For those who miss Dolly Parton (and there are many), the country great’s latest recording may feel like a revelation.
On Friday, U2 released their 16th studio album, Carnival of Luzwho saves the best for last: “Torn”, a duet between frontman Bono and Parton. The singer, who died in August at the age of 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 sick,” Bono said rolling stone for U2’s recent cover, “she got out of bed to sing this song. And you can hear it. And I can’t even listen to it now.”
The song opens with faint vocals in the background over a steady heartbeat, and soon, Parton’s distinct vibrato fills every lyric. At first, the story of someone deciding between more than two lovers seems to unfold, until the chorus with Bono reveals a wider division: “Torn apart these loving hearts that beat and break alike/We share a house divided and the blood that fills our veins/Brothers turn to strangers and sons deny their name.” In one verse, Parton sings: “Nothing hurts a mother more than a family at war.” »
Bono first pursued Parton for a still-ongoing Irish side project, and while he played her some sketches over the phone, he remembers her responding, “That’s a little too Irish.” Bono said she eventually sent in her own song, called “Torn.”
While Parton originally wrote it around the story of a woman trying to choose between two men, Bono and McDaid rewrote the lyrics around a mother watching her family fall apart. “You name the place,” Bono said of the tensions evoked by the song, “but everyone knows what it’s about… People say that in the United States now, people are afraid to go to Thanksgiving.”
Parton agreed to sing the new version. “She sang her heart out,” Bono said, “and I can’t believe she’s an 80-year-old woman.” Longtime U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois added pedal steel to the track, and Larry Mullen Jr. complemented 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 voice and the recording.”
The Edge said rolling stone that he sees Parton embodying “the radical center, which is becoming like a no-man’s land at the moment… We have aspirations in this area ourselves, but things have become so polarized that it’s very, very difficult not to be knocked down by both sides… But she has managed to be accepted by both sides and loved by all.” It’s an incredible thing. And she did it, as Bono pointed out today, with humor. Humor was his secret weapon. And no tyrant has any defense against humor, turns outside. »
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