We already knew that U2 are working on new material, but it sounds like we might be hearing some of it sooner than we thought.
That’s what The Edge seemed to be suggesting when he made an appearance on the Sodajerk on Songwriting podcast. “There might be a new song happening very soon, which you’ll hear about, “ he said. “Can’t say any more than that. We’re in a great place creatively.”
The 63-year-old guitarist also said that he has started to present finished lyrics to his three bandmates - Bono, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr – so they don’t waste time on tracks that are “never gonna work”.
“I sort of tricked myself,” he said. “I was going, ‘OK, this is for The Edge solo album, so… you can’t be, like, leaving these things half finished. It doesn’t have to have finished lyrics, but it needs to really hang together. And that extra discipline, I think, has been very useful.”
He added: “So, I’ve been just working on so much material, and I hope, now that we’re doing some U2 sessions with that material, it looks like it’s paying off in that we sort of know, ‘Yeah, that one really does have some potential here.’ And we still might end up… changing it around a lot, but we’re not gonna be wasting our time on an idea that was never gonna work.”
The Edge also hinted heavily that the band are looking to tour sooner rather than later. “We’re hoping to get to do some shows,” he said. “Because, you know, we did the Vegas run, which was fantastic, but we didn’t get to see much of the world. And… we’re looking forward to hooking up with our fans where they live, as opposed to them having to come to us.”
Other than the 2023-24 Las Vegas Sphere residency, U2 haven’t played live since before the pandemic. And aside from a one-off single in 2023, Atomic City, there has been no new new material since 2017’s Songs Of Experience album.
Instead the band have concentrated on archive projects – the ‘reimagining’ of their back catalogue that was Songs Of Surrender and last year’s re-packaging of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, which included a so-called ‘shadow’ album of offcuts, entitled How To Reassemble An Atomic Bomb.
In an interview with Jo Whiley on Radio 2 last November, The Edge described the new music the band were working on as “some crazy kind of sci-fi Irish folk music”. He also said that they were working with “some beautiful Irish musicians” and their old confrère Brian Eno.
