In early June 2026, Dolly Parton was ill enough to be in bed, and she got up anyway to record her vocal for “Torn” in Nashville. Less than three months later, on August 25, she died in Nashville at 80. That performance turned out to be the last vocal she ever recorded, and a representative for Parton has confirmed it as her final vocal performance.
“Torn” is a duet with U2 frontman Bono, and it is the closing track on U2’s new album, Carnaval de Luz, released November 13. How she ended up on a U2 record, singing a song she had started herself, began with a phone call about something else entirely.
Bono Wanted Her for an Irish Record
Bono had been after Dolly Parton for months. His first idea was a side project built on Irish roots music, one he is still working on. When she turned 80 in January, a birthday surprise from Bono and U2 included a bagpipe player, and Dolly thanked them on social media, joking that “this old bag sure feels the love.”
He played her rough demos over the phone, and she was not sold. About one of them, a song called “Lifelong,” she was plain. Bono told Rolling Stone how she put it:
“She said, ‘That’s a little too Irish for me.'”
Producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee, who has worked with U2 since the 2000s, said Dolly was willing to sing with them. The band just had not handed her a song she could sing, and Lee admitted those early songs were not good enough. So Dolly sent them one of her own.
The Song Dolly Started
Dolly Parton’s original “Torn,” as Rolling Stone described it, was about a woman caught between two men. She told Bono she wanted to see where he could take it.
Bono and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid took it somewhere very different. They rewrote the lyrics around a mother watching her two sons turn against each other, a family breaking apart in front of her. Bono considered retitling it “Civil War.” He has said the song calls to mind Ireland’s old divisions, but it could fit any country pulled apart by conflict, Dolly’s own included. U2’s announcement called it a tender country song about broken family ties. The song now carries a writing credit for U2, Dolly Parton and Johnny McDaid.
Dolly liked the new version and agreed to sing it.
Out of Bed and Into the Song
By the time she recorded, Dolly Parton was sick. In the weeks before, she had already canceled live appearances because of her health. Bono told Rolling Stone what happened next:
“When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that.”
In a later conversation with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Bono reportedly added that the band did not know at the time how ill she really was, and that he was surprised by how she took off with the song.
Rolling Stone’s writer heard a slight tremor in her voice on the track, and wrote that it made her sound more commanding, not less. Bono found it hard to sing next to her, so he kept his own voice restrained and let her lead. “She sang her heart out,” he said, “and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.”
The Edge heard something older than country music in her final performance, comparing it to an Irish funeral lament and saying she had that sound in her blood. Daniel Lanois added pedal steel guitar, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. finished it with an echoing drum part.
She Heard It Before She Was Gone
The band was nervous about one thing: whether Dolly would approve. She did. Before she died, she listened to the final mix of “Torn.” Jacknife Lee told Rolling Stone:
“Dolly loved it. She was so proud of her vocal and the recording. She was thrilled with it.”
On August 25, her family announced her death through her nephew Bryan Seaver, who had served as her head of security for more than two decades.
Two Versions of Her Last Song
There are now two ways to hear Dolly Parton’s final vocal. On Thursday, November 12, a country version titled “Torn (Kent Wells Version),” named for her longtime producer Kent Wells, got an all-day world premiere on country radio, including iHeart, Cumulus and SiriusXM’s The Highway and Prime Country. Big Machine Records, her most recent label partner, is promoting it to radio. The original duet closes U2’s Carnaval de Luz, the band’s first album of new material in nine years.
For the man who shares the duet with her, the song is still too close. “I can’t even listen to it now,” Bono said.