Wynonna Judd performed her new song “Girl Who Could Sing” on the TODAY show on October 8, and it definitely resonated with Carson Daly.
The song, which is included in his first new album in 10 years, “The Hard Truth”, tells about never meeting his biological father.
“I didn’t find out he was my real father until I was 30. So, this is a very heavy song,” he said before playing the song.
After finishing, Carson was visibly moved.
“Wow, you’re taking me there, man,” he said.
“Oh my God,” he said.
“Yes, I didn’t know my biological father, so this song, like every lyric, touched me very much,” he said.
Carson’s biological father, Jim Daly, died of bladder cancer in 1979, when Carson was 5 years old.
During the pandemic in 2020, she and her older sister, Quinn, recreated a photo of her mixing drinks while at a UCLA zip in the 1970s.
“I felt like I had stepped back into 1978 for a second and entered my father’s personal space, and for that I was grateful,” Carson told TODAY at the time.
“I have so little experience with it, it’s like such a powerful moment.” he said.
For Carson, the performance and the song’s premise struck a chord.
“For me, wearing the UCLA sweatshirt was great because there are so few things that connect me to my biological father,” he said. “It was really cool to be able to recreate that photo. The dilemma I see on my father’s face when I look at that picture. I don’t know if he’s running away from fear or turning to it.”
A few years after her father died, Carson’s mother, Patti, married Richard Caruso, whom Carson called “Pops.” The couple died five weeks apart from unrelated ailments in 2017. Carson had a strong relationship with Caruso and mourned his death.
“My father passed away today with absolute honor and pride. The greatest man we have ever known. Our hero,” she wrote on Instagram.
“He was an example of great faith, devotion to family and hard work. He provided so much for all of us. We are grateful. His legacy lives on in all of us and everyone who had the honor of meeting him. He has now been reunited with my mother.”
Judd revealed that Michael Ciminella, whom he believed to be his father, was not actually his father. His biological father was a man named Charles Jordan. He dated his mother, Naomi, when he was a teenager.
“He was so in love with her and they were so young…she got pregnant and that was it,” Judd told People last month. “This could not have happened in 1963 without very serious consequences.”
This was a development he touched upon in “The Girl Who Could Sing.”
“I was 30 years old when I found out that the man I called ‘Dad’ my whole life was not my biological father,” he said in a statement released along with the song.
“It changed everything I thought I knew about who I was. By the time I was ready to meet her, she was gone. I never heard her voice, looked into her eyes, or asked why. I’ll carry these unanswered questions with me for the rest of my life. ‘Was I really your girl, or was I just a girl who could sing?’ This is the question that hurts the most because I will never hear his answer. What do you do with questions you can never find answers to? My answer is simple… I sing about it.”