Dolly Parton's Final Recording Is a U2 Duet Called 'Torn'

Dolly Parton's last recording is a duet with Bono. "Torn," the closing track of U2's new album "Carnaval de Luz," pairs the country singer with the band's frontman on a song about "a family at war" — perhaps after infidelity, perhaps atop other divisions, as Jon Pareles reports in The New York Times' weekly playlist roundup.

The album is U2's third release in a prolific year, following two EPs. What could have been a country ballad becomes, in Pareles's telling, "a sustained U2 hymn instead, with quietly pealing guitars." Parton's voice sounds frail at first, but she seizes the song's final moments.

What else made the list?

The roundup spans nine additional tracks across pop, country, R&B and instrumental music:

• Ella Langley, "Here Then We're Gone." Written for "The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping," a patient country waltz on loss and time: "Ain't no yesterdays ever come back again."
• Dexter in the Newsagent, "Edge of the World." Charmaine Ayoku's project celebrates pure limerence — "Something in the air has changed but / it's more than my attitude" — over quick-strummed guitar and brisk break beats.
• Krill, "Dominate." The indie-rock trio, which regrouped as Knot in 2020, returns with new guitarist Andrew Clinkman alongside Jonah Furman and Ian Becker. The track, from the album "Secret Language," asks: "When history ends, who plays the end credits?"
• Ella Mai, "Over and Over." A very slow-motion R&B account of cyclical power struggles with "high stakes, no rules": "I like to mess with your mind to keep the fire alive."
• Radie Peat, "The Moon and Stars." The Lankum singer's solo album "No Human Tongue Can Tell" magnifies the bleakest parts of Celtic tradition; one verse references rue, an herb historically used to induce miscarriage.
• Ana Lua Caiano, "Um Mais Um." The Portuguese one-woman studio band, from the album "Devagar Que a Vida É Curta" ("Slowly, Life Is Short"), overdubs herself into an army of women confronting mortality.
• Jeanne River, "PP2." The debut single from songwriter Jeanne Hill, featuring prepared piano from Geese's Cameron Winter and cryptic lyrics: "Canary in a coal mine / when scales come falling from your eyes."

Who else appears?

In instrumental music, Syrian producer Rizan Said — who played keyboards behind Omar Souleyman for two decades before going solo in 2015 — releases "Choubi Kawniyya (Cosmic Choubi)" from the album "Ma Waraa Al Shaabi (Beyond Shaabi)." The track pushes nasal, modal dabke melodies toward psychedelia with stacked synthesizer tones.

On the charts, BigXthaPlug's "Burn," featuring Ava Max, sits at No. 70 on this week's Hot 100. The song comes from "Better Over Time," released Oct. 30, and Pareles notes Max's chorus — "I just won't stop until everything burns" — pushes the rapper's resentment toward revenge over moody minor chords and trap beats.

What does this change for listeners? If "Torn" is truly Parton's final studio statement, a career that built country music's most recognizable voice now closes not in Nashville but inside U2's cathedral of guitars — a pairing few would have predicted, and one that will define how her recording catalog is remembered.