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."