U2 have dropped new single Street Of Dreams ahead of their first studio album of new songs in nine years.
Drummer Larry Mullen Jr has returned to his sticks for the upcoming record, which is as-yet untitled, after he was forced to miss the band’s 2023-24 residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
U2 – who are also made up of Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton – have also dropped a music video for Street Of Dreams, which was shot in Mexico City.
According to RTE, during the video shoot, the band put in an impromptu acoustic performance from a local family’s apartment balcony near Plaza Santo Domingo, after inclement weather conditions caused a generator to crash.
U2 – who are to mark their 50th anniversary in September – released their last studio album, Songs of Surrender, in March 2023.
The record was made up of 40 re-recorded and reinterpreted acoustic and reimagined versions of their classic songs from across their career.
However, it has been nearly nine years since they dropped a studio album of new material, Songs of Experience, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.
In February, U2 released six-track EP Days of Ash, which included five new songs by the Irish rockers, as well as a poem by late Israeli poet and author Yehuda Amichai.
Some of the tunes were about people whose lives were tragically cut short.
This included Iranian schoolgirl Sarina Esmailzadeh, Minneapolis mother Renée Good, and Palestinian dad and No Other Land documentary consultant Awdah Hathaleen.
Bono said in a statement about the EP: “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 normalized 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.”