Breaking Waves…Edge on the new album, Fake news, Record Store Day
Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2025-04-18)
Yesterday, The Edge joined Jenny Huston on U2 X-Radio for a short chat. They discussed the How to Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb release, Edge’s new feature on the station “Best Ever Guitar Sound”, and they talked about U2’s new album. The show can be heard on demand on U2 X-Radio, but as we know many of you cannot access the station where you live, we’ll provide some of the quotes pertaining to the new album.
When asked what the band are up to Edge replies, “We’re always looking to the next project. We’re really focused on new stuff.”
He explained that the lockdown for Covid was a productive time for him personally, “During lockdown that’s what I did. I went into my studio room and just played and worked up some new music. So I had like 100 potential songs, in the works. So this period is really dedicated to writing and recording songs so we’re in the right headspace I think is what I’m getting at. This was the perfect timing for us in terms of our cycle. ‘Cause when you are on the road it’s very hard to work on new songs, you’re so consumed with the concerts, and with what touring entails. But when I’m off the road, that’s when I really can focus, and go deep. It’s funny how you get into condition for writing, and recording and new music.”
“I think it’s still mysterious to us. It’s never been and never will be easy. You show up. You show up and maybe once in a while you end up coming out of it with a great song. In that sense it’s a long observance in the one direction, I can’t remember who’s quote that is, but that’s what it requires. A lot of concentration.”
On the progress of the album The Edge shares, “Well we’re very excited. We’ve so much material to choose from. We’re sort of choosing the best ideas, the best songs, our problem is narrowing it down. So we’re playing around with underlying themes that will help us I think. It’s the spine. Once we have the thematic spine, of the lyrics and the ideas, then we can sort of fit the songs into that over arching story and that’s sort of we’re at that phase where it’s time to really start going with the certain songs and putting others to one side. Not that they’re not good also. But we want this to be a really cohesive collection. And we’re also very excited about getting in the room together as a band and playing, sometimes as a four piece, sometimes a three piece, we want the recordings to have the band sound, the band chemistry in it. So that’s kind of a focus as well. Which is great. Our band is kind of limited in some ways, but really has a lot of character. When we play together, when we’re making music, it just sounds like us, it’s a remarkable thing, no matter where the songs started out in terms of early recordings or demos, when we play together there’s a certain U2 thing that happens.” (We’ve been told that Bono has had to miss sessions due to other projects.)
Asked whether they are focused on an album rather than a collection of individual songs, Edge answers, “Absolutely. Obviously this is an era of individual songs, and there will be stand out songs I’m sure in this collection. To us it’s very important. Because it sort of helps us I think, move into a new area of creativity. I think One song doesn’t feel substantial enough, but if you got a collection of songs that allows you to move into a new territory musically and thematically I think it permissions a lot of creativity and inspiration. That often will feed not just the album itself, but then the tour that will inevitably follow. You start to be able to think about how these songs will look in a live context, what’s the presentation going to be like, down to what kind of shoes will I be wearing?”
The conversation about the new album ends with “It’s important that you go in with a strong point of view. The point of view is what we’re kind of developing now, as the songs are coming into focus. That’s what everyone may not understand every aspect of it, but they can sense it. Our audience, they kind of understand intuitively that there’s ideas behind this, beyond just the initial impression that they get, there’s a resonance beyond that. So it’s important. It’s in our history, always those records, those ideas, that we look back and go yeah ‘we hit on something there, that was a good set of ideas, and a good direction for us’, and then if it hasn’t quite come together we also notice that. So It’s a crucial moment. But we’re having a lot of fun. We’re working together in the studio in various parts of the world with Jacknife Lee at the controls. We don’t have anything finished yet, so it’s too early to start telling people what it is, but we’re making good progress.”
U2 X-Radio is station 32 on SiriusXM, a subscription based service available in North America. The full conversation with The Edge is available on demand separately, or as part of today’s Jenny Huston show.
When will the album come out? When it’s finished.
Adam Clayton recently appeared on “Is Breakfast Included?” and shared that they were looking at a release date early next year. That appearance happened at the end of January 2025, so ‘next year’ suggests a 2026 album release. In late 2024, Adam Clayton shared on RTL, “We really want to get a record of new songs to our audience. When we know what that record is, we’ll go out and tour it. I don’t know which year. It may be 2026, it may be 2027. It depends.”
If the plan is indeed to play stadiums in Europe as some previous rumours have suggested, time is ticking to book those venues for next year with most major venues now being snapped up by other planned tours in Europe. We have recently heard some murmurs that the band are looking at options for indoor venues in Europe for the latter part of 2026. But at this time, it appears that no tour dates have been planned indoors or outdoors, and the band very much are waiting to see where the recording of this new album takes them. As always, at this early stage of things, U2 may have multiple plans they are considering.
In the meantime, while there isn’t a lot of U2 news, it appears that a lot of fake news about the band is being published on the Facebook platform. The stories are all the same, something shocking, or exciting that will get you to click through to the website. Once you get to the website it’s filled with advertisements, and potentially some less positive elements. These sites almost always seem to start with some sports-related URL.
The stories published? Absolutely horrible. They’ve claimed Bono has been part of a fatal car accident, they’ve claimed Ali has filed for divorce, they’ve posted about Adam and Larry physically having a disagreement, and they’ve posted members of U2’s crew have died when they have not. These obviously faked stories are mixed with more plausible stories about The Joshua Tree film debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival, an upcoming tour, an upcoming tour being cancelled, Bono doing a solo jazz album, and Netflix showing a U2 ‘rockumentary’ and more. However, these stories likewise are fake. It is all designed to get a reaction from you, and a click through to the ad filled website.
Most of it is likely generated by AI. All of it appears to be fake with little grounding in reality. And it is upsetting to many fans. And can you imagine what family of the crew must feel like, if they were to see a report that their family member is dead? Only to find out it was some scam to generate traffic for advertising, and their family member is still alive? Disgusting.
As well the fake Bonos, Edges, Larrys and Adams are going strong. These fake Facebook accounts are set up to look like they may be a band member, or an official U2 account, and are offering things like meet and greets, or other VIP opportunities for a small fee. The band do not maintain individual social media accounts. And they will not reach out to you in the comments section on posts asking you to buy something, or to direct message them. If you scroll to the bottom of the front page at U2.com you can see the band’s official social media accounts.
Bono and The Edge were recently spotted at the final night of Gavin Friday’s tour of Europe, held at Vicar Street in Dublin. They sat up in the balcony of the venues. Others associated with the band were spotted at the venue. Longtime friend Guggi was also at the show.
Gavin talked about meeting Bono and Guggi during the performance, sharing, “This boy in the cul-de-sac walked up to make a phone call in 1974, and met two other boys, I lived up the cul-de sac, they lived across the road from each other. We did something quite remarkable, we became friends.” Later in the show, Gavin performed “When the World Was Young”, a track from his new album Ecce Homo which looks at his early days on Cedarwood Road. While introducing the song he shares, “Two other blokes from that fucking Cedarwood road. This goes out to the boy from 1-4-0, the boy from 10, and the boy from 5.” The numbers are references to their house numbers on Cedarwood. Gavin lived at 140, Bono at 10, and Guggi at 5.
Although Gavin’s shows are finished for now, it appears he may do some North American dates later in the year, and he has teased some information about this on his show, “Gavin Friday Presents” on U2 X-Radio. Subscribers to the station can tune in today for a Gavin Friday marathon throughout the day.
Record Store Day was Saturday and we’ve been talking to a lot of fans about the quantities available at their shops.
As expected a number of people found this item harder to find this year. This is because this new version of Original Soundtracks 1 was pressed in significantly lower quantities than we see U2 usually do for Record Store Day. In the USA, 3500 copies were available. U2’s typical releases are 7000-7500 copies, and the release of Boy for it’s anniversary back in 2020 was done at 10,000 copies. It seems that the release was limited elsewhere as well, and fans in Europe and Australia are reporting stores that did get copies, got small amounts, and sold out quickly.
An added wrinkle? Many shops in the North American market didn’t seem to know what this release was, and may have short ordered the item because of that. Stores that did order the album did seem to get good quantities of the record.
One exception to the shortages? The UK and Ireland appear to have gotten more copies than usual of the album. 3500 copies were made available in a region where U2 usually sticks to 2500-3000 copies. So if you are looking to order one, and trying to find a store with quantities online, try some of the UK shops.
A few shops with the record available to order?
UK Based:
Other Countries:
While we’ve included a handful of links above, that had quantities when we wrote this article, there are many other stores that will now be offering the item online, in both the UK, and other countries. Shops are now able to sell any excess quantities online, so check your local stores.
Finally, we are being asked about a possible digital release of the new Passengers master. At this time we are not aware of any concrete plans to release this album to digital services. However, we are told that plans are in the works to clean up U2’s album offerings on digital services ahead of the release of a new album, and that the new master of Passengers should be used when that happens.
u2songs.com was formerly known as u2wanderer.org. Follow us on Twitter | Facebook
