Always the icon, Dolly Parton is celebrating turning 80 with a gift for us. The GRAMMY-winning star has shared an updated version of her song, "Light of a Clear Blue Morning," featuring Lainey Wilson, Miley Cyrus, Queen Latifah, and Reba McEntire, all for a great cause with net proceeds benefitting Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.
LISTEN NOW: Dolly Parton on 'Light of a Clear Blue Morning'
Along with the release of the song, Dolly shared with us her motivation for choosing the track from her catalog, her thoughts on turning 80, and more.
"'Light of a Clear Blue Morning' has always been one of my favorite songs that I’ve written because I wrote this at a time when I was going out on my own, having some fears and doubts and all the things you have when you are going out on your own," says Dolly. "When I wrote the song, it was really expressing how I was feeling about life, the future and all the questions that we have in our mind. And I just felt like this day and time, this was a perfect song to revisit to give people a little light... of a clear blue morning!"
“I wanted it to kind of be like a ‘We Are the World’ – in this case, it’s like ‘We Are the Girls,’" Parton shares, going on to gush about her collaborators. "I just thought that it turned out to be the perfect thing all around for everybody, and I’m hoping that you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed doing it."
Dolly has a lot to look forward to with her 80th birthday arriving on January 19, and zero signs of slowing down. "I just hope to be able to write more songs that might lift people up, like I'm hoping that this does," Dolly reveals. "It's very important to me to give people something to look forward to, give them some hope. We're going through trouble in uncertain times, but we can't let the darkness win. We should never allow that to happen."
"I really think that I'd like to just do more, and more things, not just necessarily in songs, but whether it be movies or whether it be other projects that I have, things that just make people feel a little better about the times, and especially about themselves."