Sorted By Album (2020s)

Songs of What Might Come Next

U2 have not yet announced what they will release next, but over the last few years Bono has been speaking about some of the songs he has been working on, and we've even heard a taste of one, called "Glorify". For more information on the upcoming album progress and quotes about what the band are working on you can see our tracking page here. Continue on below for the songs that have been mentioned by name.

The following tracks are included below:

• "Freedom is a Feeling" (2025)
• "Glorify" (2023)
• "Go" (2025)
• "One Life at a Time" (2025)
• "Smile" (2022)
• "The Bards Last Breath" (2022)

Tracks in Alphabetical Order

• "Freedom is a Feeling" (2025)
  

  In a 2025 interview with Esquire they reveal that Bono has spoken with them about a new song.

  ‘Did I play you that song the last time we spoke? It was in my head—‘Freedom Is a Feeling.’

  Bono didn’t play it for me—what sounds like a brand new U2 song—and he doesn’t play it for me now, on Zoom. Instead, he begins singing it. “Free-dom,” he coos at the high end of his register, “is a feeeEEling.”

  It is both the soundtrack to and the result of the current creative quest Bono finds himself on. The band is back at work, recording new music. As soon as we hang up, he will return to the studio, where everyone is waiting. “The thing is,” Bono says, “I don’t just want to be singing about freedom. I want to be freedom, the feeling. That’s what rock ’n’ roll has to be.”

  Prior to the interview being published, on March 1, 2025, the U2 social media accounts shared what appears to be a verse from a song:

  Freedom is a feeling
  A feeling that I have around you
  Freedom is a feeling
  that I never knew.

  The lines are accompanied by Bono’s drawing of President Zelenskyy, and ends with “Slava Ukraini”. The image of Zelenskyy was originally done for a cover of The Atlantic magazine, and that cover included the words, “The choice is between freedom and fear”, which is a quote from President Zelenskyy. The original drawing and text was used for designs on T-shirts and a screen print available via U2.com and at the Zoo Station shop in Las Vegas during U2’s Sphere run, which proceeds going to raise fund for procurement of ambulances in Ukraine. The items were first sold in June 2023 and used on the cover of The Atlantic the same month. The original quote “The choice is between freedom and fear” is from Zeleneskyy.

• "Glorify" (2023)
  

  Every night at the end of Sphere, the final song wrapped up on stage, and as U2 left the stage a song called “Glorify” was heard over the PA. On some nights Edge sang along, on others Bono sang. The song itself features the vocals of Brittany Howard. Howard, the former lead singer of Alabama Shakes, was identified as the singer by Bono himself at one of the Sphere shows.

  The music itself is U2. The song was developed as a band project, and we are told that versions with vocals by Bono also exist. It isn’t the first time U2 has developed a song with another vocalist. Johnny Cash famously took on “The Wanderer” and Lykke Li contributed to “The Troubles”.

  On the heels of the Sphere shows, it was rumoured that “Glorify” would be released as a standalone single, perhaps for Record Store Day, but instead, U2 chose to release a live version of “Atomic City” instead. It is not known what plans may exist for “Glorify” going forward.

  From the mix heard over the PA at Sphere, we’ve transcribed the following lyrics:

  If the heavens fall,
  Baby don’t we all?
  Yeah it happens
  All the time, all the time

  So let your heart be fooled
  Expect a miracle
  They’re looking for you
  To glorify, glorify

  As the heavens fall
  Baby don’t we all?
  Yeah it happens
  All the time, all the time

  You’re nothing but bad news
  The kind I can’t refuse
  But still I choose
  To glorify, glorify

  Ah ah ah ah ah ah
  Ah ah ah ah ah ah
  Ah ah ah ah ah ah
  Ah ah ah ah ah ah
  Ah ah ah ah ah ah
  Glorify, glorify!

  Can you see me?
  No
  Wonder if there is something wrong
  Can you hear me?
  No
  What is it that you don’t want to be?

  The sun can’t see itself shine
  But the sun isn’t bothered
  Made for each other, you and I
  Because we’re made from each other

  If the heavens fall
  Baby, don’t we all
  Yeah it happens
  All the time, all the time

  Don’t let your heart be fooled
  Expect a miracle
  They’re looking for you
  To glorify, glorify

  As the heavens go
  Baby, don’t we all
  Yeah it happens
  All the time, all the time

  You’re nothing but bad news
  I like the rhythm and blues
  But still I choose
  To glorify, glorify

  Glorify, glorify, glorify

• "Go" (2025)
  

  In a 2025 interview with RTÉ Radio 1’s Brendan O’Connor, Bono spoke about the progress of U2’s new album, and shared some details about a song called “Go”.

  “I can’t wait for the next U2 album. And I know some of the songs. I’m very excited about it. I’m excited about the future. Perhaps dealing with the past gets you to the present. We have to get back to now, in order to think about the songs of the future. It sounds like four of us in a room at times. And at other times it sounds like something I’ve never heard before. The opening song, if it stays the opening song, is called ‘Go’ it’s an extraordinary introduction, I would want to be at that gig, I certainly want to be in that band.”

  At this point, U2 continue to work on the follow up to 2017’s Songs of Experience.

• "One Life at a Time" (2025)
  

  Bono read lyrics from this “new song” at the award ceremony for the 2025 Woody Guthrie Prize in October 2025. One of the people involved in the 2024 film No Other Land was Awdah Hathaleen. On July 28, 2025, Hathaleen was killed by an Israeli settler in the South Hebron Hills. The director of the film shared “they’re trying to erase us, they are trying to wipe us off the earth ‘one life at time’.” That inspired Bono to write the lyrics which he started writing the same week. The Edge shares that the song is not yet finished.

  Bono read out lyrics at the event, which end with:

  Look around
  Who stole Abraham?
  Who stole his words?
  Stole the colours from the flowers?
  Stole the song from the birds?
  Who stole Mohammad?
  Locked him in a cage?
  Made God a mirror of our own rage?
  “Don’t shoot my father” his three daughters are crying
  Innocent flees the scene of the crime
  We can make or break the world
  One life at a time.

  More coverage of the “One Life at a Time” song can be found on U2.com and in our news archive.

• "Smile" (2022)
  

  In 2022, during an interview with The New York Times Bono spoke about recording, and two songs that he’s fond of that U2 have been working on, “Smile” and “The Bard’s Last Breath”.

  This isn’t the “Smile” that came out on The Complete U2 which was retitled “I Don’t Wanna See You Smile” on the recent How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb. This is a different song, which is possibly why the other has since been renamed.

  Bono in the article calls this new “Smile” a pop song, “a very cool, Beatle-y thing, a ridiculous pop sort of Rubber Soul isn’t it?”

  The lyric “You make me smile, It’s been a while, You put a smile, Back on my face, back on my face.” is part of the song.

  At the time of the interview, Bono shared that the song was intended for Songs of Ascent, an album that he shared was a “beautiful ecstatic album” sharing that it was an album of psalms. At this time it looks like that album may be on the backburner while the band work on other projects.

• "The Bards Last Breath" (2022)
  

  In 2022, during an interview with The New York Times Bono speaks about recording, and two songs that he’s fond of, “Smile” and “The Bard’s Last Breath”.

  Bono shared that “The Bard’s Last Breath” was his favourite at that time. Bono shares some lyrics, “It’s a matter of degrees, but the bard was never pleased to wake up in the morning / And he said, ‘Rise, rise, the sun will rise and will set / It will rise, rise, and it hurries to forget. / He said ‘Rise! Rise! All are leaving just not yet. / He said, ‘Rise! Rise! With his very last breath.”

  Bono calls the song a song of pure joy.

  At the time of the interview, Bono shared that the song was intended for Songs of Ascent, an album that he shared was a “beautiful ecstatic album” sharing that it was an album of psalms. At this time it looks like that album may be on the backburner while the band work on other projects.