Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton Recorded a Secret Song That Fans Can't Hear Till 2045

Parton recorded a new song and locked it away at Dollywood

Dolly Parton
Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images (File)

True Dolly Parton fans may think they're completists about her catalog, but it turns out no one will be able to hear all of the country music legend's tunes until ... 2045!

That's because, as Parton recently explained in her new book, "Songteller: My Life in Lyrics," she wrote a brand-new song, recorded it and locked it away in a box left at Dollywood — with instructions not to open it for 30 years.

The song was created in 2015, when she opened the DreamMore Resort at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It's on a CD, and there's a CD player in the chestnut wood box that her uncle Bill made; she notes the wood came from a "mighty tree that got wiped out by blight." (She once wrote a song for him called "The Chestnut Tree.")

But coming up with a song only to put it away again wasn't easy, she says in the book. "'That's like burying one of my kids, putting it on ice or something, and I won't be around to see it brought back to life,'" she told those who suggested creating the song, and added, "It's just burning me up inside that I have to leave it there."

The idea wasn't hers originally, though she ran with it, and she acknowledges it's a bit odd. And not everybody was on board at first; naysayers noted that the singer, then 69, would be long gone by the time it could be opened and listened to.

"I said, 'Well, maybe not,'" she recalls in the memoir. "'I've seen people live to be older than that.'"

You tell 'em, Dolly! And we bet she will, too: Parton is something of a force of nature, surprising us left and right by helping fund the coronavirus vaccine, having produced "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and giving away over 100 million books.

"Anyway, it's kind of weird or strange that they would ask me to write this mystery song," she writes. "I don't know if I want to live to be 100 or not. But you never know. I might and if I do, I'm going to be at that opening."

We bet.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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