Dolly Parton left bed rest to record her final song in June, two months before her death, U2’s Bono revealed.
The late country music icon, who died on Aug. 25 at age 80, gave her final vocal performance for the track “Torn,” off the band’s upcoming “Carnaval De Luz” album.
The record will come out on Nov. 19 — and Bono, 66, told Rolling Stone on Thursday that he “can’t even listen” to Parton’s part since her passing.
“When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song,” the U2 frontman shared with the outlet. “And you can hear that.”
“She sang her heart out,” he gushed, “and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.”
Bono noted that he wanted to collaborate with the “9 to 5” hitmaker on the entire album, but she dubbed it “a little too Irish” for her.
“But,” he recalled, “she said, ‘I got this song. It’s called ‘Torn,’ and do you wanna see where you can take it somewhere else, maybe?’”
Bono explained how “very moving” it was “to have had these intimacies with such a figure,” saying, “The fact that they’re not there now, in any way you can call back, other than through her songs, is very sobering.”
Parton, notably, listened to the song before losing her battle to cancer and “loved” the final mix, per producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee.
“She was so proud of her vocal and the recording,” Lee said Thursday. “She was thrilled with it. We were very nervous that she might not approve, or would be uncomfortable with it, but she loved it.”
The song, co-written by Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, was described in a press release as “a tender country song detailing broken family ties that holds wider resonances.”
“Torn” will not be the first posthumous song of Parton’s to drop since her death as her “Bound to Ride” cover came out earlier this month.
The track was recorded in 2022 as part of the all-star tribute album, “Where the Soul Never Dies: Celebrating 80 Years of the Stanley Brothers.”
Additionally, Parton put a never-before-heard song in a vault at her Dollywood Theme Park, which will come out in 2045 after she was “dead and gone,” the actress predicted in 2022.
“I won’t be around to hear it,” she predicted on the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” — before quipping she “might still be hoppin’ around” at 99.
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