Kacey Musgraves dedicated her emotional Golden Hour ballad “Rainbow,” as well as a cover of “Here You Come Again,” to Dolly Parton in Boston on Friday (Aug. 28).
Musgraves, who’s on tour in support of her Middle of Nowhere album, took a moment on the TD Garden stage Friday to point out it’s not just Parton’s Grammys, or countless other career accolades, that people are talking about in the wake of the country trailblazer’s death.
“It’s what a humanitarian [she was],” Musgraves said. “Someone always looking out for someone else, looking out for the underdog, even when it probably wasn’t easy, even when it didn’t benefit her career. We can all learn a lot from someone like that.”
“She’s woven into the fabric of who we’ve always been, so it just feels extra sad. Let’s all sing this together for her memory, OK?” she suggested, leading the arena crowd in a sweet sing-along of “Rainbow,” the closing track from Musgraves’ Grammy Award-winning 2018 album, Golden Hour.
Photos of Parton, who passed away on Aug. 25 after a brief battle with cancer, were displayed on the big screen behind Musgraves as the room paid tribute to her, singing, “There’s always been a rainbow hangin’ over your head.”
The next song on Musgraves’ set list at Friday’s show was a performance of “Here You Come Again,” off of Parton’s 1977 studio album of the same name.
“Here You Come Again” was Parton’s earliest pop crossover hit, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. In fact, just two other recordings from Dolly have topped its success on the all-genre ranking: “9 to 5” and her Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream,” which both became Hot 100 No. 1s in the early 1980s. Though Parton was a prolific songwriter, “Here You Come Again” was penned by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Musgraves’ song choice is a callback to when she performed “Here You Come Again” alongside Parton in 2019, during a special segment featuring a medley of Parton’s hits at the Grammys. That year, she also sang the tune in Parton’s honor — as a duet with pop star Katy Perry, in a reprise of their CMT Crossroads performance several years prior — at the MusiCares Person of the Year gala.
“She’s an earth angel,” she said in a red carpet interview at the 2019 Grammys. “She really is. She’s so cool. She’s so present. What I like about her is she has a keen attention to detail, and that’s obviously why she’s had such a long, amazing career. She really cares about those things, she can put her stamp on things without apology … She paved the way for a lot of us, especially in country music. We wouldn’t really be able to do what we do without her. She’s the first who had all of it together. The sex appeal, the brains, the humor, the songwriting, the outfits, the hair.”
Watch the clips Musgraves shared from her Friday night show in Boston below.
