(NewsNation) — Dolly Parton has been belting out No. 1 hits for 53 years. Her first — “Joshua” — hit the top of the charts back in 1971. She now has the most No. 1 singles by a female on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart overall at 25.
Parton’s latest hit, however, may come 23 years from now. In a visit to “The Kelly Clarkson Show” Tuesday, the country icon disclosed that she recorded a “secret song” in 2015 that won’t be unearthed for more than two decades.
“I have written a song that no one is going to hear until I am 99 years old. I might be there, I might not be,” Parton told Clarkson. “You have no idea how that has bothered me. I want to go dig that up so bad. … It’s a really good song!”
Parton is 76. Her “dream box” — which is encapsulated at her Dollywood resort in Tennessee — is set to be opened in the year 2045.
“But I had to write a song that nobody would hear until then. I tell you, you have no idea how that has bothered me,” she said.
Parton put other items in the box along with the secret song on a CD, but says those items speak to the times when she made the dream box. She admits she’s a little worried that the time capsule won’t hold up until 2045.
“There is a song. I figure it would probably disintegrate. Probably nobody’s ever going to hear it. That’s the part that bothers me — that there is a song that no one is ever going to hear, and it rots in there before anyone is going to open it,” she said.
“But yes, I have a song that is buried that nobody is going to hear until … I don’t know whose dumb idea that was.”
Parton is known for some of country music’s biggest hits, including “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5” and her top-grossing song, “Jolene.”