For those missing Dolly Parton (and there are many), the country great’s final recording may feel like a revelation.
On Friday, U2 released their 16th studio album, Carnaval de Luz, which saves the best for last: “Torn,” a duet between frontman Bono and Parton. The singer, who died in August at age 80, recorded her part in June, and shares writing credits for the song with the band and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid. ”When she got ill,” Bono told Rolling Stone for their September cover story, “she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now.”
The song opens with faint voices the the background over a steady heartbeat and soon, Parton’s distinct vibrato fills every lyric. At first, a story about someone deciding between over two lovers appears to be unfolding, until the chorus with Bono reveals a broader division: “Torn apart these loving hearts that beat and break the same/We share a house divided and the blood that fills our veins.”
Bono initially pursued Parton for a still-in-progress Irish-roots side project and while he played her a few sketches over the phone, he recalled her replying, “That’s a little too Irish.” Bono said she eventually sent her a song of her own, titled “Torn.”
While Parton originally wrote it around tale of a woman trying to choose between two men, Bono and McDaid rewrote the lyrics around a mother watching her family split apart. “You name the location,” Bono said when discussing the tensions the song evokes, “but everyone knows what it is … People say in the U.S. now, people are scared to go into Thanksgiving.”
Parton agreed to sing the new version. “She sang her heart out,” said Bono, “and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.” Longtime U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois added pedal steel on the track, and Larry Mullen Jr. completed it with a drum part inspired by a Lanois production, Bob Dylan’s “Most of the Time.”
Parton approved the final mix and “loved it,” said the album’s producer, Garret “Jacknife” Lee. He added, “She was so proud of her vocal and the recording.”
The Edge told Rolling Stone that he sees Parton embodying “the radical center, which is becoming like a no-man’s-land right now … We have aspirations in that area ourselves, but things have got so polarized, it’s very, very hard to not be taken down by both sides … But she managed to get accepted by both sides and beloved by everyone. That’s an amazing thing. And she did it, as Bono pointed out today, with humor. Humor was her secret weapon. And no tyrant has a defense against humor, turns out.”
