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Love Is Like a Butterfly

1974 studio album by Dolly Parton

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ2012455 ↗
Source-derived summary

Love Is Like a Butterfly is the fourteenth solo studio album by American entertainer Dolly Parton. It was released on September 16, 1974, by RCA Victor. The title track was the third consecutive single to reach number one on the U.S. country charts for Parton. For the few years before her pop chart success, "Butterfly" was considered Parton's signature song and was used as the theme song for her 1976 syndicated music series Dolly!. The album peaked at number seven on the country albums chart. The album was re-released on iTunes in March 2014 the same day as her 2014 album Blue Smoke was made available for pre-order.

Critical reception

In a positive review of the album, Billboard said, "Beginning with her beautiful hit single, Miss Parton sings a variety of songs which demonstrate her stature in this business. It's an outstanding album, full of great songs, most of which she wrote herself, and covering a great many subjects. Some are ballads, some up-tempo, and she handles everything with grace." The review noted "If I Could Cross Your Mind", "Gettin' Happy", and "Once Upon a Memory" as the best tracks on the album. The review concluded with a note to record dealers, saying that the album has "an outstanding cover, which merits prominent display."

Another positive review of the album from Cashbox said, "Whether with Porter or by herself the inimitable songbird Dolly Parton will have an avid following [in] whatever she chooses to do or whomever she chooses to sing with.

Editorial summary

“Love Is Like a Butterfly” enters the record as 1974 studio album by Dolly Parton. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Love, Like and Butterfly can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1974, 1976, 2014—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1974-09-16. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Love, Like and Butterfly.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Love Is Like a Butterfly” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Love, Like and Butterfly provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2012455. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1976 and 2014.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Love Is Like a Butterfly”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Love Is Like a Butterfly primary sources, Love Is Like a Butterfly archive and Love research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Love Is Like a Butterfly”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Love Is Like a Butterfly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.