When she was little, GAYLE would perform at farmers markets, singing U2 songs for extra money to buy ice cream. Now she’s written a song for a new documentary with Larry Mullen Jr. — U2’s drummer.
The Grammy-nominated singer has dyslexia, and Mullen’s son also has dyslexia. As Billboard reports, that’s why they came together to write “Between the Lines,” a song for the documentary Left Behind. The film tells the story of the New York City mothers who fought to open the city’s first public school for dyslexic children.
The “abcdefu” singer tells Billboard Mullen reached out to her to collaborate. “He was talking about how passionate he was about the project, especially the fact that he has a child that has been affected with dyslexia,” she says. “He had a view as a parent seeing how it’s affected his child. He didn’t have to sell me in any way.”
Mullen tells Billboard, “I was really anxious that when I agreed to do [the song] that somebody who actually had dyslexia was involved and they would do the lyrics. It was just completely fortuitous and luck that myself and GAYLE kind of fell into each other.”
Mullen said creating the song with his two co-writers and GAYLE was “a collide of cultures, two different eras coming together. And the collision is kind of a beautiful one despite the musical differences.”
Mullen only recently returned to music, having been sidelined by neck surgery that caused him to sit out U2’s residency at Sphere Las Vegas.
“It was great to be able to do this track because I could play on it, whereas six months ago, I couldn’t,” he tells Billboard.
Left Behind will premiere Jan. 17 in New York City.
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