Dolly Parton recorded her final vocal performance for the melancholy country duet “Torn” with U2 just months before her death at age 80 from a swift, secret battle with cancer, huffingtonpost.fr reported.
The four-and-a-half-minute track serves as the closing song on the Irish rock band’s 16th studio album, Carnaval De Luz, released on Friday, November 13, according to justjared.com. Parton recorded her vocal parts in Nashville in June, leaving her sickbed to lay down the tracks while already seriously ill.
“And you can hear it.” “I can’t even listen to it now,” Bono told Rolling Stone in September, as cited by huffingtonpost.fr.
Co-written by Parton, U2, and Snow Patrol musician Johnny McDaid, “Torn” explores the pain of political and familial division, functioning as a metaphor for a fractured country, justjared.com noted. The song specifically tells the story of a mother caught between two estranged sons whose beliefs have torn their family apart.
While Bono and McDaid initially had American political divisions in mind while writing, they intended the narrative to resonate universally. The track features production by Jacknife Lee and pedal steel guitar from Daniel Lanois.
“Brothers turn to strangers and sons deny their name / Somebody loses either way and every heart is torn,” Bono and Parton sing on the track, as detailed by justjared.com.
The collaboration evolved away from early plans for Irish folk-inspired material after Parton rejected that specific musical direction. Bono recalled her telling him that the initial ideas were “a little too Irish for me,” according to The Irish Times report cited by justjared.com.
Parton instead offered an unfinished song she had composed about a romantic triangle. U2 rewrote the lyrics to focus on the mother and her divided family, and Parton agreed to lend her voice to the revised version.
Bono praised her physical resilience during the sessions, noting that her voice retained its grandeur despite her frailty. He recalled to The Irish Times that Parton had been sicker than she let on, yet still delivered “one of the greatest vocals in the history of vocals,” as reported by justjared.com.
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