Kacey Musgraves Honours Dolly Parton With Two-Song Tribute in Boston
Kacey Musgraves paid tribute to Dolly Parton with a two-song set during her Friday night concert at TD Garden in Boston, days after Parton's death on Monday at the age of 80.
The country artist opened the tribute with "Rainbow," a ballad she had not performed at any previous stop on her Middle of Nowhere Tour. She told the crowd that Parton was the inspiration behind the track, according to Rolling Stone. She then covered "Here You Come Again," Parton's 1977 single that marked her crossover from country to pop.
The pairing was not random. At the 2019 Grammy Awards, Musgraves performed "Rainbow" before being joined onstage by Parton and Katy Perry for a group rendition of "Here You Come Again." Musgraves and Perry had also performed the Parton song together that same weekend at the MusiCares tribute honouring Parton. Recreating that sequence in Boston gave the tribute a specific history rather than a generic farewell.
Following Parton's death, Musgraves wrote on social media: "The world feels a lot less sparkly all of a sudden. Dolly. This really really hurts. So glad she's with her Carl Dean." Parton's husband, Carl Dean, had died earlier in 2026.
The Boston concert was part of Musgraves' ongoing Middle of Nowhere Tour, which had not previously included "Rainbow" in its setlist. Bringing it back for this stop gave the performance an added weight for fans who knew the song's connection to Parton and the 2019 Grammy moment. Consequence confirmed the tribute as a two-song set.
Parton's death at 80 prompted an outpouring across the music industry, but Musgraves' tribute carried a particular thread: a direct artistic lineage, acknowledged onstage and in writing, from one country-to-pop crossover artist to another.
