As America Observes Dolly Day, a Look at The Enduring Qualities of ‘9 To 5’
Categoria: Musica
“What this [songwriting] job is, it’s empathy,” says Steve Earle. “A song like ‘9 to 5’ is sort of the ultimate statement of that."
Por Billboard | 25/09/2026
Ella Langley set a record with her 23rd week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Choosin’ Texas,” a song that — because of the fragmentation in modern formats — is still unknown to a fair amount of music fans. Dolly Parton , by contrast, got just one week at the top on the pop list in 1981 with “9 to 5,” and just about everyone knew it. Inside and out. Related Today Is Dolly Parton Day – It’s 9/25 Bono Says Dolly Parton ‘Sang Her Heart Out’ for Her Final Recording With U2 Kacey Musgraves to Perform on 2026 VMAs in Tribute to Dolly Parton Forty-five years later, in the wake of Parton’s death on Aug. 25, much of America is celebrating Dolly Day on Sept. 25 — not because it marks one month since her passing, but because Sept. 25 is represented numerically as 9/25. Or “9 to 5.” It may not be recognized as her greatest song, but that’s just because her catalog is so competitive that “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” or “I Will Always Love You” tend to beat it when analysts consider such things. But when it became the theme song of the movie that first put her on the big screen — alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin — “9 to 5” finished the job that she’d started with “Here You Come Again,” broadening her to the audience beyond country music. “A lot of people learned about Dolly because it crossed genres and they saw the movie — an audience that would have never known her before,” Nashville Songwriters Association International executive director Bart Herbison said on the red carpet before the Nashville Songwriter Awards on Sept. 22. “Not everybody can write for a project,” he added, “but Dolly — she nailed it.” Literally. As Parton recalled hundreds of times, she started “9 to 5” on the movie set, brushing the fingernails on one hand across the nails on the other to create a rhythmic backdrop as she formed the words and music in her head. The movie cast her as a secretary, Doralee, whose sexist boss isolated her socially in the office by claiming falsely to the rest of the staff that he was having an affair with her. Believing that lie, her co-workers wanted nothing to do with her. For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, trust that Parton’s character — mirroring Parton’s real-life resilience — managed to overcome the situation, and the script developed into a hilarious tale of warranted retribution. “It was soft feminism,” said attorney Stacey Schlitz , widow of songwriter Don Schlitz (“The Gambler,” “Forever and Ever, Amen”). “In some circles, you know, feminist is a bad word. But Dolly made it cool.” The movie might have been feminist. The song Parton wrote for it was not. Nearly every listener, regardless of gender, understood the lyric in her “9 to 5” portrait of the overworked and underappreciated employee: “You’re just a step on the bossman’s ladder.” Amusingly, Parton had become a boss herself by the time she wrote it, hiring band members, assistants and employees for her own relatively small office. But she was still