Dolly Parton always gave it her all across her glittering, extraordinary career. At the stroke of midnight, the country music icon reminded us of what we’re sorely missing with the release of “Torn,” Parton’s posthumous collaboration with U2.
The duet between Dolly and U2 frontman Bono is the closing song on Carnaval De Luz (which translates to “Carnival of Light”), the Irish rock band’s sixteenth and latest studio album.
Co-written by U2, Parton and Snow Patrol‘s Johnny McDaid, “Torn” is the country great’s last recorded vocal performance, and it connects the full 24-track deluxe version of the project, followed in sequence by the surprise-release EPs Days of Ash and Easter Lily, as a double album.
Dolly pulls it together, to create a spiritual whole. “You sense a border crossing,” Bono remarks in a statement. “And so you move from the south into the north, and you have Dolly Parton singing to you as you cross the border.”
Carnaval De Luz is the first album of new material from U2 in nine years. To celebrate its release, Island Records shares several versions of the country-tinged “Torn,” including the “Kent Wells Version” and the “T Bone Burnett Take,” all of them featuring the unmistakable voice of Dolly.
Speaking ahead of its release, Bono told Rolling Stone that the recording was, admittedly, almost too difficult for him to hear.
“When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song,” Bono remarked. “And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now.”
Parton recorded her vocals for “Torn” in June, just two months before her passing. Bono was blown away by her talents. “She sang her heart out,” he told RS, “and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.”
Parton approved the final mix before her passing Aug. 25 at 80 from a brief battle with cancer.
“It’s very moving to have had these intimacies with such a figure,” Bono explained to Rolling Stone. “The fact that they’re not there now, in any way you can call back, other than through her songs, is very sobering.”
Carnaval De Luz drops 50 years after drummer Larry Mullen Jr. pinned a handwritten notice to the message board of Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, with the fateful message: “Drummer Seeks Musicians To Form Band.”
What happened next is the stuff of legend.
With their political hearts exposed on their collective sleeves, Bono, The Edge, Mullen and Adam Clayton would become arguably the world’s biggest band in the second half of the 1980s, a crown they managed to wear well into the ‘90s despite the explosion of grunge, indie, alternative rock, hip-hop and electronic dance music.
The band has sold 175 million albums, according to Island Records, and bagged 22 Grammy Awards. Along the way, they landed 34 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including two leaders, along with eight No. 1s on the Billboard 200 chart. Induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame came in 2005.
U2 had the honors of being the first band to play the Sphere in Las Vegas, which they inaugurated in September 2023 with the residency, U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere.
According to reps, the fourpiece is currently working on plans to translate the new album for Carnaval De Luz presents: The Greatest Show On Earth World Tour, a live tour in 2027.
Stream U2’s “Torn” featuring Dolly Parton and the new album Carnaval De Luz.
