Kacey Musgraves covered Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ at Madison Square Garden, paying emotional tribute to the late country icon
Grief has a way of turning a concert into a memorial, and at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Kacey Musgraves let it. Playing New York on September 1 as part of her Middle of Nowhere Tour, Musgraves paused the show to honor Dolly Parton with a cover of “9 to 5,” her latest and most poignant tribute to the country legend who died on August 25 at the age of 80. The moment came a week to the day after Parton’s passing, and Musgraves made no effort to hide how heavily it still weighed on her.
“I’m not over it, and I’m never gonna be over it,” she told the packed venue as images of Parton filled the screen above the stage. “The world definitely lost a light, and it’s hard for me to talk about. And I know how much Dolly meant to everybody also in this room.” It was a raw, unguarded address, the kind of communal mourning that only happens when an artist and an audience are grieving the same person at once.
A Week of Remembrance
The Madison Square Garden tribute was not a one-off. Musgraves has been weaving Parton’s memory through her tour in the days since the icon’s death. At her Boston show on August 28, she covered Parton’s 1977 country-pop crossover “Here You Come Again” and brought back her own Golden Hour ballad “Rainbow,” a song she had not been playing on this run, specifically to honor Parton. “She’s woven into the fabric of who we’ve always been, so it just feels extra sad,” Musgraves told that crowd.
Let’s all sing this together for her memory, OK?”
Her grief spilled onto social media in the immediate aftermath too. “Dolly. This really really hurts,” Musgraves wrote in one post, following it with, “The world feels a lot less sparkly all of a sudden.” In a third message, she found comfort in the idea of Parton reuniting with her husband Carl Dean, who died in March 2025. “So glad she’s with her Carl Dean,” Musgraves wrote. “No one talk to me today.” She also shared a selfie with the late “Jolene” singer on Instagram.
The Weight of “9 to 5”
There is history in Musgraves reaching for “9 to 5” specifically. She first performed the 1980 anthem back in 2022, during a “Kaceyoke” segment of her Star-Crossed: Unveiled Tour, when a longtime fan picked it from a short list of possible covers. What began as a playful karaoke moment has, in the wake of Parton’s death, taken on a far heavier resonance. The song’s message of working-class solidarity and women’s dignity has aged into something like a standard, and Parton herself understood its staying power.
“We’ve come a long way, but there’s going to always be a long ways to go for women, we’re still fighting for our rights, for equal pay, for equal work and all that,” Parton said on a radio show in 2022. “So I think it’s still relevant and people still love it.” That relevance is exactly why the song lands so hard now, sung by an artist who has spent her career carrying Parton’s torch of sharp writing and unapologetic femininity.
Musgraves has never been shy about that debt. At the 2019 Grammys, she called Parton “an earth angel” and credited her as a trailblazer. “She paved the way for a lot of us, especially in country music. We wouldn’t really be able to do what we do without her,” Musgraves said then. “She’s the first who had all of it together. The sex appeal, the brains, the humor, the songwriting, the outfits, the hair.”
Parton was laid to rest after a private funeral in Nashville attended only by immediate family on August 28. As Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere Tour continues through the fall, the tributes seem likely to continue too, one more artist making sure the light Parton left behind keeps shining.
