Dolly Parton spent her life turning her own experiences, memories and emotions into music. Even after death, her songs will continue to tell her story — including two that show just how thoughtfully she considered her musical legacy.

The country music icon, who died Tuesday (Aug. 25) at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer, had already decided what song she wanted played at her funeral more than a decade before her death. And, in true Dolly fashion, she also left behind another song that she specifically instructed would not be heard until her 100th birthday in 2046.

In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Parton was asked what song she would want played at her funeral. While many might have expected “I Will Always Love You” — the song she famously wrote and recorded and then later watched become an even bigger hit through Whitney Houston‘s rendition — Parton had something more personal in mind.

“I’m sure they’ll be playing ‘I Will Always Love You’ when I die, just like they did with Whitney Houston,” she told the outlet at the time. But when it came to the song she actually wanted for her own funeral, she chose “If We Never Meet Again,” an old country-gospel hymn with a particularly meaningful connection to her family.

The song had been her father’s favorite, and it was performed at his funeral. Parton said she hoped the same song would one day be sung at hers.

The choice is fitting, given the song’s message about separation and the hope of being reunited in the afterlife.

Her funeral plans were indeed something Parton had considered in advance. Her representatives confirmed Tuesday that she requested a small, private service for immediate family. Her nephew and head of security, Bryan Seaver, also shared that Parton wanted to be laid to rest in a “beautiful bed of plush cotton.”

But Parton’s planning for the music that would remain until after her death went beyond her funeral. At Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, sits a locked chestnut box containing a recording of an unreleased Parton song called “My Place in History.” The song was written in 2015, the same year the resort opened, and Parton specifically arranged for it to be unveiled on what would have been her 100th birthday: Jan. 19, 2046.

Inside the box is a CD containing the recording, along with a CD player so that future generations will be able to hear it, outwardly a Dolly time capsule. The country legend even acknowledged the uncertainty of leaving technology from 2015 to be opened decades later.

“There’s no telling what music is going to be by then,” she wrote in her 2020 book, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “Hopefully, it will play and the whole thing ain’t rotted.”

Parton also joked that she hoped she would live long enough to hear the song herself when the box eventually opened. She was 69 when she wrote and recorded “My Place In History.”

Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift never recorded a song together, but openly shared a mutual admiration. Now, Swift is sharing her heartfelt appreciation for Parton, who died Tuesday (Aug. 25) at age 80, thanking her for “the melodies and lyrics she wrote that thawed even the coldest hearts.”

Swift praised Parton for her songwriting and also for her philanthropy and just general Dolly-ness.

“A world without Dolly doesn’t feel possible, real, or right,” Swift wrote in a statement provided to Billboard. “But because of the eternally generous way she spent her time on this earth and the countless lives she changed for the better, her legacy will be an everlasting one.”

She lauded Parton for knowing her own value as a creator, something the two artists shared: “She possessed 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,” Swift said.

Just last month, Parton took to social media to thank Swift and her then-fiancé Travis Kelce for their $2 million donation to Parton’s Imagination Library as part of their $26 million in charitable giving prior to the pair’s July 3 wedding. Parton even jokingly asked, “Hey, when you have your first born can I have it? Because that is going to be one special baby.”

Parton often praised Swift, telling E! News last year, “I’m just crazy about Taylor. I just admire her so much for what she’s done with her life. Her career. Such a great artist and songwriter.”

Swift’s statement in full is below. Like so many tributes to the icon, Swift even managed to fit in a reference to Parton’s most famous and enduring song, “I Will Always Love You”:

“A world without Dolly doesn’t feel possible, real, or right. But because of the eternally generous way she spent her time on this earth and the countless lives she changed for the better, her legacy will be an everlasting one.

She was truly the gift that kept on giving. Dolly gave us someone to look up to while encouraging us to be who we are as individuals. Somehow, she was able to give us her lessons about the world gently and honestly, simultaneously, and oftentimes hilariously. She managed to give the world the ultimate mystery and fantasy in some corners of her life, but to give full transparency in the ways that counted. Somehow, she was true grace and true grit, all in one dazzling person. She possessed 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.

Along with her other fans, I am so grateful for all of it. For the melodies and lyrics she wrote that thawed even the coldest hearts. For the millions of books she provided children all over the world so that they might fall in love with stories the way she did. 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.”

Hours after news of Dolly Parton‘s death broke on Tuesday (Aug. 25), Jack White paid live tribute to the late country icon by covering her song “Jolene” at London’s Eventim Apollo.

The rock singer posted a snippet of the performance on his Instagram account after the show, beginning with the fitting lyric: “Your beauty is beyond compare.” White also shared a tribute to Parton earlier Tuesday, posting a 1965 photo of the legend with her classic beehive hairstyle with the two-word caption: “Instant Sainthood.”

This is hardly the first time White has covered Parton’s legendary 1973 song begging another woman not to steal her man. The White Stripes — White’s rock duo with drummer Meg White — released a studio version of the song as a B-side to “Hello Operator” in 2000 and also dropped a live single in 2004. Their cover never charted in the U.S., but it did top the UK Indie chart and peaked at No. 16 on the UK Singles chart in 2004.

Parton’s original version peaked at No. 60 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot Country Songs chart in 1974. It also spawned many covers beyond The White Stripes’ as well, including Beyoncé‘s interpolation from her country album Cowboy Carter, which featured some new lyrics and peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100 in 2024. Parton herself was also featured on a Pentatonix cover, which reached No. 18 on Hot Country Songs in 2016.

Following “a brief battle with cancer,” according to her team, Parton died Tuesday at age 80 in Nashville. Her nephew, Bryan Seaver, shared the news through a video message on Parton’s socials.

See White’s tribute to Parton below: