U2’s second surprise six-track EP of 2026, Easter Lily arrives six weeks after Days of Ash – the period in the ecclesiastical calendar known as Lent. For U2 fans, it’s a case of feast rather than fast, with both releases standing alone and distinct from the band’s new studio album, for which recording sessions remain ongoing.
As The Edge explains in the new accompanying edition of the band’s Propaganda ’zine: “We wrote some songs meant for our album, but they started to assert themselves in some unexpected ways, demanding special attention, their own devotional world, suggesting they didn’t feel part of our album. So we folded… agreed to their timeline… the songs are the boss.”
These are certainly boss songs – Easter Lily…
Tag Archive: U2
It’s nearly nine years since U2 released a collection of original material, 2017’s Songs of Experience. They’ve hardly been idle since: two tours, two films, a 40-date residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, nearly three hours of stripped-down re-recordings of old material on Songs of Surrender, plus Bono’s autobiography, which spawned a solo tour, a stint on Broadway and another film. An impressive workload by any standards.
Still, you could take the gap between original albums – the longest in U2’s history – as evidence of a problem that’s bedevilled the band for nearly 20 years: where do U2 fit into the current musical landscape?
The obvious answer is to acquiesce to the “heritage rock” label, rest on the laurels of their…