U2 frontman Bono reveals his all-time favourite song (2024)

As an eminent rockstar and activist of more than four decades in the game, Bono is a man of many an opinion and he rarely shies from airing them. When he formed U2 in Dublin in the mid-1970s, Bono and his bandmates were energised by the contemporary punk movement, especially the aggression and political agenda that pervaded the movement.

During a 2017 conversation with Rolling Stone, the U2 frontman described his love for aggressive music and complained that modern music has “gotten very girly”. Detailing further, he added: “There are some good things about that, but hip-hop is the only place for young male anger at the moment – and that’s not good.”

“When I was 16, I had a lot of anger in me,” he continued. “You need to find a place for it and for guitars. The moment something becomes preserved, it is f*cking over. You might as well put it in formaldehyde. In the end, what is rock ‘n’ roll? Rage is at the heart of it. Some great rock’ n’ roll tends to have that, which is why The Who were such a great band. Or Pearl Jam. Eddie [Vedder] has that rage.”

Later in the feature, Bono offered some reparation for his previous comments, which could have been construed as misogynistic. “Does anyone know the genius singer from Iceland called Björk? She’s really one of my absolute favourite singers,” he said. “She used to say, ‘In Iceland, you know, we see musicians, artists, like carpenter or plumber.’ And I was like, that’s exactly how I see it. I see songs as kind of solutions to problems. I can’t explain that, but it means I cannot – as a lot of artists do – look down on business”.

He continued: “In the real view of the world – in God’s view or the view of social justice – a mother or a fireman or a school teacher, they’re incredible people who are not given the kind of recognition that people who can remember their lines – actors, singers, musicians – get.”

At the time of the interview, U2 were promoting their 14th studio album, Songs of Experience. The album topped the UK charts in early December, meaning U2 had achieved a number-one album in each decade since the 1980s. While the album was ultimately a success for the band, Bono revealed that, during its creation, he endured a near-death experience.

“This political apocalypse was going on in Europe and in America, and it found a perfect rhyme with what was going on in my own life,” he told Rolling Stone. “And I have had a hail of blows over the years. You get warning signs, and then you realise that you are not a tank, as [my wife] Ali says. Edge has this thing that he says about me, that I look upon my body as an inconvenience.”

While he identified the experience’s influence on the 2017 album, Bono refrained from detailing the incident in question. “It’s just a thing that … people have these extinction events in their lives; it could be psychological, or it could be physical,” he explained. “And, yes, it was physical for me, but I think I have spared myself all that soap opera.”

“Especially with this kind of celebrity obsession with the minutiae of peoples’ lives – I have got out of that,” Bono continued. “I want to speak about the issue in a way that lets people fill in the blanks of what they have been through, you know? It’s one thing if you were talking about it in a place of record like Rolling Stone, but by the time it gets to your local tabloid, it is just awful. It becomes the question that everyone is asking.”

In reaction, the interviewer asked whether the near-death experience impacted the themes pervading Songs of Experience. “Well, strangely enough, mortality was going to be a subject anyway just because it is a subject not often covered,” Bono replied. “And you can’t write Songs of Experience without writing about that. And I’ve had a couple of these shocks to the system, let’s call them, in my life. Like my bike accident or my back injury. So it was always going to be the subject. I just didn’t want to be such an expert in it.”

“I met this poet named Brendan Kennelly,” he continued. “I have known him for years; he is an unbelievable poet. And he said, ‘Bono, if you want to get to the place where the writing lives, imagine you’re dead.’ There is no ego, there is no vanity, no worrying about who you will offend. That is great advice. I just didn’t want to have to find out outside of a mental excursion. I didn’t want to find out the hard way.”

Bono later explained that the idea of mortality came from one of his all-time favourite songs, which inspired ‘Love Is All We Have Left’, the album’s first track. “Gavin Friday, one of my friends from Cedarwood Road [in Dublin], has written one of my favourite songs,” Bono said. “It is called ‘The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing,’ about this character in Dublin, back when we were growing up, called the Diceman, who died at 42, five years after he was diagnosed with HIV. I realised only recently that ‘Love Is All We Have Left’ is my attempt to write that song.”

Listen to Gavin Friday’s ‘The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing’ below.

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