Hello God

Album: Halos & Horns (2002)
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Songfacts®:

  • Dolly Parton wrote this heavenly plea the day after the September 11th terrorist attacks. "I realized just how fragile we really are, and how small life is, and how everything can change in the blink of an eye," she recalled in a track-by-track interview. "Some songs write themselves. This one was just calling out, saying, 'Write me!'

    I hope everything comes across as I meant it. It's like everybody believes that God is their God. But God belongs to everybody. Those lines: 'I have questioned Your existence, and my resistance leaves me cold.' It's like, if You exist, how could You let this happen? But then not to believe there's a God is even worse. Then you're just cold and totally alone. We're not strong. We need You. We gotta have some help."
  • This is featured on Halos & Horns, the third album in Dolly's acclaimed bluegrass trilogy. It was also released as the third single, peaking at #60 on the Country chart.
  • On the morning of September 11, 2001, Dolly was on a farm near Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where she was shooting a video for a new ride at Dollywood. No one had cellphone reception, so they were unaware of the tragic events unfolding in New York City, until a woman came running out of the farmhouse screaming about the Twin Towers. Most of the film crew were from the city and started panicking about the fate of their loved ones.

    Dolly remembered the frenzy in her 2020 book, Songteller: "We were all going crazy, going, 'Oh my God, it's the end of the world.' And then as we all got to see all that it really was, it was like the bottom had fell out of the world. It was like the world had stopped. It was like the end of time, somehow. It was just a horrifying thing. It was awful. People were freaking out and crying. And that's when I started writing that song, 'Hello God.'"

Comments: 1

  • Innocent Sunday Omaji from Abuja, Nigeria.Your song "hello God" has been blessing my spirit. Thanks for this foretelling song to the world
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