Bono has opened up about U2’s new ‘Days Of Ash’ EP and its politically charged tracks saying, “the songs all being presented here are all reactions to present day anxieties.”
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The new EP, which you can listen to here arrived earlier today (February 18), on Ash Wednesday, and fans can watch lyric videos for all the project’s five tracks (plus a poem) here. Alongside this, the band released a special issue of their magazine Propaganda featuring new interviews with band members and the EPs song lyrics.
In advance of a new album in 2026, the new project contains five songs titled ‘American Obituary’, ‘The Tears Of Things’, ‘Song Of The Future’, ‘Wildpeace’, ‘One Life At A Time’ and ‘Yours Eternally’ (which features Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia), which is described as “an immediate response to current events and inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom.”
As per a press release, four of the five tracks “are about individuals – a mother, a father, a teenage girl – whose lives were brutally cut short. A soldier who’d rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country.”
Speaking about the new EP, Bono said in a statement: “It’s been a thrill having the four of us back together in the studio over the last year… the songs on ‘Days Of Ash’ are very different in mood and theme to the ones we’re going to put on our album later in the year.
“These EP tracks couldn’t wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow, we’re working on those now… because for all the awfulness we see normalised daily on our small screens, there’s nothing normal about these mad and maddening times and we need to stand up to them before we can go back to having faith in the future. And each other. ‘If you have a chance to hope it’s a duty…’ is a line we borrowed from Lea Ypi.
A laugh would be nice too. Thank you.”
In Propaganda, which you can read here, Bono opened up more about the project, saying it is very different from the album, which is expected to arrive later this year. The first issue of Propaganda was shared by the band in February 1986, and was born out of the punk-era D.I.Y zine culture that embraced ideas and attitude. A new, one-off edition will be released to accompany the ‘Days Of Ash’ EP, and available in both print and digital formats.
It spans 52-pages, and features a Q&A with Bono, notes from his bandmates, exclusive interviews with ‘Yours Eternally’ film director Ilya Mikhaylus and film producer Pyotr Verzilov, and more.
Speaking about the new album in the zine, Bono said: “The album contenders are very different in mood and theme to the one’s we’ve chosen to put out on the ‘Days Of Ash’ EP…more songs of celebration than lamentation…the songs being presented here are all reactions to present day anxieties…some knee-jerk…some more considered…all likely to offend or annoy some parties, but that’s kind of our job!”
He continued: “It’s also part of U2’s job to describe the world around us…what you might call our exterior life as well as the interior one that I – we – have been documenting on more recent projects…So here they are – they get their own EP.”
Bono said the album would be more “defiantly joyful feel to take on these anxious times” and that it would have “a very different kind of musical mood and narrative.”
Four of the tracks on the EP are about individuals, and centre around a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were cut short, as well as from the point of view of a soldier who laments at having to give up his dreams of creativity to go and defend the freedom of his country.
The opening track, ‘American Obituary’, makes reference to the events that unfolded in Minnesota on January 7, when a civilian called Renee Good was short and killed by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer.
It is followed by another new song called ‘The Tears Of Things’, which examines, through the writings of the Jewish prophets, how one can live compassionately in a time of violence and despair. The lyrics also imagine a conversation between Michelangelo’s David and his creator, where the former rejects the idea that he has to become Goliath in order to defeat him.
‘Song of the Future’ was written to honour the life of 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh, who was one of thousands of Iranian schoolgirls who took to the streets as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022. They came together following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in Tehran from injuries she sustained following her arrest for not wearing a hijab in accordance with government standards.
Esmailzadeh was detained by Iranian security forces and died from injuries, and the song from U2 looks to honour her for the efforts she made in her short life.
Also on the EP is a reading of Wildpeace – a poem by Israeli author and poet Yehuda Amichai – and a song called ‘One Life At A Time’. The latter is dedicated to a Palestinian father of three and teacher Awdah Hathaleen, who was killed in his village in the West Bank by an Israeli settler last year.
The EP ends with a song called ‘Yours Eternally’, which sees Bono and guitarist The Edge collaborate with Ed Sheeran and Ukrainian musician-turned-soldier Taras Topolia. The track is written in the form of a letter from a soldier on active duty, and comes with a short documentary film directed by Ukrainian cinematographer and filmmaker Ilya Mikhaylus.
The film captures the daily lives of Alina and her fellow soldiers fighting on the frontlines of the war, and will be released on Tuesday February 24 –four years after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Speaking in Propaganda about how he came to work with Sheeran, Bono said: “Only in the last few years have we gotten to know Ed and his wife Cherry – she’s a very serious person…fun…but a serious climate activist, really walks the talk. Ed is a whirling dervish of a talent. High energy which he can turn on easier than he can turn off. I see a lot of my younger self in Ed, although he takes himself a little less seriously than I took myself at his age.”
He went on to say that when Sheeran came over to Dublin to record, he noticed they had “other things in common.” He elaborated: “He’s even more impatient in the studio than me…” He said when working together, they “wrote songs into the small hours” and said “there might have been a certain amount of Guinness involved.”
Elsewhere in Propaganda, Bono opened up about “singing about America again”. In response, Bono said: “U2’s been banging on about America most of our artistic life…this is a country we love and has loved us back. Amazingly. Americans for the most part have given U2 and me in particular permission to mouth off.”
He continued: “‘American Obituary is a song of fury…but more than that, a song of grief. Not just for Renee, but for the death of an America that at the very least would have an enquiry into her killing.”
The new EP arrives following Bono sharing his thoughts on the best way to achieve freedom “in every part of the world where health and humanity are at risk” in op-ed for The Atlantic last year.
He wrote the piece ahead of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the US. Since then, the singer has gone on to speak out about the Israel-Palestine crisis, saying Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions “feel like uncharted territory”, and also call for the release of Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, who is imprisoned in an Israeli jail.