short period of one another and eventually appeared on the same album.

So while the precise timing remains uncertain, there is no question that Parton was working at an extraordinary pace during that period.

Now, more than two decades before the planned opening of her time capsule, another piece of that remarkable songwriting legacy is waiting to be heard.

“My Place in History” will eventually emerge from its long-sealed resting place at Dollywood, giving listeners one final opportunity to hear a Dolly Parton song that she intentionally kept from the world for years.