Bono explains Carnaval de Luz: The singer’s track by track guide to U2’s new album

1.GO GO, here we go ... The opening of CARNAVAL DE LUZ could be described as an invocation/invitation/little flirtation to begin the festival and the possibility that this evening might be the best night of anybody’s life ... or at the very least end with a brand new start.The credit is keyboards. But the instrument Brian Eno plays best is the studio.Yes, our former producer/present-day collaborator is drawn to synthesised sounds, but with Brian they’re never preprogrammed sounds ... He’s building his own bank of original noise. He and Jacknife Lee build out the sonic architecture of the piece.Brian Eno at his home studio in London in 1974. Photograph: Erica Echenberg/Redferns Note: When Eno feels we might be getting too close to what could too easily be described as a song, he wants to destroy it. Not all Brian’s instincts are to be encouraged. Some of us love songs, including Brian.READ MOREBrian was part of a collective of people that we wanted to work with for this album to push and pull us even more than we do ourselves. Plus it was joyous to record with Larry, conjuring the drums from The Sweet’s BALLROOM BLITZ ... putting the “P” back on “arty”. Friction is as important as inspiration.2. LA REINALa Reina ... Ah ... La Reina It’s a phenomenon but it shouldn’t be ... this tradition where someone from the streets is elected to be the queen or the king of the carnival. It turns upside down the power dynamic/pyramid. The base taking control of the tip. The tipping point of our politics should be to make freedom contagious. We should not forget and even be encouraged that in Spain during Franco’s time, carnival was cancelled for being a little too free.Nobility has nothing to do with title. I have a real soft/hard spot for LA REINA. It has this big, brassy guitar sound. Edge at his most unreasonable ... right there.Yes, there is a bit of T Rex, as well as David Bowie. And a bit of U2. There’s this moment where you get to speak to the pageantry in the crowd: I definitely stole that...Somewhere between those two thoughts is where most of us live ... and the best reason to be together in a crowd. Festivals, live shows, have become church for so many of us ... a source of ecstatic community. People can be themselves, gay or straight or whatever else. Whoever we are, whoever we want to be, we feel welcome, and a shot at the best night of our life.U2 podcast: Drummer Seeks Musicians - the story of how U2 beganIn a new three-part podcast series Róisín Ingle uncovers the making of U2 through interviews with classmates, teachers, friends, family and members of the band.Listen to all the episodes here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oscar Wilde’s the mask reveals the man. In carnival people of all shapes and sizes are dancing, swaying; though sometimes dressed up in the ridiculous, the mask will always reveal who you are.This is a tangent, but my favourite bit of Halloween is late at night when revellers are on their way home forgetting that they might have overindulged and lost in an argument about a subject they will be embarrassed to remember the next day ... What they will never remember is they fell out with each other dressed as a chicken and a tin of beans…3. STREET OF DREAMSU2 filming in Mexico City. Photograph: Hector Vivas/Getty Another fun fact we forget is that rock’n’roll was/is a dance beat. Or at least I do.The original beat goes back to Cuba, the Afro-Cuban clave rhythm. The Bo Diddley beat. Babababa… Rock music happened when it lost the roll.We tried to bring back some of that on this record. The carnival beats are sophisticated, complex to play. Edge was the rhythm king on this one, encouraging all of us to experiment. Larry has the chops, but his instinct was to chop them down to the size of the song ... In the end he plays to the simplicity of the singer as much as the complexity of the bass. Larry Mullen Jr has the stubbornness to not be literal. You can hear his inventiveness on every song here, not just his version of carnival beats but also his choice of what not to play.There’s something going on in Latin America at the moment. It’s like a renaissance in communities. Mexico City blew our minds. It’s ridiculous: full of art and artists. As well as some wild places to eat and sleep. There’s an easiness with surrealism, a magic realism. I’ve always been inspired by the prolific imaginations of so many great writers from that part of the world ... So many I will not name one.And The Clash. Anyone who is a fan of theirs will hear it in Street of Dreams. It’s Adam that it’s coming from, I think, as well as a bit of the barking-orders thing.“Be here, be free, be yourself, and then free me.” We tried to keep it playful more than self-help. “Justice an obsession on the street of dreams. Love in a procession down the street of dreams.”Edge came up with the little prayer to open and close it ... Well, it’s a gigantic prayer; there’s no such thing as a little prayer ... When I said it sounded like Psalm 61 he said he had special permission to plagiarise.4. THE MIRROR MAKER (ROSALÍA)Rosalía: hot for God. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Ah, the mirror maker. Myself and my daughter Jordan were obsessed with the Catalan singer Rosalía. The artist. Her music, her MOTOMAMI tour. Neither of us can speak much Spanish (Unos, dos, tres, catorce!), but Rosalía is speaking a whole other language, is the truth. It’s not just dance, her moves ... the sense of flamenco ... the sense of the past ... It’s who she’s speaking to ... There’s an intimate conversation going on with God both playful and serious ... “Me pongo guapa para Dios ... I want to look hot for God, you understand?” puts a whole other spin on dressing up in your Sunday best.As you may have noticed, artists have a touch of narcissism. There are some of us who are content to look in the mirror and see our own reflection. If we grow we might also focus on the world reflected behind us. Then you get artists more curious, who want to see through the mirror, past those reflections to discover what’s on the other side. Some wish to smash the mirror. Patti Smith is one of those for me. Björk too. Both of them appear on Rosalía’s LUX. A seer? Let’s see! It feels like serious fanboy activity to have the members of U2 and our families, including my missus, behaving like children at her shows. I am told it makes her smile that she’s ended up on our album ... a male quartet singing about this woman who’s leading the charge of culture right now. Charge of the Light Brigade. Carnival of Light.5. SUPERFICIALITYIn my head SUPERFICIALITY is like a disco song played by a punk band who can’t quite play disco. This is a fun idea. The song starts out a bit Talking Heads circa 1977, but I would love somebody like Nile Rodgers or Daft Punk or somebody who really gets the dance floor and the protest that dance music can be to remix this song. Because dance is a protest. You think about the civil-rights movement in the US, the danger of those times, people being arrested, assaulted, assassinated, yet Sly and the Family Stone, these great black artists, they refused to have their joy stolen.Also on my mind were some words of the activist Dan Savage: “During the darkest days of the Aids crisis we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon and we danced all night ... because it was the dance we were fighting for.”And the silvery thread of CARNAVAL DE LUZ: “You and me are breaking news because the news can’t break us / That don’t make us superficial, serious is what that makes us.”6. IF THE WORLD IS AT WAR WE BETTER NOT BEU2 playing their final gig at Mount Temple school. Photograph: U2 From Mount Temple to the devil. I surprised myself on this one: I don’t think I’ve ever gotten quite so gothic. Never fear the devil ... Mock the devil and he will flee from thee.I’ve found it easier than most of my friends to believe that there might be a force of love and logic behind the universe and that love might be expressed as a child born in straw poverty to a particular people, at a particular time – ie the Christmas story of Jesus born in a cave in Bethlehem (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre presently surrounded by barbed wire).I am easily captivated by the concept that God is LOVE, a lot less comfortable and much slower to accept its antithesis – the concept of evil – and, worse, how each and every one of us can even inadvertently serve such darkness, BUT recently, as “evil” seems to be much more out in the open, I’ve had to evolve my position. I remember discovering Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA. The devil does his best work when no one believes the devil is there.There’s a level of darkness in the world that’s too much to bear. We mustn’t bear it.7. SILENCIOParental Warning: SILENCIO arrives with a few expletives ... Bob Geldof is the best cusser in the English language ... but if you’re not Bob, swearing can become a lazy lay-off, too tempting a way to make an impression. I have to watch myself, but certain words are so percussive, with an exuberance that I can’t resist.Silencio is also a kind of prayer. It describes two kinds of silence ... the one you’re forced into when you’re afraid to speak out, and the one that is the meditative kind ... that makes you withdraw to your own silence, where you have a chance to speak to what you might call God ... or encounter what you might call God speak to you.Mary, Mother of Jesus, was offered a choice. I love that. I love that the angel came down and asked, “Would you?”Then…My own belief is that God is there for our private conversations, to be shouted at as well as praised ... (the Imprecatory Psalms). If you read the Psalms you might be aghast at how some are full of raw punk energy ... the birth of the blues. There’s also the beautiful, silent effortless wellspring of pure joy and gratitude for being alive and waking up in the morning. I guess that’s gospel. I know it’s someone else’s song, but gospel and the blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll.[ Bono on U2’s first days, 50 years ago: ‘Edge and Larry could play. Adam and myself were bluffing’Opens in new window ]8. THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH Carnaval de Luz: U2. Photograph: Viviane Sassen THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH ... I can feel the eye rolls ... I’m in my comfort zone right there. When I proposed to the band we should also use it as the name of the tour I think they wanted to cancel. Or at least cancel their lead singer. While I do happen to think our shows are pretty great, this song is far from a boast. “We were once the greatest show on Earth.” If it was just about a band, or a great love, it would be heartbreaking, but there is a deeper ache in this song. THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH is not just about the lovers at their wedding Mass; it’s about the cathedral where they are betrothed.When Edge and I saw Baz Luhrmann’s film about Elvis called Epic – Elvis Presley in Concert – and heard him singing The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, we thought, that song is so raw there’s no way whoever wrote it was letting go of that relationship ... This is not a lament, it’s a proposal ... And no way that relationship was letting go of the writer either. I wanted to write a song like that, but about a performer. Performers can be hard to trust – the showmanship can lead to pretence – but this performer is trying to be real. He’s trying to own up to who he is, to be honest. And in admitting his complications he may endear himself to the love he’s been losing and find her once again. As for the religious interpretation...Christianity once was the greatest show on earth for a lot of people. Those cathedrals that people travelled so far to see; the sense of awe they found as their voices echoed around. The cinema of the stained glass for people that couldn’t read but could look up and see stories told though coloured beams of light. I wish to worship in the Church of Love. Many have their doors open and their pews empty. I pray for revival.Note: David Bowie turned me on to Bertolt Brecht when I was a teenager, and this one does go a bit Cabaret at the end.Maybe when you name the condition, you have a chance to survive it.9. GLORIFYTranscendent: Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes. Photograph: Rob Kim/Getty We had this song as a little Easter egg at the end of our Sphere shows with Brittany Howard from Alabama Shakes, a transcendent singer. We worked on it with Martin Garrix. His sounds are not the kinds of sounds we were used to, and vice versa, but these beautiful things emerged as we kept writing. With GLORIFY we ended up with a kind of demo of a U2 pop song.We were trying to find a Fatboy Slim PRAISE YOU-type vibe. I thought it would be fun to write it from the divine point of view – yes, I know, putting the messy in messianic – which brought a touch of gospel too. The divine voice exclaims...At one point I think we had the line “You’re nothing but bad news, I read the reviews, but it’s you I choose to glorify, glorify.”That’s the point. I’m sure we believers must annoy God; we must be such a pain in the divine arse. (I know I am.) But people who know they need God – and God knows I know I do – you feel this overwhelming love. Even if you’re bad news, you’re never nothing.[ Bono has failed to give the Irish public any of the things we demand of our starsOpens in new window ]10. MIDNIGHT SUNSHINEU2 tries out some soul shenanigans ... Smokey Robinson. It had a falsetto part in the verse originally. It’s about the difference between hope and faith and how the latter can help you with the former. The devil makes another appearance. When he calls for silence it’s time to turn up the music.My favourite lines...The discovery of our naivety, and then it goes into this mid-late section…Okay, maybe these are my favourite lines... It’s part of being alive, being human, to imagine the worst, what can go wrong, and get ready for it. Presently we are seeing things going very wrong out there. While we fight to put them right, we gotta be careful we don’t let fearfulness become a daily routine. I just love the idea that you can fill in the blanks for “stop repeating his name”. You can fill in the blanks for who he or she is, but I just want these attention eaters to be spat out of our lives. Clever numbskulls are trying to control us with fear. Some ways to repel that? Faith, rock’n’roll, laughter, dancing as a prayer for company. 11. CAN’T STOP US NOWErnest Heminway in Cuba in 1950. Photograph: Clifford Coffin/Vogue/Condé Nast via Getty My family and I went to Cuba some years back. A mesmerising island country. It’s an intoxicating place, but the hangover is a big one. Left-wing guerrillas, right-wing guerrillas: they may have different ideologies, but both tend to end up with people who just don’t leave power soon enough ... It was such a sore subject for the people we met. The Cubans deserve better leadership, and they also deserve not to be bullied by the rest of the world. They deserve freedom and they deserve democracy.When we were there I wrote little notes. And for reasons I can’t figure out, when writing a song about friendship, CAN’T STOP US NOW, some of these words just came back at me. I was imagining these four friends meeting in a bar at the end of carnival.The bar I had in my head was the Floridita in Havana. Hemingway’s favourite flytrap. He wrote about it; I stole his line... “My daiquiri at the Floridita, my mojito at the Bodeguita.” It’s not exactly a drinking song, because Adam doesn’t drink alcohol ... He’s in the bar drinking his zero zero.It’s about four friends who have been through a lot. And I think the opening line is the most important...Fifty years later and we’re still learning how. 12. TORN Dolly Parton. Photograph: Katherine Bomboy/NBC via Getty CARNAVAL DE LUZ is mostly set south of the equator, because they do carnival better than anyone. That said, New Orleans has a pretty great go at it. Anyway, something happened last spring to bring us up north.We’d always wanted to work with Dolly Parton. I don’t think anyone would question why. It’d be like asking why wouldn’t you want to meet Miles Davis or Bob Dylan or Brandi Carlile or Willie Nelson or Paul McCartney.We approached her with a couple of ideas that came out of sessions with Johnny McDaid and Ed Sheeran – nothing very U2, more folky stuff which we thought Dolly might like. Which she did not. “That’s a little too Irish for me, Bono,” she replied with a smile so big I could hear it through the phone ... and before we knew it, instead of her working on one of our unfinished songs, we were working on one of hers.That song was TORN. She suggested we take it anywhere we wanted. It became a story of a family riven by uncivil wars ... two brothers, Abel and Cain, mute at a kitchen table ... America was on mine and Johnny’s mind, but it could be a story around a kitchen table anywhere in the world.Dolly was everything you’d think. Tolerant, funny, heartbroken and -breaking, funny, forgiving, funny, full of faith, funny ... and tender enough to be that tough. We’d no idea it would be her last vocal recording. We did know the moment we heard it that we were part of something bigger than our band.It turned out she was much sicker than she let on, but she got up and sang her heart out, delivering one of the greatest vocals in the history of vocals. It’s almost indescribable for another singer to hear ... the control it takes to sing like that and sound like it’s effortless ... It’s beyond ... Jacknife Lee, who was mixing her voice, explained the only time he’d heard anything even close was a Pakistani singer called Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.TORN was born to be the last track on our family album. It provides an unexpected coda. A ballad, a beacon of such illumination darkness scuttles from it. The spirit of carnival bursting from a one-room shack in the Appalachians ... Born in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, in a single room with 11 siblings, mother and illiterate father, Dolly Parton was/is the queen of our carnival.Carnaval de Luz is released by Island Records