'We had no idea how ill she was': Bono on recording Dolly Parton's last songThe rock group discuss Parton's final recording before her death, and why they refuse to be censored on stage.11 hrs agoCulture

U2 are at their best when they act on instinct.

Their biggest songs are fuelled by fiery indignation (Pride, Sunday Bloody Sunday) or sudden inspiration (One, Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own).

When they overthink, they misfire. An attempt to marry grunge and hip-hop on the 2006 single Get On Your Boots was, in the words of drummer Larry Mullen Jr, “a catastrophic choice”.

So it was a good sign when, at the start of 2026, the band rushed out two EPs of new music, ripped from the headlines of a world in turmoil.

U2’s follow-up, Easter Lily, was more reflective, asking whether faith and friendship are enough to sustain us in challenging times.

Together, they were the band’s strongest material in years, combining the combustive power of their early, post-punk incarnation with the melodic sophistication they developed in the late 1980s.

“We put those EPs out without telling anyone,” says Bono, the band’s voluble frontman.

“Our management, our label, they all said, ‘You can’t do that, people won’t notice’.

“And we said, ‘We don’t mind. It’s okay not to have a big hype behind everything’.

“And it was really beautiful. The people who we wanted to notice, noticed.”

For long-term U2 watchers, that’s a big shift.

This is the group who described their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind as the sound of four men “re-applying for the job of biggest band in the world”; and who forced 2014’s Songs of Innocence into 500 million people’s iTunes libraries – an epic act of overreach that Bono’s been apologising for ever since.

There’s no such hoopla around their new album, Carnaval de Luz, which is getting a pretty traditional roll-out for one of the world’s biggest rock bands.

Sure, there’s the requisite deluge of box sets and vinyl variants, a filmed concert for BBC Two, and a handful of interviews, including this one. But, more than ever, U2 want the music to speak for itself.

The album’s a companion piece and a counterbalance to Days of Ash and Easter Lily. Inspired by ecstatic nights at music festivals, it rejects anxiety in favour of what Bono calls “defiant joy”.

There’s a stirring ballad titled If The World Is at War, We Better Not Be; while the chiming guitars of Superficiality lend an optimism to Bono’s affirmation that, “the news can’t break us”.

“We didn’t want to be dragged down by dark clouds or melancholy,” explains bassist Adam Clayton.

“Our journey from the mid 1970s was about expanding freedom and opportunity for everyone: Make your own rules, pull down what wasn’t useful. Now we seem to be in a period where that’s under threat and under attack.

“We wanted to make the point that we didn’t want our joy robbed.”

During recording sessions last year, Bono told me U2 were chasing “the sound of the future“. In a separate interview with Radio 2’s Jo Whiley, guitarist The Edge claimed they were working on an album of “sci-fi Irish folk”.

The results sure sound like U2, though.

The electronic groove of the opening track, Go (Carnaval de Luz), echoes their experimental 90s phase; while the serrated riffs of Silencio are direct descendants of 2004’s Vertigo.

The sci-fi folk idea persists, however, on the closing track Torn – a duet with Dolly Parton, that became the country star’s last ever recording.

To court the first lady of country, Bono sent her a set of bagpipes for her birthday. Intrigued, she agreed to listen to his demos.

“We had some folk songs we were playing, there was one called Lifelong, and I remember her saying, ‘You know, that’s a little too Irish for me’,” he recalls.

“So she said, ‘Look, I’ve started a song called Torn. You can take it where you want, and I might like where you take it’.

“And she did.”

Parton’s original lyric was about a woman trying to choose between two men but, with help from Snow Patrol’s Jonny McDaid, U2 rewrote the song to address the political divisions tearing families apart.

“Brothers turn to strangers /And sons deny their name / Somebody loses either way 
And every heart is torn.”

Parton recorded her parts in June, less than three months before she died.

“We knew she was ill, but we had no idea that it’d be her last vocal,” says Bono.

“That was a real shock. A shock for us because we’d been working with her, but a shock for anyone who loves music.

“I remember I was with [R.E.M. frontman] Michael Stipe in a car when the news came in, and he actually fell down and started sobbing. He just could not believe it.

“Probably the only thing that people can agree on in the entire world right now is Dolly Parton. Whether you’re gay or straight or conservative or liberal, she was ready for you to fly at her show.”

Another female presence shimmers on the fourth track, The Mirror Maker, which is dedicated to Catalan superstar Rosalía. Written after witnessing her spell-binding Lux tour, Bono describes the “heavens swirling” to reveal “the re-enchantment of the world”.

“Normally you have to be dead or in jail for us to write a song about you,” he laughs, “but she’s a feminine force field. A kind of transcendent, ecstatic musician.”

He wrote the song without her knowledge, phoning the singer afterwards to timidly seek her approval.

“It could have been excruciating if she really, really hated it,” he grimaces. “I’d have had to pretend it was about Santa Rosalia, a saint who lived in a cave in Italy in the 17th Century.”

According to producer Jacknife Lee, The Mirror Maker went through 196 different takes before U2 were happy, suggesting they haven’t entirely abandoned their perfectionist streak.

“The early sessions for this album were at times super inspiring, and then really not that good at all,” admits The Edge, identifying a stubborn “stick-with-it-ness” that stops them from giving up.

“This band is absolutely relentless,” agrees Bono. “It’s a grudge match.”

“It’s the most frustrating thing,” Mullen Jr adds. “I’m always reminded of how incapable I am of doing all those things that other people find easy.

“It’s always been a challenge for us, and that’s what makes those moments when it [works] so special. That’s why you keep on chasing it, and why you stay in a band.”

There’s more to U2’s longevity than that, though. Their line-up has remained unchanged since they first formed at Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive School 50 years ago. They remain friends first, and superstars second.

When we meet, in a bingo hall that hosted some of U2’s formative gigs, there’s a familial vibe to the whole operation.

They tease Mullen Jr for turning a hose on fans who climbed the wall of his parents’ house in 1976; and chat animatedly about their musical obsessions (“every four-piece wants to be the Beatles,” confesses Bono).

Those bonds have kept the band together through commercial and critical ups and downs, not to mention the life-altering injuries that forced Bono to cancel a 2010 US tour, and neck problems that prompted Mullen Jr to skip their 2023-2024 Las Vegas residency.

Doctors advised him to retire, but after a (risky) surgical intervention, he’s back behind the kit – developing an entirely new playing style to avoid further damage.

His determination will be put to the test next year, when U2 embark on a massive international stadium tour, including four UK dates at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium next June.

The US leg will see them play some of the same venues as their friend, Ed Sheeran. So what did they make of the controversy over his recent US tour – where some venue owners pressured Sheeran into dropping his support act, Macklemore, for making pro-Palestinian comments?

“We totally support Macklemore’s right as an artist to say what he wanted to say,” says The Edge.

“I don’t think Ed should be vilified. He was in a very difficult situation. But I commend the other young artists who decided to leave [his] tour.

“They were sticking up for an artist’s right to free speech, and I think that’s the issue above anything else.”

He recalls several occasions where U2 themselves made risky political statements on stage.

In 1987, after Arizona’s governor banned Martin Luther King Day, Bono faced death threats if he dared to play Pride (In The Name of Love) – which addresses King’s assassination – in the state.

He went ahead and did it anyway, closing his eyes in anticipation of a gunshot.

“I looked up at the end of the verse and I clearly wasn’t dead,” he later told Mojo magazine. ‘But not only that… Adam Clayton was standing in front of me.”

“It would have been way smarter and better for us to shut up,” says the Edge. “But it was artistically necessary, and we just said, ‘We can’t not do this’.”

Reflecting further on the Macklemore controversy, he adds: “We might disagree with some of the members of the pro-Palestine movement, but we absolutely agree with the fundamentals. We absolutely agree that what’s going on [in Gaza] is unconscionable and that a child’s life is equally valuable, no matter what their background.”

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to an unprecedented Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

During Israel’s military campaign in Gaza more than 73,780 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

Mullen Jr is equally forthright about the freedom to speak out.

“We, as a band, will fight for the right to speak your mind, as long as it doesn’t incite violence,” he says.

“Even if we disagree with it or don’t like it, nobody – no billionaire, no promoter, no owner – has the right to censor anybody.

“And they will definitely not be censoring us, ever.”

Like I said: U2 are at their best when they trust their instincts.