When Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Kacey Musgraves, Jennifer Nettles, and Reba McEntire came together to sing “I Will Always Love You” for Dolly Parton in 2016, the moment felt like much more than an all-star country performance. It was a celebration of a woman whose songwriting, voice, determination, and extraordinary career had influenced generations of artists.
The occasion was the 50th CMA Awards on November 2, 2016, when Dolly received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award. Before she accepted the honor, a remarkable group of country women gathered to celebrate her music. Jennifer Nettles and Pentatonix opened with “Jolene,” Reba followed with “9 to 5,” and Kacey Musgraves performed “Here You Come Again.” Then the tribute reached its emotional centerpiece: Carrie Underwood and Martina McBride began “I Will Always Love You,” before the other women joined them.
It was an extraordinary sight.
Five distinctive voices.
Five different careers.
Five artists from different moments in country music history standing together to honor the same songwriter.
And at the center of it all was Dolly.
The significance of “I Will Always Love You” made the performance even more powerful. Dolly wrote the song in 1973, during the difficult period when she was preparing to leave Porter Wagoner’s television show and establish herself as a solo artist. What began as a personal farewell eventually became one of the most enduring songs she ever wrote.
Dolly’s original recording became a country hit in 1974. Years later, Whitney Houston’s unforgettable version introduced the song to an entirely different generation, turning it into a worldwide phenomenon.
But on that CMA stage in 2016, the song returned to the country music community that had watched Dolly create it.
Carrie Underwood and Martina McBride brought tremendous vocal power to the opening of the performance. Both singers had built careers on emotional delivery and strong country voices, yet neither treated the song as an opportunity to outshine the others.
Instead, the performance gradually expanded.
Kacey Musgraves, Jennifer Nettles, and Reba McEntire joined them, transforming a solo composition into a collective expression of admiration. Their voices came together not as competitors, but as artists paying respect to someone whose work had helped shape the road they were traveling.
That distinction is important.
Dolly’s influence on women in country music cannot be measured simply by record sales or awards. Her career demonstrated that a woman could be a songwriter, singer, entertainer, businesswoman, actress, producer, and creative force while remaining unmistakably herself.
For many of the women standing on that stage, Dolly was not simply another country star.
She was part of the musical foundation beneath their own careers.
As the five voices blended on “I Will Always Love You,” Dolly watched from the audience. She was not performing her own song. She was listening to other artists take something she had written decades earlier and make it their own.
That reversal gave the moment an unusual tenderness.
For most of her career, Dolly had been the person giving songs to the world.
Now, the world was giving one of her songs back to her.
Reports from the evening described Dolly as deeply touched by the tribute. She later reflected on seeing the women sing her song and said the experience was extremely moving. She even joked that she was trying not to ruin her makeup.
That response was unmistakably Dolly.
Even in a deeply emotional moment, she found a way to bring humor into the room.
Reba captured the feeling of the night when she told Dolly, “Gosh dang it Dolly, we love you!” The words were simple, but they expressed what the entire tribute had been building toward.
This was not simply an awards-show performance.
It was a musical thank-you.
The artists were acknowledging the songs Dolly had written, but they were also acknowledging the doors she had helped open. “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” “Here You Come Again,” and “I Will Always Love You” represent different sides of Dolly’s remarkable catalog, from heartbreak and vulnerability to independence, humor, ambition, and unconditional love.
Bringing those songs together created a portrait of the songwriter herself.
And “I Will Always Love You” was perhaps the perfect song with which to close the musical tribute.
Its message is about parting with affection rather than bitterness. It is about recognizing what someone has meant to you and wishing them well even when circumstances change.
For an artist receiving a lifetime achievement award, those words carried an additional emotional layer.
Dolly had spent decades giving country music unforgettable songs.
Now, the women who had followed her were standing together and telling her, through her own words, how much those songs meant.
There was also something beautiful about the generational range represented on that stage.
Martina McBride and Reba McEntire represented established voices who had already become country institutions in their own right. Carrie Underwood and Jennifer Nettles represented another generation of artists who had carried traditional country influence into a new era. Kacey Musgraves, meanwhile, represented a younger songwriter whose own artistic identity had been shaped in part by the freedom Dolly had demonstrated throughout her career.
Different generations.
Different vocal personalities.
One songwriter.
One song.
And one unforgettable tribute.
The performance also reminded viewers that Dolly’s greatest legacy was never confined to a single decade. Her songs continued to move artists who had grown up listening to her, just as Dolly herself had once been inspired by the singers and songwriters who came before her.
That is how musical history survives.
One generation writes the songs.
The next generation learns them.
Then another generation finds its own meaning in them.
On that night in 2016, the women of country music were not simply singing “I Will Always Love You.”
They were standing inside Dolly Parton’s legacy.
And Dolly, watching from her seat, had the rare experience of hearing her own words returned to her by artists who deeply admired her.
The performance ended with the singers united around the song, creating a moment that felt intimate despite the enormous stage and television audience.
For a few minutes, awards, charts, careers, and decades seemed to disappear.
There was only the song.
There was Dolly.
And there were five remarkable women reminding her—and everyone watching—that the music she had created would continue to live long after the original moment had passed.
That is the true power of a great songwriter.
You may write a song in one room, during one chapter of your life, believing it belongs to a particular moment.
But decades later, someone else can sing it and discover something entirely new inside it.
That night, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Kacey Musgraves, Jennifer Nettles, and Reba McEntire did exactly that.
They took one of Dolly Parton’s most treasured songs and transformed it into a collective expression of love, gratitude, respect, and musical inheritance.
And as Dolly listened, the message seemed beautifully clear:
Her songs had not simply survived.
They had become part of other people’s lives.
And that may be one of the greatest honors any songwriter can ever receive.