Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late, great Dolly Parton, whose workers anthem “9 to 5” reached No. 1 in February 1981.
Dolly Parton was well on her way to becoming a crossover superstar when the movie 9 to 5 was released in December 1980. She had reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1978 with “Here You Come Again,” a winsome pop song written by the great team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. But 9 to 5 took her to another level. She more than held her own with two superstars, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. She was great in her role as Doralee Rhodes, a secretary who is perennially harassed by her boss from hell, Frank Hart (played by Dabney Coleman).
But her biggest contribution to the film may have been writing and performing its letter-perfect title song. It was one of the biggest and best hits that Parton, who died on Tuesday (Aug. 26) at age 80, ever had.
The song suits the film perfectly – it’s uptempo, which is ideal for a comedy. It distills and advances the film’s central theme – how workers are often taken advantage of in the workplace. (Both the film and the song owe their titles to 9to5, an organization founded in 1973 to bring about fair pay and equal treatment for women in the workplace.) But the song is more nuanced than, say, Johnny Paycheck’s recording of David Allan Coe’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” another country crossover hit that reached No. 1 on Hot Country Songs in January 1978.
