El País : Bono narrates his life (and his traumas) in a monologue. It’s all intense, just like him

In the documentary ‘Bono: Stories of Surrender,’ the U2 frontman talks about his late mother and the distant relationship with his father as well as his experience of stardom and activism. Bono insists that U2 never had a leader, that the four of them were equal, but the truth is he was perceived as the leader, not only because he is the frontman, but because of his involvement in multiple humanitarian causes, from hunger to AIDS to the war in Bosnia and the debt of the Global South. He was seen meeting with George W. Bush and Tony Blair, giving speeches at the Davos Forum, in the U.S. Congress and in the European People’s Party. For many, his do-gooder activism became burdensome, too intense. It seemed he always had a sermon to deliver, but he has something to say about that.

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The Irish Times : Cannes Film Festival : Bono, Paul Mescal and Element Pictures to fly flag for Ireland this year

There will again be significant domestic interest at the upcoming Cannes film festival. Bono is expected to be in the city for the premiere of Bono: Stories of Surrender, a documentary for Apple TV+, based on the singer’s memoir, from Australian director Andrew Dominik. Paul Mescal, whose Aftersun, for which he received his first Oscar nomination, premiered here in 2022, will be walking the red carpet for Oliver Hermanus’s period drama The History of Sound.

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Cult Following : U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Review (by Ewan Gleadow)

Long-suffering U2 fans may be waiting for another album as interesting or relevant to the times as How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. You can wait a little longer. How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, the so-called shadow album to the studio release from twenty years ago is on the horizon. With the context of those additional songs, it feels almost necessary to head back into How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, to reflect on the rock makings and staggering cultural message it had at a time of wavering peace in places we expected calm from. But no, the world has always been a warzone and the rise of tech to showcase this for us has been a miserable experience – not least because it continues but also due to how frequently we see it. This was not the point U2 made with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb but it has morphed into something new, something pertinent once again.

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The Guardian : Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? reissued as all-star mashup – including three generations of Bono

For 40 years, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? has been praised by some as a triumph of charitable fundraising and festive songwriting – and condemned by others as the most high-profile example of white saviourhood in pop. Now, to mark its latest anniversary, the song is coming back around for a fourth time, in the form of an all-star splicing of the three previous official versions. Announcing the new version, Bob Geldof, who masterminded the 1984 original, says Do They Know It’s Christmas? “tells the story not just of unbelievably great generational British talent, but still stands as a rebuke to that period in which it was first heard. The 80s proclaimed that ‘greed is good’. This song says it isn’t. It says it’s stupid.” Proceeds will benefit the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports health and anti-poverty initiatives across Africa.

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The American Songwriter : The Story Behind the Lengthy Evolution of “Vertigo” by U2 (by Al Melchior)

Some bands may be comfortable with putting out music that is less than perfect, but those bands aren’t U2. The Irish superstars have built a reputation for second-guessing their own work and spending months—or even years—tweaking their compositions. Perfectionism hasn’t always translated into perfect songs, but in the case of their 2004 hit “Vertigo,” it resulted in one of their biggest chart successes. One could plausibly argue that “Vertigo” was U2’s last truly big hit.

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Rolling Stone : Hear U2 Get (Kinda) Funky on Long-Lost Song ‘Happiness’ (by Brian Hiatt)

It has somehow been 20 years since U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb— the one with “Vertigo” — and the band is rolling out a “shadow album” of ten outtakes from it, dubbed How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, on Nov. 22. The band already dropped one of the songs, the chiming mid-tempo anthem “Country Mile” and now they’ve released a second track, “Happiness,” which is a bigger sonic surprise. In the wake of mixed reactions to their underrated 1997 album Pop, which incorporated some electronic dance beats into their sound, U2 shied away from their funkier instincts for a while. But “For this anniversary edition I went into my personal archive to see if there were any unreleased gems and I hit the jackpot,” the Edge recently wrote. “We chose ten that really spoke to us."

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ScreenRant : U2’s Bono And The Edge Talk Art Against Oppression In Kiss The Future Documentary Clip (by Owen Danoff)

Kiss the Future is a new documentary about an underground artist community during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo that inspired a U2 concert, and Screen Rant has a clip featuring the hit band themselves. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was a major locale in the Bosnian War and was ultimately besieged for a whopping four years—from April 1992 to February 1996. During that time, a vibrant community of artists utilized art and music to affect change, which inspired a U.S. aid worker to propose that U2 help raise awareness of the conflict.

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Se7en : ‘Sarajevo Concert Documentary ‘Kiss the Future’ by U2, Executive Produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Set to Land on Paramount+’

"Kiss the Future", the docudrama regarding U2’s spots 1997 show in Sarajevo. The movie, created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for Artists Equity and Sarah Anthony and guided by Nenad Cicin-Sain, is based upon author Bill S. Carter’s narrative Fools Rush In, which catches the imaginative defiance bordering the 1990s siege of Sarajevo throughout theBosnian War [...] U2 lead guitar player The Edge included: “Kiss the Future documents how through superhuman acts of courage and creativity, the people of Sarajevo kept going while their city was under siege during the bloody Balkan civil war of the early 1990s. Their story of defiance and resistance against extreme nationalism couldn’t be more relevant to today. To have been even a small part of this amazing story is a huge privilege.”

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Forbes : U2 Announces A Series Of New Music Releases (by Hugh McIntyre)

U2 is fresh off their first Las Vegas residency and ready to head into their next chapter. But while the world waits for completely brand new music from the Irish rockers, they have announced a year-long series of musical re-releases, ones which will surely be of interest to their most die-hard followers. On Friday (April 5), U2 dropped a new collection of remixes and alternate editions of their single “Discothèque.” [...] The new album runs an hour and 12 minutes long, with plenty of renditions of “Discothèque” for fans who can’t get enough of the tune. The tracklist includes the original radio edit, as well as remixes that come with names like the DM Deep Club Mix, Howie B, Hairy B Mix, and the Hexidecimal Mix, among others.

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