"You're The Best Thing (About Me)" (2016)

Demo Song

Background Information

In August 2016, we reported that DJ Kygo caused a stir in the U2 community by playing a new U2 song at the Cloud Nine Festival in Bergen, Norway. The song was played at the end of the set, and he introduced it as a “brand new song I’ve never played before that I’ve made with U2.” [Translated] He also introduced it as “You’re the Best Thing About Me” in his introduction. The song was the same song that Bono had been heard playing from his home in the South of France recently which had featured the chorus, “You’re the Best Thing About Me”, however some of the lyrics heard in those clips appeared to be different than the version Kygo played in Bergen.

In February of 2017, the song is mentioned again, however under a new title now. The song is referred to as “The Best Thing About You Is Me” in an article published in MOJO Magazine (Issue 281, cover date, April 2017):

Of the songs Bono currently imagines will make the final tracklist, his current favourite is “The Showman,” “It’s like something from Rubber Soul,” he enthuses. “It’s about singers. It’s not me.” To illustrate his point he quotes the song’s lyrics to MOJO: “The showman gives you front row to his heart/The shaman prays that his heartache will chart/Making a spectacle of falling apart/Is the heart of the show.” Other likely inclusions are “The Best Thing About You Is Me” and “The Little Things That Give You Away,” while both “Red Flag Day” and “Summer of Love” reference the refugee crisis in Europe. “Two songs that have a similar theme,” says Bono “about people running for their lives on the same Mediterranean that we’re running through the shallows. “Summer of Love” is achingly beautiful and empty. It could be a big song and it’s tiny. These are real tunes.”

The song was released on September 6, 2017 as a single. Additional updates to the song information will be done at the discography entry for this single.

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