Dolly Parton
Episode 165: How a Poor Girl from East Tennessee Became One of the Most Universally Loved Superstars of All Time
Publicity photo of Dolly Parton taken in 1977
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On August 25, the Internet erupted with tributes to the late Dolly Parton. As I scrolled through Facebook and Instagram past tribute after tribute with Dolly‘s iconic face plastered on every post, the warm smile, the big hair, the bold… eyeshadow, and meme after meme with inspirational Dolly quotes, little known facts about her giving, and phrases like be a Dolly, I noticed something particularly interesting. People of very different ages, very different beliefs, very different political affiliations, different views on life, different perspectives - they were all posting these tributes. They were all loving Dolly. They were all calling for us to be a Dolly. I had never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen a celebrity death affect such a wide group of people. Even the guards at Buckingham Palace were playing “9 to 5.” How was this possible? How was it possible that a woman who, in many ways maintained a comical appearance and a silly personality, the butt of endless jokes could end up so universally loved by the masses. What did it mean to be a Dolly, to be like Dolly? How did she manage to transcend party lines, to bridge these differing perspectives, jump age gaps, bypass hate, and shun fear, all while being a Dolly. To answer that question, we have to answer this one first: who was Dolly Parton and where did she come from. Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix, where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I am so thrilled to be back. If you've been living under a rock, then you may not know that I took the entire month of August off, but it is September now, my friends, and I am back in a big way. I had a totally different topic lined up for this week, but with the recent passing of the beloved Dolly Parton, I decided to shift gears and talk about Dolly instead. I am very rarely affected by celebrity deaths. I just don’t really care. That sounds terrible, but I don’t. I didn’t know them personally. I’ve never met them in real life. I might appreciate their art or the contributions to society but it’s just not something that’s really ever touched me very deeply. The death of Dolly Parton is different. Not because I knew Dolly, just because of who she was. But what I didn’t realize was that absolutely everyone else felt that way too. You don’t see that very often. You don’t see that sort of universal liking of someone in the spotlight, especially a women, especially someone as extreme as Dolly Parton. We’ve seen many examples of strong women throughout history living loudly, living authentically, powerful, unapologetic women who are completely demonized by society. Society hates powerful women. Typically someone who lives that loudly, as Dolly did, is going to have a lot of haters. She undeniably brought a lot of attention to herself, even just with her physical appearance. So the most eye-opening thing to me about the death of Dolly Parton is the complete lack of haters. Not that people tend to hate on people the literal day they die but they also don’t post tributes like what I saw on August 25th. So what is it about Dolly that made her so universally loved. Who was Dolly Parton. Let’s get into it.
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, which just so happens to be my mother’s birthday, in Sevier County, Tennessee. Dolly is known for coming from humble beginnings, being born into a family that was not well off. But that is really an understatement. First of all, Dolly was one of 12 children. She was the 4th born. Willadeene, David, and Coy were her older siblings and then after her came Robert, Stella, Cassie, Randy, Larry, Floyd, Frieda (who were twins), and Rachel. So that is a lot of kids. That is a lot of mouths to feed, especially for a family that had almost no money. They lived in a one bedroom home - okay, so just let that sink in: 12 kids, one bedroom - in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. Apparently, the missionary who delivered Dolly when she was born, was paid with a sack of cornmeal, or so the story goes.
Her father, Lee, was a sharecropper and later acquired his own land and a tobacco farm. He also worked construction occasionally in an attempt to bring more money home. Lee could not read or write, he was illiterate. But despite this, Dolly often said that he was one of the smartest people she had ever met. Her mother’s name was Avie Lee. Avie Lee had 12 children before her 35th birthday. Yeah. She, obviously, stayed home to tend to the children while Lee worked. They had no money, right, very very poor, but they had an exceptionally loving home life.
Dolly’s childhood, tucked in the picturesque Smoky Mountains with her parents and a hoard of brothers and sisters who loved and supported her, clearly had a huge impact on who she would become. According to Dolly’s bio on her website dollyparton.com quote “Dolly consistently drew inspiration throughout her career from her immense appreciation and love for the place and people that raised her. She lived a simple childhood chasing the beauty of butterflies, listening to Appalachian folklore and ancient ballads passed down by her relatives. Huddling around the family radio to hear the Grand Ole Opry broadcast, Dolly and her siblings would joyfully make music together,” end quote.
So here’s where the music comes in. Dolly lived in a very musical household. Her mother, Avie Lee, was very musical. She had come from a musical family with Welsh ancestry and she often sang old European folk songs and Elizabethan ballads that had been passed down in southern Appalachia. She brought music into the home and she encouraged a love of music in all 12 of her children. That’s evident in the fact that 8 of the 12 Parton children became singers, songwriters, or musicians in some capacity as adults. Dolly especially showed a lot of musical talent at a young age. Dolly’s bio from her website says quote “Dolly’s musical talent was evident and encouraged by her mother – crafting simple songs on her guitar that were seemingly pulled from the spirit of the Smoky Mountains themselves. Dolly took notice of the attention her music got from everyone around her and knew then she was meant to share her heart and talent with the world. She began writing songs at the age of five, the first being about a corncob doll her mother made for her called “Little Tiny Tasseltop.” While she couldn’t read or write at this point, her mother wrote down the lyrics as the knee-high Dolly sang them,” end quote.
Now, for most poor kids growing up in rural Tennessee in the 1950s, the story would more or less end there. But Dolly had an uncle who was involved in the music scene. He was an accredited songwriter and his name was Bill Owens. Bill was her mother’s older brother. And Bill really saw the natural musical talent in Dolly. He bought her a guitar so she could write her songs as a young child. And then, when she was 10 years old, he started taking her to and from Nashville with him, which of course Nashville was and still is a huge music scene, specifically country music. At the age of 10 she started singing on local radio and TV shows. And at just 13 years old, Dolly debuted on the Grand Old Opry stage. While there, she met Johnny Cash who introduced her as quote “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee,” end quote.
The day after Dolly graduated high school in 1964, she packed up and moved to Nashville. She knew she wanted to be a musician and she knew Nashville was the place for that. So literally day one, she was there. And, worth noting, her literal first day in Nashville was the day she met her future husband, Carl Dean. Dolly often referred to this day, the day she moved to Nashville and met Carl, as the “day her life began.” Dolly and Carl would get married 2 years later and spend their entire lives together. Carl died in March of 2025, roughly a year and a half before Dolly, at the age of 82. Carl was very different from Dolly in a lot of ways, though. He did not like to be in the spotlight. He was a very private person and he very intentionally stayed out of the spotlight of Dolly’s career. But he obviously loved and supported her and so he became this sort of normalcy, that she came home to when she wasn’t on the road performing.
So, let’s talk about Dolly’s actual musical career, now. How did she go from a 13 year old singing at the Grand Old Opry like a sort of novelty party trick, to a serious renowned musician. She actually started as a songwriter, like her uncle Bill. Soon after moving to Nashville, she signed with Combine Records as a songwriter and she worked with Bill, they were like songwriting partners. She wrote quite a few songs that hit the top charts. So this is like, she’s writing songs for other musicians to sing. For example, while working for Combine, she wrote two top 10 songs for Bill Phillips. She wrote a number 11 hit for Skeeter Davis. Kitty Wells and Hank Williams Jr. recorded songs written by Dolly, that sort of thing.
In 1965, at the age of 19 Dolly transitioned from just a songwriter into a singer songwriter when she signed a record deal with Monument Records. Now, Dolly wanted to be a country singer, but Monument didn’t think her high soprano voice would work for country. They wanted her to sing bubblegum pop. Then, one of the songs she wrote for Bill Phillips called Put it Off Until Tomorrow reached number 6 on the country charts in 1966 and Monument Records was like “well, okay, maybe she would be good at country after all.” And from there her career as a country music singer songwriter really took off.
In 1967 she was invited to be on the Porter Wagoner show. According to Wikipedia, Porter Wagoner was an American country singer known for his flashy rhinestone suits and blonde pompadour, which is like this super tall sort of puffy hairstyle. It’s actually, fun history fact, it’s actually named after Madame de Pompadour who was a mistress of King Louis the 15th of France. So picture like Marie Antoinette hair, basically. That’s what the pompadour is based on. So Dolly joined Porter Wagoner on his show and they became really this very famous country duo with this really eccentric look, the pompadours, the rhinestones. A clear look is developing and Dolly is really coming into her own during her time on the Porter Wagoner show and she’s becoming a very famous country music star with Porter by her side. During this time from 1967 to 1974, the duo recorded a dozen studio albums with lots and lots of top 10 hit singles on the country charts.
In 1973, Dolly released the song Jolene which is probably her most famous song. Jolene topped the country chart in February of 1974 and and reached the lower regions of the Billboard Hot 100 chart which is like, not just country, it’s like all music, so that’s a big deal. Jolene also charted in the UK, reaching number 7 there which was her first success in the UK. So, at this point, Jolene was a solo song, without Porter and it was a smashing success, Dolly had always seen herself as a solo artist, she hadn’t really wanted to be a duo like she was with Porter, she makes the decision to leave the Porter Wagoner show and pursue a solo career. Her decision to leave the show caused some friction. Porter was not happy about it. And this is actually when Dolly wrote what is one of the most famous songs of all time “I Will Always Love You.” The most famous version of that song is the one sung and recorded by Whitney Houston in 1992. But “I Will Always Love You” was first written and sung by Dolly in the 1970s as a goodbye to Porter Wagoner when she left his show and started her solo career. But even before Whitney Houston made it insanely famous, back when it was a Dolly song, it hit number one on the country charts twice, once in 1974 and again in 1982. After that, after Jolene and I Will Always Love you, after leaving the Porter Wagoner show and setting out on her own, Dolly was catapulted to super stardom. She began touring world wide, won all sorts of awards. Dolly was a big deal.
In 1980 she began an acting career and, she was actually a really decent actress. You know sometimes you see a famous person in a movie and they got the part because they’re famous they bring that star power to the movie, make people want to watch it with their preexisting starpower. And I’m sure that’s why Dolly got her first part, because she was already so famous and they wanted to sort of use that starpower to promote the movie. But she also happened to be a pretty decent actress. So in 1980 she starred in the film 9 to 5 with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. According to Dolly’s bio quote “The theme song was an instant success and became an anthem for generations of working women everywhere. It took the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, the Country charts, and the AC charts. The film also opened the doors for her to take on other iconic roles in classic films like The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, Joyful Noise, and many other television films. Her production company, Sandollar, produced an array of television specials starring Dolly, including a 1987-88 self-titled variety series, which commanded the biggest deal ever negotiated in prime-time television at the time,” end quote. So, Dolly was killing it in show business. Like, I don’t think people realize how hard Dolly was killing it.
She’s killing it so hard, she’s so famous, she’s open your own theme park famous. That’s a rare level of famous. In 1986, she opened a theme park called Dollywood in Pigeon Ford, Tennessee which, today draws in more than 4 million visitors every year. So, just for some context, Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, that’s the closest theme park to me, they get just under 3 million visitors a year. So, people really love Dollywood. Now this, really, with the opening of Dollywood is where we see Dolly start to give back. She has grown from a poverty stricken tobacco farm in the mountains of East Tennessee, to absolute superstardom. And there are a lot of people, there are a lot of famous people who get to that point, and they never look back. They forget all about where they came from, as if their past did not exist, as if they were born under the flashing lights in the middle of a cheering crowd. Not Dolly. Dolly never forgot her roots. And the reason she decided to open Dollywood specifically in Pigeon Ford, Tennessee, was because she was born and raised very close to Pigeon Ford, Tennessee. This was a way for Dolly to give back to the people, to the place she came from. Because Dollywood created a lot of jobs. It brought a lot of visitors, 4 million people a year, people with money to spend, to a traditionally very poor area. Dollywood was Dolly’s way of pouring back into the place she came from, of giving back, of pulling them along, pulling them right up with her as she rose. She didn’t forget them. She brought them up with her. And you’ll see this again and again with Dolly.
So Dollywood helped revitalize the economy of East Tennessee, but it also opened up a whole new chapter for Dolly as a really talented businesswoman. And this is what Dolly had always said about her father Lee when she talked about him as one of the smartest people she knew. She said he was a really talented businessman. He couldn’t read or write but he was really smart about business. Well Dolly appeared to be as well. In the years after Dollywood she built a whole empire of businesses: we’re talking baked goods, frozen foods, wine, coffee, fragrances, jewelry, clothing, cosmetics, dinner theatres, hotels, and the list goes on.
So she started as a really talented songwriter. She became a really talented singer, then an actress. Then she also became a really talented businesswomen, but also a philanthropist. Dollywood was sort of her first taste of giving back, giving back to the people of East Tennessee. But she didn’t stop there. In 1988 she founded The Dollywood Foundation which provided scholarships to students in East Tennessee. Dolly highly valued education. I think a lot of that came from the fact that her own father was illiterate. He was the smartest person she knew and yet he never learned to read or write. That was a product of where he lived, rural Tennessee. The opportunities did not exist for him and she must have viewed that as an injustice because a lot of Dolly’s charity work was geared toward combatting educational inequality and making sure kids could learn, that they had access to education. By 1991, the dropout rate at Dolly’s old high school in Sevier County, Tennessee was around 30 to 35%, that’s one third of high school students not graduating. So Dolly, through the Dollywood Foundation offered $500 to each 7th and 8th grader in 1991, she would give them each $500 if they graduated high school. The result? The dropout rate dropped from 30% down to just 6% for that group. Here’s the thing though, here’s why, I think, it was so successful. There was another stipulation. Each of these kids, these 7th and 8th graders had to pick a buddy. And both of the buddies had to graduate for either of them to get the $500. It was called the Buddy Program. Ingenious. Right, because they had accountability now. If they dropped out, their buddy would lose the $500 too. So they kept each other in school. Genius. I love that because it illustrates a few different things about Dolly. It illustrates how much she valued education and helping others. But it also illustrates how intelligent she was and how her form of genius directly led to many of the successes she experienced in her life. And, afterthought, it illustrates her deep understanding of how important maintaining positive relationships with other people were.
In 1995 Dolly started her Imagination Library which is probably one of her most impactful philanthropic acts. If you’ve given birth in the United States since 1995 then you probably know about the Imagination Library. I have over a hundred Imagination Library books upstairs on a bookshelf in my son’s room right now. Free books, thanks to Dolly. When you sign up for this program, your child receives a free book in the mail every single month from birth until they turn 5 years old. That’s 60 books per kid. I have 2 kids so that’s something like 120 books, thanks to Dolly. You guys, as an educator, I cannot even begin to tell you how powerful and impactful that is. Not every family has the means to buy books. Not every family can get to the public library and then haul a huge stack of heavy books home every few weeks. Those of us who can take that access for granted. But for many people, for kids growing up in rural East Tennessee and other places like it, that access to reading does not exist, except for Dolly’s Imagination Library. It’s such a beautiful thing that has personally touched my life now for really the last 7 years. 120 free books. It’s incredible. Since she launched the Imagination Library in 1995, it has donated over 300 million books to children in the United States, and also Canada, the UK, Australia, and Ireland. More and more every single month. There are countless children who developed a love of reading they otherwise might not have without Dolly. On the topic of her philanthropy, she also donated $1 million in April of 2020 to help fund the Covid vaccine. April of 2020 is very very soon after the world shut down during the pandemic. Dolly wasted no time. She was just like here, and she cut them a check, no questions asked. She did that act of extreme generosity for literally everyone. Not for East Tennessee, not for children under 5 in English speaking countries, for literally the whole world, she did that.
Oh and, Dolly got roughly $10 million dollars in royalties when Whitney Houston’s rendition of her song “I Will Always Love You” hit it big. You know what she did with that $10 million? She bought and invested in a commercial office complex in order to revitalize a historically Black neighborhood in Nashville, referring to it as the quote “house that Whitney built.” I mean just what superstar celebrities are doing things like that today with their money? What are they doing with all their money? Just hoarding it all for themselves?
Dolly continued performing music well into her 70s. Her bio says quote - and this is a lot but I’m going to read it all to you because I think it’s important. I think it really illustrates how wildly talented and successful Dolly Parton was - it says quote “Dolly’s career in music is nothing short of legendary. Her distinctive voice, heartfelt lyrics, and charismatic stage presence endeared her to millions of fans worldwide and has for generations inspired the careers of countless artists of all genres. Dolly’s contributions to American culture were recognized in 2006 when she received a Kennedy Center Honor. She amassed 11 Grammy Awards and 54 nominations, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, 10 Country Music Association Awards, including Entertainer of the Year; five Academy of Country Music Awards, including a win for Entertainer of the Year; four People’s Choice Awards; and four American Music Awards. In 1999, Dolly was inducted into the coveted Country Music Hall of Fame. Her undeniable mark on Country music shaped the sounds and stories we hear today. In 2024, Billboard named Dolly the #1 Country Music Artist of All-Time.
In 2022, Dolly was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She followed the induction with the release of her album Rockstar. The album made history by reaching the biggest album debut sales week of her seven-decade career and earned her six #1s on the Billboard charts - Top Rock Albums, Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Country Albums, Top Album Sales, Top Current Album Sales, and Independent Albums. Dolly earned 29 RIAA-certified gold, platinum, and multi-platinum awards across her career, selling over 100 million albums worldwide. She had 26 songs reach #1 on the Billboard Country charts during her lifetime - a record for a female artist. Across her career Dolly saw her music top Billboard’s Hot 100, Country, Pop, Adult Contemporary, Bluegrass, Christian, Rock, and Dance charts,” end quote. She also has a musical that she wrote called “Dolly: A True Original Musical” that is set to debut on Broadway in December of this year. Something tells me it will be a hit.
As everyone probably knows at this point, Dolly passed away peacefully on August 25th at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. And that is when the world completely opened up about its unanimous love for Dolly Parton. I mean it just erupted with love for Dolly. But here’s the thing, when you look at Dolly Parton, the huge hair, the overdone makeup, the ridiculous outfits, the cosmetic surgeries she underwent, the whole look, the whole getup… it’s pretty ridiculous. Dolly looked ridiculous. And she knew that. And she owned that. She even said quote “I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes, I made ‘em up myself.” You know how it’s really hard to respond to a bully properly. Like, if you’re being bullied and you get all upset about it, you’re just giving the bully exactly what they wanted. You’re letting them win. But if you can somehow go along with it, if you can somehow make light of the whole situation, you stop the bully in their tracks. They don’t even know what to do with that. They back down. They go away. Heck, they even gain respect for you, come to admire you. That’s what Dolly Parton was a master at. Whatever the word for that thing is. Dolly summed it up perfectly herself in an interview with Barbara Walters when she said quote “Oh, I know they make fun of me, but all these years the people have thought the joke was on me, but it's actually on them. I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent. I'm sure of my love for life and that sort of thing. I am very content, I like the kind of person that I am. So, I can afford to piddle around and do-diddle around with makeup and clothes and stuff because I am secure with myself,” end quote. She also said, I like this one, she said quote “I’m not offended by the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb, and I’m not blonde either.” She had this remarkable way of rolling up really serious issues, heartbreak, and bullying, and these really deeply troubling problems into something very light hearted and palatable, something funny.
When we look at her first movie, 9 to 5, and she wrote the song for that movie “9 to 5.” That song became one of her biggest crossover hits, it was a pop song not a country song, and earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. It also won two Grammys. But look at what Dolly is really doing with that. She's a country singer. But now she's starring in a Hollywood movie. And she's writing a pop hit. And she's writing about working women. And she's doing it with humor. The song is catchy. It's fun. But underneath it is a pretty serious complaint about workplace inequality and the treatment of women. Dolly herself later talked about the song as part of her broader commitment to women's equality. And this became a pattern with Dolly. She would wrap serious ideas in something shiny. You'd be laughing. You'd be singing. You'd be watching the hair bounce around. And then suddenly you'd realize: Wait. She's actually talking about something serious here.
And it really points to how much Dolly was a walking contradiction. I don’t mean that she wasn’t authentic. She was very authentic. She was unapologetically Dolly. She even said quote “I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, as a writer, as a professional, as a human being. A rhinestone shines just as good as a diamond,” end quote. And she said quote “find out who you are and do it on purpose,” end quote. The biggest contradiction with Dolly is that she had this really silly, trivial air about her, right she seemed silly, she told jokes, she dressed up in ridiculous get ups, and yet she had this immense depth to her underneath that shiny facade. You know, underneath the enormous hair is an extremely disciplined person. Underneath the jokes is an extremely strategic person. Underneath the rhinestones is an extremely ambitious person. And underneath the sweetness is somebody who spent decades navigating an industry that was not particularly kind to women. Dolly came into country music at a time when women were expected to fit certain roles. And she pushed those boundaries hard. Her songs dealt with women's independence, sexuality, jealousy, economic hardship, work, marriage, motherhood and heartbreak. And she did it without abandoning the femininity that she actually liked. She didn't have to become masculine to become powerful. She didn't have to pretend she didn't care about appearance. She didn't have to stop wearing rhinestones. She somehow kept being Dolly while sort of covertly getting to the root of these really heavy issues without you even noticing it. And people loved her for it. They loved her authenticity. She looked completely fake but she was really and truly authentic.
And that’s where we get to this phenomenon that we all encountered across social media outlets on August 25th, this outpouring of love for Dolly from people of all walks of life, all political affiliations, just everyone. Dolly's ability to exist across political and cultural divides is fascinating. She has fans on basically every side of the political spectrum. She deliberately avoided turning herself into a partisan political figure. But that doesn't mean that she didn’t take positions. She supported Black Lives Matter. She supported transgender rights. She criticized North Carolina's "bathroom bill" when that whole dumpster fire was going down. And yet, she was not ostracized by those who disagreed with her on those issues, clearly. You guys, Fox News is one of my sources for this episode, okay. That says a lot. How did she manage this? Well, she consistently emphasized compassion, equality, and treating people decently. She didn’t approach these sensitive issues as: "Here is why you are a terrible person. You’re wrong about this and that. How could you be so mean and stupid and wrong.” She didn’t go about it like that. Her approach was more “we should all just be kind to one another. We should all just love one another.” Which sounds incredibly simple, but sometimes simple works. That is a sentiment that literally everyone can stand behind. And it’s, for some reason, it's an exceedingly rare sentiment.
But, I think what I love the very most about Dolly is that, even though she was like ridiculously successful in the entertainment industry, she never abandoned her roots. She never abandoned East Tennessee. She could have left. She could have moved to Hollywood. She could have spent her entire life in New York or even Nashville. But she kept coming home. Dollywood is in the Smoky Mountains. The Imagination Library began in Sevier County. She invested in local infrastructure. She supported education there. She helped with wildfire relief, donating $8 million to families affected by the 2016 wildfires in Gatlinburg and Sevier County Tennessee. I didn’t even mention that one earlier. And she turned her own story into part of the region's identity. There's something so unusual about a celebrity who becomes more connected to their hometown as they become more famous. Usually the opposite happens. But Dolly's success somehow made her more Appalachian rather than less.
She brought East Tennessee to Nashville. She brought Nashville to LA. She didn’t completely reinvent herself as her fame grew. She brought her past with her and it influenced her in big ways. I love this, especially as a lover of history because this is what we do with history. History isn’t gone because it happened in the past and we’ve moved on. We roll it up like a rug and we carry it with us, and it impacts our decisions on a daily basis, minute decisions that we make, the ways that we view the world, our perspective on things all of these come from our understanding of the past. We roll that rug back out and we stand on it. And if our understanding of the past is flawed, if it’s wrong, or if it’s missing altogether, that is going to affect literally who each and every one of us is, the decisions that we make, how we choose to behave, and how we choose to treat each other and to live our lives. It affects the very ground we stand on. Dolly brought her past with her, and she used it in each and every decision that she made and it strengthened her immeasurably. Dolly knew who she was because she never forgot where she came from. And because Dolly knew who she was, because she was so sure of herself, so confident, even in a world designed to tear her down, to tear down a powerful woman, to tear down a woman who dressed in an extreme almost hyperbolic femininity, as if to laugh in the face of the patriarchy, because this came from a place of genuine authenticity, a place of genuine love for everyone, genuine kindness and generosity, Dolly won the hearts of literally everyone. Dolly, girl, you queen, we will truly always love you.
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