Buckingham Palace Guards Play Dolly Parton's '9 to 5' in Tribute After Her Death
The band of the Coldstream Guards and Welsh Guards played Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" during the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, honoring the country music legend following her death at age 80. Parton died after a short illness, according to GB News.
The Changing of the Guard is the daily ceremony in which one detachment of the King's Guard formally replaces another outside the palace gates. It draws tourists year-round, but the music is what makes each performance distinct. The guard bands rotate through a repertoire that runs from military marches to pop covers — and on this Wednesday morning, a brass-and-drums arrangement of Parton's 1980 workplace anthem filled the courtyard.
Buckingham Palace shared video of the performance on its official Instagram account with a caption honoring Parton and her Imagination Library, the literacy program she founded in 1995 that has distributed more than 300 million free books to children worldwide, Town & Country reported. Queen Camilla's own foundation, the Queen's Reading Room, issued a separate statement praising Parton's philanthropy and three decades of work with the Imagination Library.
King Charles and Queen Camilla were not in London to hear it. They are spending the summer at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, part of the royal family's annual August-and-September stay at the 50,000-acre estate in Aberdeenshire. The palace carries on without them: guards still change, bands still play, and the public still gathers at the gates.
Parton had a handful of intersections with the British monarchy over the decades. In 1977, she performed at the Royal Variety Show in Glasgow — the annual charity performance attended by the sovereign — held that year in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, the 25th anniversary of her reign. Parton shared the bill with the Jackson 5. More recently, in 2023, during a trip to promote her album "Rockstar," Parton received an invitation to have tea with Catherine, Princess of Wales. Scheduling conflicts kept it from happening, Town & Country reported.
What gives the tribute its weight is the match between the performer and the institution. Parton built her career on songs about working people. The guard bands exist to serve the Crown. Hearing "9 to 5" — an anthem about underpaid, underappreciated labor — played by musicians in bearskin caps outside a 775-room palace is the kind of juxtaposition that needs no commentary to land.
The Queen's Reading Room tribute pointed to the thing the palace chose to highlight: not the songs alone, but the 300 million books. Camilla has made literacy her signature cause, and Parton's Imagination Library, mailing free books to children from birth through age five, occupies overlapping territory. The palace's decision to foreground that work over the music catalog says something about which legacy it wanted to amplify.
Parton was 80. ITV News London and WATE both confirmed the Wednesday performance. The palace's Instagram post remained public through the day.
