U2 reveal Dolly Parton gave them old song to finish as theirs were ‘too Irish’

U2 have revealed their collaboration with Dolly Parton on the single Torn came about after she declared their songs were “too Irish” for her.

The Irish rock band and the late country music star worked together on the track, which appears on U2’s latest album, Carnaval De Luz.

The single was co-written by the band, Parton and Snow Patrol star Johnny McDaid.

It also became Parton’s last ever recording, with the singer dying in August at the age of 80 following a “brief battle with cancer”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Track Of My Years With Vernon Kay, the band’s frontman Bono – real name Paul David Hewson – explained how they came together.

He said: “We were looking for something to unify our album because it would be nice if when the characters in our album could deal with what’s going on in the outside world. It’s a really fractious time that we live in where everyone’s got a point of view and, you know, you’re the enemy if you don’t agree with them. She’s the penicillin for that, isn’t she? She’s the antidote to all that.

“But we didn’t know it would work. And Dolly has started a song called Torn. And she said, ‘look, you can take it whatever way you want, you know, and I might like where you take it’. And we took it quite a ways away from where she started. So, when we sent it back, it was very different. It was a kind of sci-fi country soundscape.”

Guitarist The Edge, real name David Howell Evans, added: “Basically she said, your songs are too Irish for me. So, what about this one?”

Bono then explained that the folk album they were making “didn’t hit her voice”, which he suspected might have made her want to make changes to the track – which is about two brothers who do not talk.

“Or she was just being really smart and getting us to finish off one of her old songs. Whatever way I’ll take it. And this is one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived. So that’s how it started,” he said.

Bono previously told Rolling Stone that he almost found the track – which Parton recorded two months before her death – too difficult to listen to.

“When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now,” he said.

“She sang her heart out and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.

“It’s very moving to have had these intimacies with such a figure. The fact that they’re not there now, in any way you can call back, other than through her songs, is very sobering.”

The group previously announced their Greatest Show On Earth tour, which will kick off with a series of concerts in Latin and South America in February 2027 before the European leg begins in April.

It will include four performances at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on June 18, 19, 22 and 25.

Asked about curating a setlist with the new album and the band’s back catalogue, The Edge said on Track Of My Years: “When it comes time to put the show together, it’ll be a trial and error thing, but we absolutely will be playing the classics as well. It’s not going to be two-thirds new work, it’ll be probably more old than new, I would imagine.”

While he added his relationship with their back catalogue was “uncomfortable”, Bono said they were “still finishing them in their own head”, and bass guitarist Adam Clayton added: “I feel like we’re starting to discover that they mean different things at different stages in your own life.

“So they mean different things to you. I’ve heard people say, ‘oh, I can’t stand that song. I don’t want to perform that song ever live.’ I don’t feel that about our material or our songs. I think the audience sort of owns them 85% and maybe we own 25% of them at this stage. but with our DNA is still in there.”

Carnaval De Luz, which was released on Friday, is the band’s first album of new material in nine years and features 12 tracks.

Formed in Dublin in 1976, U2 are known for combining their rock music with political activism, human rights advocacy and social commentary.

The line-up also includes drummer Larry Mullen Jr.

They have achieved 22 Grammy Awards, eight Brits and two Golden Globes across their five-decade career, along with seven UK number one singles and 11 number one albums.