U2 are set to film in Mexico City this week for what fans anticipate will be the video for the lead single from their first album of new material in nearly a decade.
The Dublin rockers will follow two well-received EPs – released at the beginning and end of Lent this year – with a full-length album, expected in autumn.
And rumours the album’s first single will be released next month grew stronger this week as the band sent a cryptic message to Mexican fans inviting them to a filming event in the country’s capital on Tuesday.
An email from the official U2 website, sent only to mailing list subscribers in Mexico, asked fans to complete an attached application form ‘if you can get to a location in central Mexico City next Tuesday, May 12, from roughly 2pm to 8pm’.
It added: ‘You and a friend could be selected to join the fun.’
U2’s leading fan site, U2songs.com, writes it is ‘likely that this material being filmed will be used for the first video from the album’.
The group – celebrating half a century together this year – have contacted fans to appear in their videos before.
The promo for their 2023 single, Atomic City, was filmed in front of fans in the Sphere in Las Vegas, ahead of their run of shows there.
In 2017, the band recorded a video for their track The Blackout in Amsterdam, performing for around 300 invited fans.
Similarly, they made a video for their 2014 single, Invisible, in front of an audience in an airport hangar in Santa Monica, California.
The Edge and Bono of U2 perform on stage during their residency at Sphere on March 1st, 2024 in Las Vegas
Bono is asking fans to come and join him and the band in Mexico on Tuesday next
And probably most famously of all, the band filmed the video for their 1987 hit Where the Streets Have No Name in public from the rooftop of a downtown LA liquor store, during which police tried to stop filming after more than 1,000 people created traffic chaos – all of which is seen during the video.
The band have not yet confirmed the title of the upcoming album, or any of its tracks.
But Bono told fans last month that he, David ‘the Edge’ Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr are ‘in the studio, still working towards a noisy, messy, “unreasonably colourful” album to play LIVE… which is where U2 lives’.
Bono also assured fans the surprise release of two six-track EPs in spring, one on Ash Wednesday and one on Good Friday, would not delay the new album.
The band’s last studio album, 2023’s Songs Of Surrender, consisted of stripped-back reworkings of 40 songs from their extensive back catalogue, released as a companion to Bono’s memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
That means the upcoming album will be their first LP of new tracks since 2017’s Songs of Experience.
Meanwhile, Bono – real name Paul Hewson – and wife Ali’s eldest child Jordan has launched her music career with the release of the single Don’t Kill The Vibe.
It was her first release under the name Jordan Joy, and she has hinted an album is in the works, telling followers on Instagram there is ‘more to come’. The catchy, New York indie-inspired track has been endorsed online by celebrity pals including Helena Christensen, Julian Lennon and Laura Whitmore, and has received positive reviews from critics.
However, the release has not yet had a huge impact in terms of streaming numbers, with around 12,000 plays on YouTube since its release two weeks ago and just under 120,000 plays on Spotify.
Irish band Amble’s single Moral Victory, released three weeks ago and currently sitting at number 34 on the Irish singles chart, already has 1.8 million streams on Spotify.
Jordan’s siblings, Eve and Elijah, an actress and musician respectively, have previously spoken about the inevitable ‘nepo baby’ label often attached to Bono and Ali’s offspring.
Eve even joked she was ‘devastated’ not to be included in a 2022 New York Magazine article about nepo babies.
She posted on Instagram: ‘When are you gonna drop the article about the nepo babies that never did anything cool or artistic and just sat on the couch draining their mommy’s millions.’
Eve later told an interviewer the ‘only thing you can do’ when labelled a nepo baby is ‘crack a joke and move on’.
Elijah, lead singer of the band Inhaler, has acknowledged the usefulness of having one of the world’s most famous rock stars as a father when starting out in the music business, but insisted it can only get his group so far.
He said last year: ‘While there have been advantages for sure, what it’s made us do is work really hard because we didn’t want to be perceived as walking into it.
Read the full article here
