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Dolly Parton Enters Heaven at Age 80
The earthly world has lost Dolly Parton as the legendary singer, songwriter, actress, philanthropist and woman of faith entered heaven today at the age of 80.
Her nephew and head of security, Bryan Seaver, shared the news on Dolly’s Instagram page with words that speak beautifully to the faith she carried throughout her life:
“Sadness lies with us. Not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the Heavens.”
For Tennessee, for Nashville, for country music and for millions of people around the world, it is difficult to imagine a world without Dolly Parton in it.
At CCM Magazine, we also mourn someone whose contributions to gospel and Christian music cannot be separated from the larger story of her extraordinary life. Because beneath the rhinestones, the one-liners and one of the greatest song catalogs in American music was a woman whose faith was formed in the mountains of East Tennessee and whose music never wandered very far from it.
Long before the world knew “Jolene,” “9 to 5” or “I Will Always Love You,” Dolly’s musical vocabulary was being formed by the church. She grew up in a deeply musical family in East Tennessee, singing gospel songs and hymns and performing in church as a child. Her grandfather was a preacher, and faith, family and music became intertwined early in her life.
Those roots remained audible throughout her career.
Her 1971 album Golden Streets of Glory put gospel music front and center, and she would return repeatedly to songs of faith throughout the decades that followed. Precious Memories found Dolly singing traditional hymns and gospel standards, while songs including “Hello God,” “He’s Alive” and countless others gave her opportunities to speak directly about belief, prayer and redemption. For decades, Dolly’s voice and songwriting bridged country and contemporary Christian audiences, offering hope, grace and simple truth wrapped in unforgettable melodies.
And unlike many artists who leave the sacred music of their childhood behind as their audience expands, Dolly seemed determined to bring it with her. She took gospel into country music, pop culture, television, movies and some of the biggest stages in the world. In recent years, a new generation of Christian music listeners discovered that side of Dolly when she joined Zach Williams for “There Was Jesus.”
The collaboration became a major Christian music hit and earned Dolly her first GMA Dove Award, winning Bluegrass/Country/Roots Recorded Song of the Year. The song also earned Dolly and Williams a GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song.
For an artist already surrounded by almost every accolade imaginable, those honors represented something special: Dolly Parton was still making meaningful Christian music more than half a century into her career.
It is difficult from today’s vantage point to fully appreciate how many doors Dolly Parton helped push open. She crossed from country to pop without abandoning country. She conquered television and movies without abandoning music. She became an entrepreneur without abandoning East Tennessee.
Dolly became one of the most recognizable people on Earth, yet she spent much of her life pointing people back toward the relatively small corner of Tennessee where her story began.
Dolly Parton’s Christian legacy isn’t found only on records. It can be found on children’s bookshelves around the world. Her compassion and servant heart were perhaps most visibly demonstrated through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The program launched in 1995 and grew into an international effort that has placed hundreds of millions of books into the hands of children. And the Imagination Library was hardly an isolated act and her generosity reached well beyond Tennessee.
Dolly’s beautiful spirit and unforgettable light touched the world because she seemed to understand something profoundly simple: if you have been given much, you have an opportunity to give much. Perhaps that is why the words announcing her passing feel so appropriate.
“Sadness lies with us. Not with Dolly.” After the death of Carl Dean, her husband of nearly 60 years, in 2025, she talked about believing she would see him again. “I am a person of faith, and I truly believe that I’m going to see him again someday,” Dolly said.
That doesn’t erase the sadness. Tennessee has lost one of its greatest ambassadors. Nashville has lost one of the people who helped make Music City known around the world. Country music has lost one of its greatest songwriters. Christian and gospel music have lost a voice that carried the music of a little mountain church to audiences that might never have otherwise heard it.
But Dolly Parton’s story doesn’t end today. Somewhere tonight, a child will open a book that arrived because Dolly decided children should have books. Somewhere, a family rebuilt after disaster with help she provided. Somewhere, a young woman is writing her first song because generations of women like Dolly Parton made it possible for her to believe she could.
And somewhere, someone will press play on an old gospel recording and hear that unmistakable mountain voice singing about Jesus, heaven, grace and home. For more than seven decades, Dolly Parton gave us a remarkable example of what can happen when faith is not merely something you sing about, but something you live.
Her beautiful spirit and unforgettable light touched the world.
Rest in peace, Dolly.
We will always love you.
Dolly Parton, 1946–2026.
Contributors: Amanda Sekulow, Ali Holston
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CCM First Listen: for KING + COUNTRY’s The Most Beautiful Colors
Don’t be jealous, but we got a first listen to the new for KING + COUNTRY album, The Most Beautiful Colors, arriving September 18.
While its first five tracks have already been released, hearing them within the full album reveals what Joel and Luke Smallbone are actually building: something theatrical, ambitious and ultimately far more personal than its massive production initially suggests.
So, before we get into the songs, here’s the vibe check.
The Most Beautiful Colors is a big record about surprisingly ordinary things. Love. Marriage. Divorce. Death. Aging parents. Family legacy. Even just the daily goals surrounding being a good husband, father, son or brother when life refuses to cooperate with the version you pictured when you were younger.
For all its enormous drums, global rhythms, synths and arena-sized choruses, this may actually be one of for KING + COUNTRY’s most mature records. Many of us in our early 40s are discovering that life’s biggest adventures no longer look like the ones we imagined as teenagers. The stakes are still high, but they are more grounded. Dreams coexist with mortgages. Parents get older. Kids grow up. Marriages require work. People disappoint you. You disappoint yourself.
If there is a larger theme, it is figuring out what it means to live well when nobody’s life turns out perfectly. It also occupies an increasingly valuable space between Christian radio and congregational worship. This is clearly faith-informed music, but it rarely sounds constructed for a Sunday-morning setlist. In that sense, The Most Beautiful Colors feels more Proverbs than Psalms. Its faith tends to emerge through practical stories about the lives we are actually living.
Of course, for KING + COUNTRY has apparently decided the best way to explore their “middle ages” is enough production to fill an arena…but is it enough to fill up 8 shows a week at the St. James Theatre times a week (pun intended). That’s right, a few songs in, I found myself asking a serious question: Is this a soundtrack to a new Broadway musical?
Considering the brothers’ filmmaking ambitions and the onstage spectacles they have become impresarios of, it would not surprise me. This is an album built for the stage.
At first, it almost presents itself as a concept record. Strangely, though, the longer it plays, the more it reminds me of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Not because it sounds anything like the Beatles, but because it establishes a world early on and then decides that world can contain basically whatever its creators want to put inside it. Global rhythms. Boy-band synths. Musical theater. Acoustic reflection. An ’80s keyboard solo. Jessica Simpson…. You read that right.
The record kicks off with what almost feels like a classic at this point. It is hard to judge “World on Fire” as a new song when it has been with us for nearly a year, but it remains a tremendous opening statement. It immediately establishes the album’s global scale and world-music influence. If this album isn’t eventually going to the stage, somebody at least needs to start developing a “World on Fire” Vacation Bible School theme and accompanying mission-trip curriculum.
Paul Simon found his way to world music and allowed it to reshape his sound. Likewise, for KING + COUNTRY has evolved its percussion-heavy approach here, trading some of the digital sheen for a more organic, goatskin beat. The progression feels natural in every sense, but that diversion doesn’t last long.
“Miracle” begins the slow rise of the band’s unmistakable synth sounds back into the record. There is a Greatest Showman quality to its scale and unapologetic optimism. Then, just when you think you understand what it is doing, the song delivers something resembling an ’80s Michael W. Smith keyboard solo. I mean that entirely as a compliment.
“What If I Told You” explodes with heavier melodic textures and unmistakable 2000s boy-band energy. There are moments that feel like they could have landed on an early TobyMac record, filtered through the maximalism that has become uniquely for KING + COUNTRY. While we were given a full first listen, there are some secrets I’m sworn to keep until we get closer to release day.
Without giving away every turn, the rest of The Most Beautiful Colors expands considerably beyond the youth-group-anthem energy of its opening stretch.
Steven Curtis Chapman is smiling somewhere because there is an actual love song on a contemporary Christian record. “Ever and ever before” has ‘first dance at the wedding’ written all over it, and the inclusion of two sets of Smallbones makes the moment even more personal. It is sentimental and sappy, it’s what you want.
And don’t worry, fellow millennial dads. There is a song where the GUITAR is the main instrument. “A Good Man” trades enormous production for acoustic reflection. If “Ever and Ever” owns the wedding-video market, this one is giving milestone birthday or, if we want to get a little morbid, family funeral. And that is really where the album’s larger theme starts making sense. These aren’t abstract life lessons. The Smallbones are increasingly writing about the people sitting around their own dinner tables.
The guests reinforce that approach. We live in an era where mainstream artists appearing on Christian records has become fairly common, but “My Mosaic,” featuring Jessica Simpson, still comes completely out of nowhere and it works. Amid the celebrity and tabloid history surrounding Simpson, it can be easy to forget that her vocal power was, and remains, entirely legitimate. Here she gets more than a novelty cameo. “My Mosaic” gives her room for a genuinely autobiographical performance, and her voice fits remarkably well alongside the Smallbones.
There are more songs and surprises to talk about when the album arrives, but one thing becomes increasingly clear as it progresses: for KING + COUNTRY is interested in pure audience connection. The lyrics are intentional and direct. They aren’t hiding behind layers of ambiguity. A love song is a love song. A song about their dad is about their dad. A song with Jessica Simpson? Yeah, it starts with talking about being married on reality television.
This is relational music, and it wears its heart on its sleeve.
As always, these songs also appear to have been created with for KING + COUNTRY’s live show already somewhere in the back of their minds. This is a band of spectacle: costumes, theatrical staging and arena-rock drama delivered to a civilized audience. Like many of my favorite arena-sized bands, you cannot completely understand their music until you see it take shape in front of a crowd.
The record is the blueprint. The concert is where the building appears. Although this time, that stage may eventually need to be on Broadway.
The Most Beautiful Colors arrives September 18.
PRE-SAVE NOWSandi Patty’s Next Chapter Starts Now
There are some voices that simply belong to Christian music history. Sandi Patty’s is one of them. And last week, CCM Magazine’s Logan and Amanda Sekulow were invited to an intimate, invite-only premiere celebrating a voice that is far from finished.
The special event, which was also live-streamed for fans, marked the premiere of “The Voice I Have Now,” Patty’s first newly recorded song in more than a decade. But it quickly became clear this wasn’t simply a celebration of one new song. It was the beginning of something much bigger.
At 70, the five-time GRAMMY winner and 40-time Dove Award recipient is entering a new chapter that feels remarkably full circle. Patty has returned to the Gaither Music Group, reconnecting with a musical family deeply intertwined with her career and legacy, and she’s bringing new music with her.
“The privilege of turning 70 is that I have more years to look back and see God’s faithfulness,” Patty shares. “And the best predictor of God’s future faithfulness is to recount His faithfulness in the past. That is one of the most beautiful things that comes with age. I have so much for which to recount.”
At the live event she was joined by songwriter Joel Lindsey for the performance of “The Voice I Have Now.” It isn’t a song about trying to recreate the Sandi Patty of another era. It’s about appreciating everything that brought her here and discovering there is still plenty ahead.
One lyric makes that especially clear: “I’m not ready for the final bow.”
Turns out, she really isn’t! Patty revealed that a brand-new album is coming in February 2027, her first new album in years. For an artist whose career has stretched across nearly five decades, more than 30 albums and some of the defining songs of contemporary Christian music, there’s something beautifully fitting about watching the story circle back around while still moving forward.
And CCM Magazine will be there for the next chapter. How so? Stay tuned!
Sandi Patty will return to CCM Magazine in 2027.
Stream “The Voice I Have Now”:
