RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Billboard — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 1 sourcesForever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late, great Dolly Parton, whose workers anthem “9 to 5” reached No. 1 in February 1981.
Related
Dolly Parton, One of Country Music’s Biggest & Brightest Icons, Dies at 80
Dolly Parton’s 25 Best Songs: Critics’ Picks
Dolly Parton’s Half-Century Hot 100 Legacy: ‘9 to 5,’ ‘Islands in the Stream’ & More
Dolly Parton was well on her way to becoming a crossover superstar when the movie 9 to 5 was released in December 1980. She had reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1978 with “Here You Come Again,” a winsome pop song written by the great team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil . But 9 to 5 took her to another level. She more than held her own with two superstars, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin . She was great in her role as Doralee Rhodes, a secretary who is perennially harassed by her boss from hell, Frank Hart (played by Dabney Coleman ).
But her biggest contribution to the film may have been writing and performing its letter-perfect title song. It was one of the biggest and best hits that Parton, who died on Tuesday (Aug. 26) at age 80, ever had.
The song suits the film perfectly – it’s uptempo, which is ideal for a comedy. It distills and advances the film’s central theme – how workers are often taken advantage of in the workplace. (Both the film and the song owe their titles to 9to5, an organization founded in 1973 to bring about fair pay and equal treatment for women in the workplace.) But the song is more nuanced than, say, Johnny Paycheck’s recording of David Allan Coe’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” another country crossover hit that reached No. 1 on Hot Country Songs in January 1978.
Parton wisely opened the song with a verse that is completely universal about worklife, saving more specific complaints for later. She opens with clever rhymes and witty wordplay: “Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen/ Pour myself a cup of ambition/ And yawn and stretch and try to come to life.”
In the chorus, she begins the litany of complaints: “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’/ Barely getting by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’/ They just use your mind and they never give you credit…” But the very next line contains a glimmer of hope: “It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.” The clear implication: don’t let it. (Parton also lays in hopeful messages in the second verse: “But you’ve got dreams he’ll never take away/ In the same boat with a lot of your friends/ Waitin’ for the day your ship’ll come in/ And the tide’s gonna turn an’ it’s all gonna roll your way.”)
The song mixes blunt talk that almost makes Parton sound like a union organizer (“It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it/ And you spend your life puttin’ money in his wallet”) with glimmers of the hope and optimism that were at the core of who Parton was as a person. On paper, the lyrics read as borderline-angry in spots, but Parton doesn’t sing it that way. Her charm and warmth, her audible smile, all soften the impact of her words.
It was Fonda’s idea to cast Parton in the film, and the role was written with her in mind. Parton wrote the song on the set of the film. She has often explained that she devised the clacking typewriter rhythm by running her acrylic fingernails back and forth against each other.
In the 2019 BBC documentary Dolly Parton: Here I Am, Fonda explained how the casting came together in early 1978. “I was driving home from having just seen Lily Tomlin for the first time in her one-woman show called Appearing Nitely , and I was totally smitten by Lily. … I turn on the radio. [Parton’s] ‘Two Doors Down’ is playing, and I suddenly get an image of Dolly Parton sitting at a typewriter, and I thought that would be something – Dolly Parton in her first movie playing a secretary in a movie that, among many other things, is going to touch upon sexual harassment. She’s perfect.”
In that doc, Parton said that she pushed to write the title song. “When Jane came to me with it, I said, ‘Well, this is a good opportunity, but I will only do it if I can write the theme song.’ So they said, ‘Okay.’”
Fonda and Tomlin knew the song was a home run the moment they heard it. Fonda remembered “the morning that Dolly came to work and motioned us over, and just outside the set, she said, ‘I’ve just written the song, and she used her long nails as a washboard, and she sang ‘9 to 5.’ And Lily and I looked at each other, and we had goosebumps.”
Tomlin added: “[We] were just flabbergasted. We thought it was so great. I said to Jane, ‘This will make the movie a hit, if nothing else.’ And we knew this is not just a movie song. This is an anthem.”
Gregg Perry, Parton’s long-time musical director and occasional producer, produced Parton’s single. The track featured such pros as guitarist Jeff Baxter, pianist Larry Knechtel and trumpeter Jerry Hey. Joey Scarbury, who would land a No. 2 Hot 100 hit in August 1981 with “Theme From Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not),” was among the backup singers.
The song entered the Hot 100 at No. 73 in the week ending Nov. 29, 1980. It was the week’s second-highest debut, behind Steely Dan ’s “Hey Nineteen.” In the week ending Feb. 14, 1981, the song jumped from No. 4 to No. 2, becoming Parton’s highest-charting hit to that point. The following week, it hit No. 1, bumping off Kool & the Gang ’s “Celebration.”
After one week on top, it was in turn displaced by Eddie Rabbitt ’s “I Love a Rainy Night.” Rabbitt’s song was No. 1 for two weeks, before “9 to 5” regained the top spot in the week ending March 14, 1981. After those two nonconsecutive weeks on top...
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.