Katy Perry, Kesha, Pitbull and Jon Batiste Pay Tribute to Dolly Parton on Stage, in Song: ‘She Was Kind to Everyone’

It’s a testament to the wide and deep impact that Dolly Parton had on the hearts and minds of her musical peers that just hours after news broke about the country legend’s death at 80 on Tuesday night (Aug. 25), artists ranging from Katy Perry to Pitbull, Jack White and Kesha and Jon Batiste took time out to tip their hats to the “Jolene” hitmaker from the stage and studio.

At Perry’s show in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, the singer acknowledged Parton’s passing on stage, telling her fans, “Dolly Parton was an icon … who defied the odds, ‘cause she had both big boobs, big brains and a big voice in one body. And on top of that, the biggest thing that she did was that she was constantly kind. She was kind to everyone. And it’s not always easy after you’re in the spotlight for decades, and decades, and decades. So I just wanna send a little love to Miss Dolly Parton.”

Perry then went on to encourage her fans to discover, or rediscover, Parton’s impressive catalog of hits, emphasizing that she was, at heart, one of the most accomplished songwriters of all time. “It’s where all songwriters — we learn how to write music is through a songwriter like her,” Perry said before cueing one of the first song she ever wrote herself in her 20s, the 2008 One of the Boys song “Thinking of You.”

Pianist Jon Batiste posted an emotional tribute to one of Parton’s most iconic hits, “I Will Always Love You,” performing the classic ballad on piano while wearing a black cowboy hat and blue jean overalls. Pitbull took time out from his show at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, N.Y. on Tuesday night, telling the crowd that while they were having fun he wanted to shout out someone that was, “very special to me and showed me love and believed in me when a lot of folks didn’t and gave me an opportunity.”

When he mentioned Parton, the audience went wild as Pit added, “She lived an amazing life, a hard-working woman … intelligent, sophisticated, funny, powerful, intimidating, but more than anything a good human being with a good heart.” After taking a swig from a Champagne bottle and toasting Parton, Mr. Worldwide shimmied along with his dancers to her iconic hit “9 to 5” as the screen behind him filled with a giant image of the unlikely musical duo smiling for a picture.

Parton teamed up with Pitbull in 2024 to record new vocals and a rap verse on his song “Powerful Women,” which sampled “9 to 5.”

Kesha had a personal connection to Parton through her mom, Pebe Sebert, also a songwriter. During her show at Pavilion Star Lake in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, Kesha performed Parton’s 1980 hit “Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle To You),” a country tune co-written by Sebert and Hugh Moffat. The song was a country chart hit for Joe Sun in 1978 and then again in 1980 on Parton’s Dolly, Dolly, Dolly album, with that version hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.

“I just want to say thank you for bringing me so much joy today, because earlier today, I’m sure many of y’all know that we lost Ms. Dolly Parton,” Kesha told the crowd as seen in a fan video. “We literally lost an angel. But through her art and through her kindness and through her love, she will live forever. And I want to talk about her a little bit. For those of you who don’t know, I come from a long lineage of songwriters and before I was born, my mom actually wrote a song for Dolly Parton. And that song bought us a house, like a roof. That song put me through school.”

The connection came full circle in 2017, when Kesha recorded a duet with Parton on “Old Flames” for her Rainbow album in the midst of the singer’s long-running court battle with former producer/label boss Dr. Luke. She reminded the crowd that she recorded that album “in the middle of a very scary litigation, and I was in the #MeToo movement, and having such a legendary woman do this song with me and stand beside me, it made me really feel like God was on my side,” she said. “And that’s how it feels working with Dolly Parton. So in honor of her incredible legacy and her beautiful life, I’d like to sing the song that my mom wrote for her.”

In addition, Jack White played a ferocious version of the oft-covered “Jolene” at London’s Eventim Apollo just hours after the news of her death broke. The Detroit rocker now based in Nashville posted a snippet of the performance on his Instagram after the show, beginning with the apt lyric: “Your beauty is beyond compare.” Earlier in the day, White shared a tribute to Parton via a 1965 photo of the legend with her classic towering beehive hairstyle and the two-word caption: “Instant Sainthood.”

Parton had mostly been out of the public eye for more than a year due to a series of unspecified health issues and died on Tuesday in Nashville at 80 following a “brief battle with cancer.”