U2: “You have to up your game when people step into the room like Fontaines D.C.”

U2 conversou com a NME sobre a “defiant joy” do seu novo álbum ‘Carnaval de Luz’, os segredos de permanecerem unidos após 50 anos, “failing the mainstream” e como o seu amor por Fontaines D.

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C., Rosalía and Lambrini Girls keeps them in the game.

NME met Bono and The Edge in their London hotel on the afternoon of Guy Fawkes Night, just a couple of days after their intimate album launch show for the BBC at The Tate Modern.

While in a similar celebratory spirit to recent homecoming gigs in Dublin marking the band’s 50th anniversary, this career-spanning set in the South Tank was filmed against a 360 degree backdrop of the artwork ‘77 Million Paintings’ by Brian Eno, as the Irish stadium giants paid tribute to their longstanding collaborative relationship with the musician and producer.

It’s a spirit that remains with U2 today, with Eno still having a hand in their Jacknife Lee-produced 16th album ‘Carnaval de Luz’. After ordering “a nip” of whiskey for the three of us (Bushmills Black Bush, the Protestant tipple of his late Irish Catholic father) Bono pulled out his phone to play ‘The Slave’ by Trinidadian calypso legend Mighty Sparrow, a recent discovery under recommendation of bassist Adam Clayton.

The frontman and guitarist then recalled their memories of hedonistic trips to carnivals in Nice, Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz. “We had Quincy Jones take us to carnival like he was taking us to rob a bank,” remembered Bono of a trip where they got roped into a jam session with a passing float.

The Edge – who wanted had the ideal for 1991’s seminal ‘Achtung Baby’ to be called ‘Carnalville’ – explained how they’ve always been “very conscious of the fact that we were fucking cheated out of carnival by the Catholic Church in Ireland”.

Esse espírito maior que a vida e a necessidade de “defiant joy” é o que impulsiona o novo álbum efervescente da banda, ‘Carnaval de Luz’, lançado de forma apropriada com o single que sobe ao céu, ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’.

The track lends itself to a stadium tour of the same name next year, but some hardcore fans may recognise the title from a sign that Bono found himself in front of on U2’s 1992 NME cover when we caught them in Miami on their globe-shaking ‘Zoo TV’ tour.

And how will they give the world ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’ once again? “With the history of showbusiness and shamanism, no less,” replied Bono.

Check out the rest of our interview with the frontman and the guitarist below, as they tell us about their “messy, sacred, defiant, luminescent, and unreasonable” new album, how true collaboration is the glue of all great bands and what the world could learn from that, America “waking up”, and the new generation of artists that have what Bono calls “the other stuff”.

The Edge: “Eu amo isso. Não há nada assustador para mim nisso. Meu lugar feliz é a brincadeira e a experimentação.”.

The Edge: “A band is a cooperative. The essence of cooperation is, ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’. That’s what a good band does. A good band all look out for each other and realise, ‘If I can help my bandmate win, then he can help me win, and what happens.

We all win!’ You do have to sublimate your ego into this band ego. That’s not scoring points against each other. It’s coming together to score points.”.

Bono: “‘If you scratch my back, I’ll shave your moustache!’”.

The Edge: “Unfortunately right now, we seem to be at a very low ebb of social cohesion, trust between different groups, and this ability to argue from a position and realise that just because you have a difference of opinion with someone, that doesn’t make them evil.”.

Claro que existe, mas isso não é o ponto. O ponto é que a cooperação é tão importante, e nunca foi mais importante entender por que é tão fundamentalmente benéfica – em pequena escala ou em grande escala.

Which brings us to why we need a carnival.

The world is a very different place since 2017’s ‘Songs Of Experience’. What kind of compulsion did you feel to make this record, and what did you imagine the purpose would be of a U2 record in 2026.

Bono: “Utility! He’s stumbled onto utility.”.

The Edge: “We always make music for what we would want to hear and see, and what’s going to help us. We always put ourselves in the audience at some mythical show.

Bono: “But I think Andrew is getting at something else: utility, which is a word that can offend artists, but not us because we, particularly the two of us who have talked about it quite a lot even in the past weeks.

Na verdade, por causa das playlists e da funcionalidade. Brian Eno, ‘Music For Airports’, utilidade. ‘Music For Films’, música de dança, sua utilidade, e eu não fico assustado com isso.

The Edge: “The big enemy right now is despondency.”.

There is the Trojan Horse aspect to U2. If you’ve been selling out stadiums for four decades then you know your music is going to reach a mass audience regardless.

Conte-nos sobre essa pressão de impacto que você pode exercer na mídia dominante e o que você tentou fazer desta vez.

The Edge: “We disregarded anything that was an agenda at first. We literally just enjoyed making music. Bono and myself in particular did a lot of work towards projects that weren’t initially going to be U2.

We worked with Brian without knowing if that was going into the album, we worked with Johnny McDaid [Snow Patrol], we worked with Ed Sheeran, which led us eventually to work with Dolly Parton [on her final recording, ‘Torn’].

Bono: “Sou muito mais cínico do que Edge, então eu estaria pensando nessas coisas. Eu diria que há uma parte de mim que sentiu que falhamos com o público mainstream com nossos últimos dois álbuns ['Songs Of Innocence' e 'Songs Of Experience'].

You only have a certain amount of agency with that audience. The perfect song, the perfect punk rock song for instance, it is my drug of choice.

The Edge: “We’re working towards self-indulgence though!”.

Bono: “We got to it, that’s the point! When we’d given up on the mainstream, we got the ‘Carnaval de Luz’, [and sister EPs] ‘Days Of Ash’, ‘Easter Lily’. Who’s going to buy that.

Em termos de atender ao mainstream, você tem uma banda como a Fontaines D. C. tocando esses shows enormes nos estádios no próximo ano.

Bono: “It’s incredible to see them doing stadiums, they’re so great.”.

It’s often said that they’re now ‘the biggest Irish band since U2’. Do you welcome them coming for your throne.

The Edge: “We’re huge fans of theirs.”.

Tudo isso deveria te impulsionar no seu jogo. Bandas se tornam melhores uma com a outra se forem boas. Não consigo imaginar The Beatles sendo tão bons quanto foram sem The Stones, não consigo imaginar The Stones sendo tão bons quanto são sem The Beatles.

Paul [McCartney] writes ‘Let It Be’ then they put out an album called ‘Let It Bleed’, you know, ‘All You Need Is Love’ and then ‘Street Fighting Man’. In the ‘90s you had Blur and Oasis.

Vocês se tornam melhores um ao outro. Eu admito que quando você ouve algo realmente único e original. Aquela música [Edge] tocou para mim recentemente.

The Edge: “Lambrini Girls. I’m just so jealous of them. Now that’s a sound I would love to hear on a U2 album. Just the sonics are fantastic.”.

The Edge: “Or Geese. I love what they’re doing, and Cameron Winter’s solo stuff as well. Did you see him on Jimmy Kimmel when he played ‘Drinking Age’? Wow.”.

Bono: “He’s the man who understands the power of a silhouette. An original silhouette only comes along every 10 or 20 years. I went to see Geese and he was standing with his back to us.

E o que era que você queria capturar sobre Rosalía em ‘The Mirror Maker.’.

Bono: “She’s doing something completely unique and different, and making the world fit around her aesthetic. The reason we wrote ‘The Mirror Maker’ about her is because all of us artists occasionally have to look in the mirror.

There’s a bit of narcissism involved, there’s the world behind you, so that’s OK, we can suffer that. She’s more interested in what’s behind the mirror than her own reflection.

The Edge: “I also love the fact she has this healthy disrespect for staying in her lane. She will draw on so many different influences from flamenco to opera, fine arts, modern dance, whatever.

Eu adoro isso. Isso é mais ou menos o que temos feito ao longo dos anos.

Bono: “Smashing the mirror, if you have to make it short. She goes through the mirror.”.

E você ainda conta com a Wolf Alice como apoio na sua turnê de estádios pelo Reino Unido no próximo ano.

Bono: “Yeah, they’re another extraordinary band that won’t stay in their lane. They are swerving all over the road. That’s why we’re bands.”.

Você acabou de celebrar seu 50º aniversário, o que não é pouca coisa. Você já disse antes que parece que vocês se separam e depois se reconstroem após cada disco.

How do you feel about the future right now.

The Edge: “I know Bono feels the same, but I still feel like I could wake up tomorrow and be part of the best U2 song we’ve ever come up with. There’s still a lot of creative ambition within the group, and so that’s a reason to get out of bed.

I don’t see that stopping anytime soon either.”.

What’s your advice for new bands looking to last 50 years.

Bono: “No aftershave. Careful with that…”.

The Edge: “It’s about pooling the idea of where you want to go once you’ve all signed up to the same idea of what you want to do and where you want to go. There’s a great quote from Nietzche which is, ‘He who has figured out the why in their life can bare any how’.

Isso lhe confere muita resiliência se você estiver unido nesse sentido de onde quer chegar e o que quer fazer.

U2 lança ‘Carnaval De Luz’ na sexta‑feira, 13 de novembro, antes de uma extensa turnê mundial em 2027. Visite aqui para ingressos e mais informações.

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