U2 have shared the first taster from their forthcoming album, the Jacknife Lee produced ‘Street Of Dreams’ – check it out below.
The video for the single was recently shot in Mexico City where fans gathered around a bus as the band played the song on the roof.
“Hopped a bus in Mexico City, destination: Street of Dreams,” the band captioned the footage at the time. “Justice an obsession, love is procession down the street of dreams”.
In a subsequent post, U2 revealed that heavy rain and thunder “crashed the generator for the film shoot”, and a “bewildered but welcoming neighbour” let the band use their balcony to lead the crowd in singalongs of ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Desire’ while they waited for the shoot to recommence.
Now, they have finally shared the track, which features The Edge‘s trademark anthemic guitar licks as Bono sings: “La calle, calle de los sueños / All the doors are open on the street of dreams”. You can listen to it and view the official video below.
Notably, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is in the video, having missed the band’s Las Vegas Sphere residency in 2023 and 2024 after undergoing back surgery.
The clip shows the band playing in front of a crowd on a spray painted bus interspersed with shots of them inside of the bus, being chased across the streets of Mexico City by fans.
It ends with the four-piece being disrupted by heavy rain, which forces them to perform on a local resident’s balcony.
The Irish four-piece have long been thought to be working in the studio on their 15th album, and they have released two EPs of new music already this year.
Bono said of the album at the time that their second EP ‘Easter Lily’ came out: “We are in the studio, still working towards a noisy, messy, ‘unreasonably colour xerox’ album to play LIVE… which is where U2 lives.”
He added: “We still look to vivid rock n roll as an act of resistance against all this awfulness on our small screens. These are for sure ‘wilderness years’ for so many of us looking at the mayhem out there in the world. It’s a time that has our band digging deeper into our lives to find a wellspring of songs to try to meet the moment…”
The band have been teasing a new album as far back as 2024, when The Edge said that it would not be “a straight-up rock thing”, while last summer, Bono shared that he was “ready for the future” with U2, with the band having written “25 great songs”. Previously, while discussing the writing process, the frontman also said that U2 were overcoming the past to make “the sound of the future”.
It will be their first album of new music since 2017’s ‘Songs Of Experience’, which NME awarded two stars and noted: “There are brief flashes of ‘Vertigo’ vitality, notably when they bemoan the current political s**tstorms on ‘The Blackout’. But overall, U2 have built a stadium rock cruise liner they’ve zero interest in rocking, and ‘…Experience’ is 50 minutes of very plain sailing indeed.”
They also released ‘Songs Of Surrender’ in 2023, a record of re-recorded songs from the band’s back catalogue, released as a companion to Bono’s memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
Bono played a handful of shows with Jacknife Lee as part of his book tour, which also saw the latter perform alongside the frontman and direct the concerts.
He previously worked on their 2004 album ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’, their 2006 Skids cover with Green Day, ‘The Saints Are Coming’ and their 2023 single ‘Atomic City’
Lee has also worked with The Killers, R.E.M., Editors, Robbie Williams and many more artists and bands.
U2, who will celebrate their 50th anniversary in September, are expected to release their new album later this year.
