U2 released Carnaval De Luz on November 13, with Dolly Parton joining Bono on the closing track, ‘Torn’. The duet is also the album’s fourth single. A separate country version bearing Kent Wells’s name arrived in the same release week through Parton’s label partner Big Machine Records. The two listings give listeners a choice of arrangement for the same song.
Where to find each version
On the Island Records album, ‘Torn’ is track twelve. Jacknife Lee produced that recording, and Daniel Lanois plays pedal steel. The Kent Wells version is listed separately. The album version already includes an instrument associated with country, so the useful distinction is how each release presents the duet. Finding pedal steel in the album credits is no reason to assume that is the Wells version.
U2, Parton and Johnny McDaid share the writing credit. The band says Parton recorded her part in Nashville in June 2026 and identifies it as her final recorded vocal performance before her death in August. The date on the new releases tells us when listeners could hear the collaboration. The June date tells us when she sang it. Those two dates matter when an alternate version reaches stores alongside the album.
How the album fits into U2’s year
Carnaval De Luz is U2’s sixteenth studio album and the band’s first album of new material in nine years. Earlier in 2026 they released Days of Ash and Easter Lily, each with six tracks. Put the two EPs next to the twelve tracks on the album, and the band’s count of twenty-four new songs for the year makes sense. There is no need to include a second version of ‘Torn’ to reach that figure.
The sequence of releases and the order in which the band imagines the work are different. Both EPs came out before the album, but U2 describes the carnival of the title as preceding the periods associated with the EPs: Lent and Easter. For someone who followed the releases as they came out, the November album adds what the band sees as an opening chapter to music already available.
Within Carnaval De Luz itself, the earlier singles give listeners a way in. ‘Street of Dreams’ is third, ‘Silencio’ seventh and ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ eighth. ‘Torn’ leaves the last word to a duet about a fractured family. It can be heard as that closing scene or sought out on its own in the country arrangement, with a separate credit to look for when choosing which recording to play.
