Taylor Swift is honoring the late country music icon Dolly Parton.
Parton died Tuesday in Nashville at 80, her family announced. She died after a “brief battle with cancer,” her reps told People.
“A world without Dolly doesn’t feel possible, real, or right,” Swift began in a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter. “But because of the eternally generous way she spent her time on this earth and the countless lives she changed for the better, her legacy will be an everlasting one.”
“She was truly the gift that kept on giving. Dolly gave us someone to look up to while encouraging us to be who we are as individuals. Somehow she was able to give us her lessons about the world gently and honestly, simultaneously, and oftentimes hilariously,” Swift continued. “She managed to give the world the ultimate mystery and fantasy in some corners of her life, but to give full transparency in the ways that counted. Somehow she was true grace and true grit, all in one dazzling person. She possessed the softest heart when it came to the struggles of others, and a backbone of steel to defend her own self worth as an artist.”
She concluded, “Along with her other fans, I am so grateful for all of it. For the melodies and lyrics she wrote that thawed even the coldest hearts. For the millions of books she provided children all over the world so that they might fall in love with stories the way she did. For the tightropes she walked so that young girls like me could grow up dreaming of joining the circus too. Dolly, I’ll think of you each step of the way.”
