Dolly Parton's Last Song Is a Duet With Bono

A farewell nobody announced as one

Parton went into a Nashville studio in June and sang. There was no farewell framing around the session at the time — she sent Bono a note dated June 2 saying she loved the song and thought it could be something really special, according to a message from Parton's team reported by PEOPLE. She died less than three months later, on August 25, after what her representatives described to PEOPLE as a brief battle with cancer.

That sequence is what makes Thursday's premiere land the way it does. The version radio played all day — “Torn” (Kent Wells Version) — went out across the major country networks and SiriusXM's country channels as an exclusive world premiere, one day ahead of the album. The album version arrives Friday as the final track on Carnaval De Luz.

Bono has said plainly what the song costs him to hear now. He told Rolling Stone, in remarks reported by PEOPLE, that when Parton got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song — and that he can't even listen to it now.

The song itself

“Torn” was co-written by U2, Parton and Johnny McDaid. Jacknife Lee produced it, and Daniel Lanois plays pedal steel — a country record's worth of signals before the first note. The band and PEOPLE both describe it the same way: a tender country song about broken family ties, carrying a wider ache about people who share a house, and a bloodline, and can't agree on anything inside either one.

Album producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee confirmed, in reporting carried by U2's fan-radio coverage of the announcement, that Parton heard the finished recording and approved the final mix before she died. Whatever else Friday brings, the last Dolly Parton vocal the world gets is one she signed off on herself.

Nine years, then this

Carnaval De Luz is U2's 16th studio album and their first album of new material since Songs of Experience in 2017 — a nine-year gap, ending in the band's 50th anniversary year. Island Records announced the 12-track record for November 13, produced by Jacknife Lee, in the same season that marks 50 years since Larry Mullen Jr. pinned his “Drummer Seeks Musicians To Form Band” note to a school noticeboard in Dublin in September 1976.

The record was built in the open this year. Two surprise six-track EPs — Days of Ash and Easter Lily — arrived early in 2026 from the same sessions, which means U2 will have released 24 new songs in their 50th year. “Street of Dreams” came first in July; “Silencio,” the album's second track, is out now, with a video shot in Mexico City. Brian Eno co-wrote and plays synthesizers on three songs. Martin Garrix co-wrote “Glorify.” Ryan Tedder added production on “Silencio.”

The Edge called the album “a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs.” It closes, pointedly, with the quietest thing on it.

Also today

• The charts are already on Previously. Olivia Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is back at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for a fourth week, and Ella Langley's “Choosin' Texas” has stretched its Hot 100 record to 27 weeks — both stories are live on the site today.
• BigXthaPlug's first rap No. 1. The Dallas rapper's Better Over Time tops Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart dated November 14 — his first No. 1 there in four tries — with 35,000 first-week units, a No. 2 debut on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, and a No. 7 Billboard 200 debut that ties his career best. The full numbers sit inside today's Billboard 200 story.
• Friday is stacked in hip-hop. November 13 brings Wiz Khalifa's Cool, Offset's GMFU, Westside Gunn's HEELMATIC, Benny the Butcher's A Friend of Ours 2, Babyface Ray's Unfuckwitable 2, and Snoh Aalegra's Legendary Love — before U2's record even enters the frame.
• Fall Out Boy are going big in 2027. The band announced the 36-date Twilight of the Punks tour alongside “ACES,” their first new single in more than three years, per Rolling Stone.
• ATEEZ go again Friday. GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6 arrives November 13 after nine straight Billboard 200 top-10 albums.