Music Notes & Nails: The Legacy of Dolly Parton

Did you know that Dolly Parton’s nails are credited in a working-class anthem for women?

​While filming 9 to 5, a film about worker solidarity between women at a toxic workplace, Dolly found she could use her long acrylic fingernails to simulate the sound of a typewriter. She wrote the film's theme song between takes on set by clicking her nails together to form the beat. "9 to 5" is a song that echoes working-class sentiments to this day. "It's a rich man's game no matter what they call it, and you spend your life puttin' money in his wallet," Dolly croons in the song.

Before she was a well-known country singer, Dolly recounted growing up “dirt poor”, with a working-class father who worked farming and construction jobs, a homemaker mother, and her siblings. She sang about her family’s poverty in some of her early songs.

Dolly was also one of the more iconic faces encouraging folks to get vaccinated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when nail salons were the first businesses to close and among the last to reopen. COVID-19 exacerbated the struggles and challenges faced by nail salon workers and owners, such as economic and health impacts. CHNSC supported the nail salon workforce with PPE distributions, educational outreach, and in-language resources about vaccinations and how they protect community health. Dolly took to social media to announce that she received the COVID-19 vaccine after donating $1 million to fund critical early stages of the development of the Moderna vaccine.