The Song in an ‘SNL’ Sketch That Became A Big Hit for Dolly Parton

Michael O’Donoghue’s second go-around as a writer for Saturday Night Live didn’t go as well as the first. Brought back after Lorne Michaels and the original cast headed out for parts unknown, O’Donoghue, the show’s new head writer, wanted to give it a flaming Viking funeral. In other words, “he wanted to destroy the show,” explained Tim Kazurinsky in the SNL oral history Live From New York. 

One reason O’Donoghue believed the show should die, according to Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O’Donoghue: He thought the cast was horrible. He particularly hated Kazurinsky for his relatively tame, unassuming style (O’Donoghue believed Kazurinsky’s Second City was well past its prime) and deemed most of the cast “losers” and “shit.” There were only two performers O’Donoghue liked — Eddie Murphy, for obvious reasons, and Christine Ebersole.

Ebersole is more of a puzzle. She had no sketch comedy background when she arrived at SNL as a veteran of Broadway musical comedy. She created no memorable recurring characters and her short tenure as a Weekend Update co-anchor was, by her own admission, unremarkable. O’Donoghue, however, found himself drawn to her musical talents, which is the only explanation for a 1981 segment (can we even call it a sketch?) in which Ebersole sang O’Donoghue’s original song, “Single Women.”

The segment is unlikely for many reasons. There’s not a punchline to be found, for example — just a showcase for Ebersole’s impressive pipes. Then there’s O’Donoghue’s tune, a straightforward torch song about a lonely woman looking for love in a singles bar. Had the Dark Prince of SNL gone sincere when we weren’t looking? By all rights, “Single Women” should have been a quirky footnote in a lost SNL season. But the song refused to die. 

Dolly Parton decided to record a honky-tonk version of “Single Women” the following year, and it somehow became one of her biggest hits, reaching #8 on the country music charts. In fact, O’Donoghue shows up on at least three of Parton’s hits compilations, including The Essential Dolly Parton, Greatest Hits and Legendary Dolly Parton.

Then things got even weirder. The next year, ABC turned the song into a made-for-TV movie starring Tony Danza and Shelley Hack. The movie was produced by O’Donoghue himself, even though it looks exactly like the kind of melodramatic crap he would have lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Its promotional tagline? “Come right in. Find a lover. A friend. Or both. For an evening. Or forever... in a place where fantasies come true.”

The final legacy of “Single Women”? Its success gave O’Donoghue an unlikely side hustle, penning country-western songs for Nashville musicians. None of his subsequent work, however, reached the heights of the throwaway song for Saturday Night Live.