Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at the age of 80. Less than two months later, on the night of October 21, her voice filled the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University in Nashville one more time.
It happened during CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton, the two-hour tribute broadcast live on ABC and Disney+. Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Lainey Wilson and many others sang Dolly’s songs that night. Zac Brown did something different. He didn’t sing a Dolly Parton song. He sang the one they made together.
The song was “Butterfly.” Zac and his band played it live, and when the chorus arrived, Dolly’s original studio vocals came in beside him, just as they do on the record. Walls of flowers arranged into butterflies stood on both sides of the stage, a stand-in for the woman who couldn’t be there.
A Song He Wrote for His Kids
The strange part is that “Butterfly” was never meant for Dolly at all.
Zac Brown wrote it with Dan Auerbach and Sasha Sirota, and he has said it was the first song he ever wrote on the piano. He can play the instrument, but he had never really written on it. One day he sat down and tried, and what came out was a song for his children.
In a conversation with Dolly published by Interview magazine in December 2025, he explained what was on his mind. His kids had grown up somewhat protected at home, he said, and hadn’t yet seen what real struggle looks like. But it was coming, one by one, as they left the nest. The chorus is his message to them for those days: you are stronger than you think, and you can find your way out of the dark.
At the tribute, Zac told the audience the same thing in plain words. He wanted his kids to understand that even when life gets hard, staying true to who you are can carry you through, and you can come out stronger.
“Sing Whatever You Want”
When the song was finished, Zac sent it to Dolly. He didn’t hand her a part to learn. On the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast, he said his only instruction was to sing whatever she felt.
What she sent back stunned him.
She’s a ninja.
That was how he summed her up on the podcast, with a few saltier words around it. He told TODAY that summer that it had become a real duet, and called it a pinch-me moment.
Dolly, for her part, didn’t need convincing. Zac told Jason and Travis Kelce on the New Heights podcast in July 2025 that she had picked it out as the one she wanted, and warned him to keep it to themselves.
Don’t give that song to anybody else, honey.
And there was the title. Butterflies had been Dolly Parton’s symbol for most of her life. In that Interview conversation, she said she had always been chasing butterflies one way or another, so when she heard the song, she took it as her little cue.
“Butterfly” was released on September 5, 2025, with a video that opens with Zac at a piano and Dolly standing beside him. It later appeared on the Zac Brown Band album Love & Fear that December. It was the first duet Zac Brown and Dolly Parton ever recorded.
The First Time Without Her
The song’s concert debut didn’t come until just days after her death in August, during a pair of Zac Brown Band shows at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York.
That night, too, Zac sang it alongside her studio vocals, and he dedicated it to her from the stage.
There will never be another Dolly Parton.
So by the time he walked onto the stage in Nashville, he had already learned what it felt like to sing with a voice that was no longer in the room.
One More Time in Nashville
Before the band began at Belmont, Zac talked about how the song came to be. He admitted he hadn’t written it with Dolly in mind. But looking back at how it all fell into place, he told the crowd he didn’t believe in coincidences.
He said it meant the world to him to be there and to sing the song with her one more time.
In a pre-show interview with the CMA, he remembered dancing with Dolly while they filmed the video, twirling her around, and how kind and loving she was. After the performance, he summed up what she meant to him.
She was a national treasure and I’m just proud to have known her.
Even critics who were lukewarm on parts of the special singled out the moment. The reviewer at Saving Country Music admitted being surprised by how strong the performance was, while noting that hearing Dolly’s recorded voice only underlined how irreplaceable she was. Billboard wrote that her vocal made the performance all the more moving.
The night raised $1 million for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the free book program for children she started in 1995.
Zac Brown wrote “Butterfly” to tell his kids they could survive the hard days. On October 21, it ended up being the song that let a room full of people in Nashville hear Dolly Parton sing one last time with someone who loved her.
Have you heard “Butterfly” since Dolly passed? Does the chorus land differently for you now?