9 To 5

Parton wrote this for the 1980 film of the same name. The film, which was Parton's acting debut, stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Parton, and Dabney Coleman and deals with life in an American office, where the workday was 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. She wrote the song while the movie was filming. In a 2009 interview with 60 Minutes, Parton talked about the unlikely inspiration for this song: her fingernails. She had very long, acrylic nails, and discovered that when she rubbed them together she could create a rhythm that sounded like a typewriter, and since the movie was about secretaries, she was able to use that sound to compose the song on the set. She even played her fingernails as part of the percussion sound when she recorded the track.

Both the film and the song "9 to 5" exposed gender inequity in the workplace. It was done for laughs, which was the only way it could reach a mass audience, but still made a strong statement, with three female leads taking on their stereotypically disparaging boss. The song has a jaunty tone that fits the movie, but the lyrics ring true for many women: They just use your mind and they never give you credit It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it Parton was more than qualified to write these lines, having conquered the male-dominated world of country music with extraordinary tact and ambition. "9 to 5" didn't start any kind of movement, but did push the issue forward. When the #metoo uprising took shape, it became a touchstone to measure progress - women were still earning considerably less than men and dealing with an often criminal level of disrespect. In 2018, punk rock forebears Alice Bag, Kathleen Hanna and Allison Wolfe teamed up to re-create scenes from the movie for the video to "77," a song that refers to women earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

This was a huge crossover hit for Parton, who expanded her audience to the world of mainstream pop. Years later, many country music artists, especially female singers like Faith Hill and Shania Twain, followed Parton's lead and made headway on the pop charts.