Songfacts®:

• Dolly Parton was well on her way to becoming a superstar by the time she released her eponymous 16th solo album in 1975. Her previous three releases landed in the top 10 of the Country Albums chart and yielded the #1 singles "Jolene," "I Will Always Love You," "Love Is Like A Butterfly," and "The Bargain Store." But she didn't feel nearly as confident in her spiritual life, which is reflected in "The Seeker," where she admits her shortcomings and asks God for guidance.
  
  The song, however, isn't necessarily a religious one. "This song is for those people who are struggling for some kind of truth," Dolly explained in her 2020 book, Songteller. "It could even be about people who are not religious. People look for whatever that meaning of life is, whether you call it science or whether you call it 'higher knowing,' or whether it's just seeking that better part of you. As for me, it came to me at a time when I was going through a lot. I felt like I wasn't being as good a Christian as I should have been. Not that I have ever been, but I believe that I do my best."
• Although she's described the tune as a talk with God, she never explicitly mentions God or Jesus in the lyrics. She never realized the omission until someone brought it up to her years later. "That's when I thought that it really is for everybody," she noted in Songteller. "I think it was God's will for me to write that song."
• This peaked at #2 on the Country chart. It was held off of the top spot by Freddy Fender's "Wasted Days And Wasted Nights."
• Dolly re-recorded this for her 1995 album, Something Special.
• Nelly Furtado covered this for the 2011 movie The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom. In the coming-of-age film, a young girl (Julia Sarah Stone) discovers she was adopted and fantasizes about the singer being her birth mom.
• Merle Haggard recorded this for his 1976 album It's All In The Movies.