OK so I'm going to write this one a little quieter than usual, because the news deserves it. Dolly Parton, the singer, the songwriter, the actress, the human sparkle, has died at 80. Reuters reported the news on Tuesday, and I think it's fair to say the whole world exhaled at the same time.

Eighty years. And she packed about four lifetimes into them.

You know the songs. "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" and "9 to 5," a career that ran from country music all the way through Hollywood and back again, across more decades than most performers even get to attempt. She did it in rhinestones. She did it in heels. She did it while being funnier than almost every comedian who interviewed her, and she was writing the songs too, which is the part people sometimes forget. Every one of those songs came from her.

But there's one part I keep coming back to, the part that fits this little corner of the internet I get to write for: Dolly might be the greatest example in modern history of joy as a deliberate act. People made jokes about her look for fifty years and she was always, always in on it. Nobody ever got the better of her in an interview, because she was having more fun than anybody in the room, and she was doing it on her own terms, in her own sequins, for her entire career.

And I want this on the record. Read any story from anyone who ever met her. Crew members, waitresses, other singers who should've been her rivals. Nobody has a bad Dolly story. Nobody. In an entire lifetime in show business. That might be the most impressive record she broke.

She glittered like a disco ball and wrote lyrics that could break your heart in a single line. She never pretended to be anything other than exactly what she was, and the world loved her for it, and kept loving her for it, decade after decade after decade.

My feed is already full of people sharing their Dolly moments, the concerts, the lyrics that got them through something, the impressions, the jokes she told that people are reposting tonight. That feels right. That feels like the only memorial she'd actually want: everybody telling stories, playing the records, being a little louder and a little kinder than usual.

So put on "Jolene" today. Or "Coat of Many Colors," if you want to cry. She gave us more than enough songs for every mood, and she'd want the music on.

Rest well, Dolly. Thanks for everything.