Sophia Michaels
Dolly Parton doesn’t know whose bright idea it was to create a brand new song and bury it in a time capsule beneath Dollywood, only to be opened after she turns 99 years old, but she’s losing her patience more and more the longer it sits underground. “You have no idea how that has bothered me,” the country icon said on a recent episode of the Kelly Clarkson Show. “I want to go dig that up so bad.”
The song is sealed off in a chestnut box in different listening formats with their corresponding devices, including a cassette and CD player. It’s been there since Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort and Spa opened in 2015 and is meant to remain until the park celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2045.
“They weren’t expecting me to be there at all,” Parton said. “I’m just saying, I might be there. Who knows? But the point is, there is a song – I figure it’ll probably disintegrate, probably nobody ever hears it. That’s what bothers me, to think that it’s gonna be a song that nobody’s ever gonna hear if it rots in there before they open it.”
By the time they open the capsule, she’ll probably have no recollection of what the song actually sounds like, but for now, at least, she is on record gassing up how good of a track it is – the kind that makes her want to grab a shovel to unearth it and play it for the world to hear.
“It’s a really good song,” she added. “But yes, I have a song that’s buried that nobody’s gonna hear – I don’t know whose damn idea that was.”
