Stella Parton's 'Stand By Me' Honors Late Brother Floyd Parton
It’s been seven years since Stella Parton felt musical inspiration strike, her last album being 2018’s Survivor—but the last few years have taken their toll, and there was no better way to process what she was going through and honor the folks she lost than in the studio. The sister of Dolly Parton, Stella has carved out her own path in the arts, but her family is an integral part of who she is. In the last few years, she had to say goodbye to her brothers David, Randy and Floyd Parton.
One of 12 siblings, Stella shares a unique bond with all of them, but saying goodbye to Floyd was a tough moment for her, and her recent cover of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” was her way of honoring and remembering him. Now, as she prepares to release new music in the coming year, Stella opened up to Woman’s World about what inspired her, paying homage to Floyd and what’s next.
Stella Parton’s cover of ‘Stand By Me’ is a touching tribute
Always one to keep busy, when several years had gone by and Stella had yet to release any new music, the people closest to her began to worry—but it was a lack of inspiration that ultimately kept her away from the studio.
“I had a friend say, ‘Stella, if you’ll get back in the studio, I’ll pick some songs that I’d like you to start with, and let’s see if we can get you back in the studio and get you started again.’” Stella was down for the challenge.
“So I went into the studio and cut a couple of things, and I thought, ‘Well, I guess I’m still singing,’ because I really hadn’t croaked a note in seven years. I thought, ‘My voice is still here, I guess I can sing, and I can still hear, so let me just get started,’” she explained to Woman’s World. “I started working in this studio with this incredible engineer, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m just going to go ahead and keep singing.’ And before I knew it, I had a full album of all cover songs.”
Through this process, she landed on “Stand By Me,” and its heartfelt lyrics felt like the right way to her brother, Floyd Parton, who passed away in 2018.
“I had recorded ‘Stand By Me’ because I’d always loved that song, and my little brother Floyd was always there for me when I was raising my son, and I had helped raise him because he was seven years younger than me. As a child in my home—a girl—he was kind of handed to me to be responsible for when he was born, and so we were extremely close.”
She continued, “I didn’t want it to be like a mournful thing; I wanted to be more like a declaration, saying, ‘I’ll stand by you.’ And we need to stand up for ourselves, for our country, for our families, for our friends, people that matter to us. We need to be able to stand up and stand by people that mean something to us.”
New music is on the way for this Parton
Though no specific release date has been revealed, Stella shared that her upcoming project will be titled Nostalgia and feature a handful of exciting covers with the same appeal as her “Stand By Me” rendition.
“I was shocked that they would want me to do certain songs, but I did them anyway, and I thought, ‘Well, hey, that turned out okay,’” she shared. “I was surprised by some of the songs that they turned out as well as they did, and it made me kind of proud of myself. I thought, ‘Stella, you still got your chops. No one ever notices, but you do have chops. You can sing pop, you can sing rock, you can sing blues, you can sing R&B,’ and all of that is on this project.”
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This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 3:30 PM.