Dolly Parton's Sister Stella Was Inspired To Return To Music For This Heartbreaking Reason

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When asked to name a singing Parton sister, Dolly Parton might be the first and only name that comes to mind for many people. However, the "9 to 5" singer has 11 siblings, and her younger sister Stella Parton followed Dolly into music. Before 2026, it had been seven years since Stella released anything new. She told People that June that the heartbreaking reason she stopped — the deaths of three brothers and a niece — was similar to the reason she was inspired to create music again.

"It's a soul connection," Stella told People of her relationship with her siblings. "So this whole thing was kind of like emotional paralysis for me in a strange sort of way. Grief has really been a writer's block for me." Dolly, Stella, and their families have lived through a lot of tragedy. After a friend encouraged Stella to try her hand at cover songs until she was ready to make her own music once more, she covered Ben E. King's classic "Stand by Me." Stella told People the song described her relationship with her younger brother Floyd, who passed away in 2018.

The "I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight" singer explained that she was like a parent to Floyd and then he was always there for her while she was raising her son. "I always like to say that I knew of all my siblings, Floyd would be the one that would come and help me hide the body. And he knew that I would do the same for him." That is "Stand By Me" in action.

Floyd Parton isn't the only sibling that has inspired Stella Parton to sing. She and her older sister Dolly Parton released a duet that they co-wrote, "More Power to Ya," in 2016. "We'll always say that to each other if we got a new project or something," Stella said, explaining the title and inspiration for the song to the Australian outlet Studio 10. Although it has improved as they've gotten older, the Parton sisters have a complicated relationship that had more bumps in the road than natural sibling bickering.

After Dolly, Stella is the most famous Parton child, a fact that Dolly and other family members resented. They didn't always support her music career. In her memoir "Tell It Sister, Tell It: Memories, Music and Miracles," she wrote that an uncle who was Dolly's manager discouraged her from pursuing a music career and Dolly didn't stand up for her. "Well Stella, if you are going to sing then you need to change your name," Stella recalled Dolly saying in the book, via the Daily Mail.

Stella and Dolly have a good relationship these days and have endured a lot of grief together. They lost their brother Larry when he was a baby, Floyd in 2018, their brother Randy in 2021, and their brother David in 2024. Their niece, Randy's daughter Tever, died in 2017. Stella explained how they cope to People in June 2026. "We just have to laugh and laugh at ourselves as much as we laugh at everybody else, because if you take it too serious, you can't carry the load," she said.