Bono on U2's New Album: ‘Everyone in the Band Seems Desperate for It'
Almost ten years since the release of its last album, Songs of Experience, U2 is back in the studio. The band is cooking up new music and very likely gearing up for a whole new tour. If you hear it straight from the group's frontman, Bono, it's a matter of life and death.
'Everyone in the band seems desperate for it,' Bono told Esquire's Madison Vain in our new cover story. 'It's like their lives depend on it.... And, as I tell them, they do.'
In between discussions of family, politics, health scares, and slowing down—including the story of Bono learning how to sit on his couch and binge-watch Chef's Table and Fleabag—the singer confirms that U2 is working on new material for a new album, which the band may greet with a whole new tour. The album is reuniting U2 with producer Brian Eno, who also produced The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and Zooropa.
Although the album doesn't yet have a title, at least one song is tentatively titled 'Freedom Is a Feeling.' Bono said this of the still-in-development piece: 'The thing is, 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.'
Bono also strongly hinted at plans for a tour. 'I just like to play live,' Bono said. Though Bono enjoys his cozy dwellings in Côte d'Azur, which Esquire explores with Bono in the piece, he's looking to get out of the house in the right circumstances. 'You want to have some very good reasons to leave home,' he said.
U2's latest album, Songs of Experience, was the world's sixth-best-selling album of 2017 and was supported by the Experience + Innocence Tour in 2018. More recently, U2 enjoyed a buzzy residency from September 2023 to March 2024 at Las Vegas's cutting-edge venue Sphere. The production earned critical acclaim, with outlets like Billboard, The Telegraph, and The Guardian observing how the marriage of U2's artistry and vision with the venue's technical capabilities creates a show that forecasts the future of live entertainment.
Still, for U2, it's about the music, and even Bono admitted that he's unsure what the future holds. 'I hope they're going to still be there for us,' Bono said of the band's fans. 'We've pushed them to their elastic limit over the years. And now it's a long time that we've been away. But I still think that we can create a soundtrack for people who want to take on the world.'
You Might Also Like
Kid Cudi Is All Right
16 Best Shoe Organizers For Storing and Displaying Your Kicks
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Miami Herald
Pitt stop: How Las Vegas helped bring ‘F1 The Movie' to life
LAS VEGAS - We've all had that week at work. There was a project due or an uptick in responsibilities. Maybe a couple of key people were out. You were pulled in a thousand directions and weren't sure how you'd get everything done. Focus on it. Really try to put yourself back inside those moments. Then throw Brad Pitt into the mix, along with everything that comes with a star of his magnitude, including a hundred-person film crew, and you'll have a sense of what it was like in November when F1 and "F1 The Movie" descended upon the Las Vegas Grand Prix. A whole new look at racing Few summer blockbusters have had the access that "F1" enjoyed. Heck, some documentaries don't get that close to their subjects. Journeyman driver Sonny Hayes (Pitt) lives in a van, wears mismatched socks and hasn't been on a Formula One track since crashing out of the circuit three decades ago. But when his old friend Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) is at risk of losing his struggling race team, Sonny signs on to drive for him and mentor promising rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). The movie follows the traveling circus that is Formula One to the last nine races of the 2024 season, starting with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The cast and crew were embedded throughout. "They were so giving and opened up all their doors," Pitt says of F1 in the film's production notes. "We were able to shoot on race weekends, shoot on podiums, shoot during the national anthem. We had our own garage. We even shot on our pit wall while the races were going on." After months of training, Pitt and Idris got behind the wheels of Formula Two cars designed by Mercedes-AMG that were similar to, yet roughly $14 million cheaper than, their Formula One counterparts. By utilizing the "white space" in each weekend's schedule - 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there - the actors drove on the actual tracks with fans in the stands. The Las Vegas Grand Prix made international headlines when Pitt's stunt double was filmed collapsing on the track in footage that didn't make the movie's final cut. What viewers will see is some of the most breathtaking racing footage ever captured, thanks to new camera technology that could be mounted on 15 positions on each car. The result is the kind of immersive, you-are-there view of racing that you'd expect to see somewhere like Sphere. 'Incredible placement' When Brian Gullbrants saw Wynn Las Vegas on the screen, he put his fists in the air and cheered. This was during the "F1" world premiere with the movie's stars, three-quarters of the current Formula One grid and several thousand other bigwigs at New York's Radio City Music Hall. "My wife looked at me and said, 'Putyourhandsdown,'" recalls Gullbrants, COO North America, Wynn Resorts. "I was so excited." Shortly after arriving in Las Vegas, Pitt's Sonny enters his Encore suite, walks over to the window and stares out at the neighboring Wynn. The scene, which Gullbrants calls "incredible placement in an unbelievable movie," was filmed the Tuesday before the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Director Joseph Kosinski ("Top Gun: Maverick") shot it on the floor where Pitt, the film's other top stars and producers stayed. "With the level of customers that we had and the celebrities that were here and the drivers that were here," Gullbrants says, "we already had all the security details in place. … It went very smoothly. You would never know we were shooting a major motion picture in our hotel while we had all of these people here." He's hopeful "F1 The Movie" will increase interest in the sport in those pockets of the world that haven't yet embraced it and that it ultimately will lead to still more fans coming to the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Gullbrants already had one wish fulfilled when he spotted the Wynn logo in Pitt's hands. Sonny, a somewhat reformed gambler, is rarely without a deck of cards, whether he's flinging them one by one across the room or blindly pulling one to stick in his pocket before a race. He and Idris' Joshua get to know each other during a poker game inside a supper club as they vie for control of the race team. (The club is implied to be Wynn's Delilah, but those scenes were filmed on a soundstage in London.) During the premiere, Gullbrants whispered to his wife how thrilled he was to see Pitt using the Wynn-branded cards he'd given the production, even though he was convinced no one else would notice. "After the movie," Gullbrants says, "five different people at the screening came up and said, 'Wow, it was really great that you got your cards in there, too.' " 'The glamour of Las Vegas' Throughout most of "F1 The Movie," Sonny is presented as something of a cowboy, a lone wolf in a sport that requires teamwork. By the time the action moves to Las Vegas, he's ready to let down his guard, reveal some things about his past and prove he's more than just a beautiful agent of chaos. Such an important scene demands an exceptional location, which is where The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas came in. "They were looking for a room that really captured the glamour of Las Vegas," says Allyson Wadman, associate director of public relations for MGM Resorts International. "Something that was edgy, luxurious and kind of in the middle of all the energy on the Las Vegas Strip." The production found that in a Cosmopolitan suite that has a wraparound balcony overlooking the Fountains of Bellagio and a large section of the Las Vegas Grand Prix course. The thing about such a perfect location, though, is that it's already a hot commodity among high rollers during race week. "We try to be really flexible," Wadman says, "especially when it's a really great opportunity to showcase our property and the city itself." Planning for that shoot began in early 2023, before the strikes by the acting and writing guilds pushed principal photography back a year. When it finally came time to film on that Tuesday night in November, there was more than enough pressure and distraction to go around. "You think about all of the street closures, the grandstands, all of the hundreds of thousands of people," Wadman says. "Operationally, that is already a lot going on for all of the resorts on the Strip." The "F1" team removed light fixtures, rearranged the furniture and applied dark paint over the balcony's white ceiling. "Those small little details of the suite, we were having meetings on meetings," Wadman says. Planning took "countless hours" over the course of several months. 'That world-class scene' Jason Strauss was watching Tiësto perform inside Omnia when the music stopped and the 1,500 or so clubgoers started milling about. Then it happened again. And again. For hours. Three days before the Dutch DJ would play there again while the Las Vegas Grand Prix roared by, the nightclub at Caesars Palace served as a movie set filled with extras. (The club was used again by Rosé for that "Messy" video.) It wasn't the typical Omnia experience, even aside from the stops and starts. The production added its own lights to the club's rigging, making the space brighter than ever. Footage shot in the 12 hours starting at 3 p.m. that Wednesday has been used in the movie's trailers and promotional videos. "It didn't really feel that sexy watching it," says Strauss, co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality, which owns and operates the club. "But then seeing it in the trailer, it looked (expletive) sexy." Tao Group's parent company, Mohari Hospitality, has long-standing ties to Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time Formula One world champion who's one of the movie's key producers. Tiësto was selected after being on both the production's shortlist of DJs and the Tao Group roster. "This is a major thing for our group," Strauss says, "but it's also a (big) thing for Vegas." The only time you really see Sonny and Joshua out on the town, taking in life away from the track, is when they're in Las Vegas. After that poker game, set the night before the race, Joshua heads to Omnia to unwind. "For them to say, when it comes to nightlife, Vegas has to embody that world-class scene, and of all the nightclubs in Vegas, they chose Omnia," Strauss says, calling it "just a great accolade." Tao Group is developing Omnia outposts around the world, and Strauss sees being tied so closely to Formula One as a huge stamp of approval. Especially when "F1 The Movie" shows Joshua, a hot young driver who can do anything he wants, hanging out there. "Guess what? That's what it is in real life," Strauss says with a confident laugh. "That's why it's going to resonate. It's very authentic." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
‘We are not at war, but neither are we at peace': Chan Chun Sing
SINGAPORE – Singapore has to raise its vigilance in various places given the conflicts around the world, as it is unclear if it could become 'collateral in other people's fight', said Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing. He noted that the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) is dealing with a range of threats and challenges daily across all four of its services. 'Today, we are not at war in the conventional sense, neither are we at peace in the conventional sense,' he told reporters in an interview on June 25. 'We are always operating somewhere in between, with different gradations. And that's what keeps us on our toes.' Mr Chan cited how the Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS) and other government agencies deal with thousands of attempts to penetrate Singapore's cyber systems every day, without naming those behind these attacks. 'Sometimes it could be just people fooling around, but often, I think people are doing this very intentionally and probably with malicious intent,' he said. It is a round-the-clock operation to protect Singapore's cyber domain, he added, noting that a breach could mean not just a hit to the country's reputation or the loss of some classified information, but real consequences for its power grid and financial and water systems. There are also constant efforts to secure Singapore's airspace and territorial waters. Mr Chan said the air force responds to hundreds of cases every year, some requiring air defence assets to be scrambled to verify unknown threats. 'For the navy, it is the same thing,' said Mr Chan, who was chief of army before entering politics. 'The number of ships that sail through the narrow Singapore Strait, the number of boardings that we have to (do to) check and verify to make sure that the strait remains safe from threat actors, that goes into the hundreds as well and, in fact, sometimes the thousands.' In the information sphere, people are constantly trying to shape how Singaporeans think – another threat the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) counters daily, he said. 'The type of information operations that people conduct, perhaps directly on us and sometimes indirectly on us, where we are the collateral, is also not something that we will take lightly.' Mr Chan spoke to the media at Mindef's headquarters in Bukit Gombak ahead of SAF Day on July 1, amid rising global tensions fuelled by escalating conflict in the Middle East. Addressing the conflict between Iran and Israel, which also involved the US bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, he said retaliation from Iran may not be limited to targets in America or Israel. 'It could be anywhere else,' Mr Chan said, adding: 'It could also stoke up emotions in the region, and we must be careful that these do not spill into terrorist activities.' There are greater security concerns because of these conflicts, he said, noting that the threats now go beyond conventional terrorism and extend into new areas such as cyberspace. Similarly, the nature of threats that Singapore faces has changed, Mr Chan said. While some technologies, such as computer viruses and drones, are not new, the way and intensity in which they are applied have evolved, he said. The lines between military and civilian use of these technologies have also blurred, he added. Moving forward, security operations will be more decentralised, with troops operating in smaller units, he noted. This plays into the SAF's strengths, Mr Chan said. The SAF has never relied on the size of its troops since 1965, but on technology as a force multiplier, he noted. 'If anything, going forward, the new generations of technology that is coming in across the world will allow the SAF to multiply its manpower capabilities even more.' Another strength is the quality of manpower and leadership it has, he said. Mr Chan said some believe that having full-time national servicemen (NSFs) or national servicemen (NSmen) is a disadvantage for the SAF. 'We never think so, because by having NSF and NSmen, we are able to have the best across society operating our systems, participating in the design of our systems.' This is why the SAF can operate with more decentralisation, he added. There will be more leadership opportunities for these groups going forward, he said, noting that this does not just refer to an increase in the number of soldiers attending SAF leadership schools, he said. It also means more leadership at different levels and more of such opportunities for many NSFs, he said. Mr Chan gave an example from the DIS, the SAF's newest service, where soldiers operate in groups as small as three or five, compared with traditional army companies that can have around 100 men. 'Each and every one of them must be able to take (on) leadership because of the technology that they are using and applying.' Going forward, the SAF will continue to spend prudently and in areas that will 'give us bang for (our) buck', Mr Chan said. It will not simply target a certain amount of expenditure but ensure that spending is sustainable because building new capacities takes many years, he said. 'What we don't want is what we call the 'feast and famine' kind of spending, where you buy a lot of things when you have money, and then you find that you can't maintain it,' he added. 'That's not how we stretch the defence dollar.' Over the last few years, defence spending has hovered around 3 per cent of Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP), Mr Chan noted. This does not include security spending outside Mindef, such as on the Home Team and cyber security. The minister was answering a question on whether Singapore's current spending is sufficient given the global security situation. There have been calls in the region for an increase in defence spending. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in May, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth asked American allies in the Indo-Pacific to raise their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. Mr Chan said the SAF has been fortunate to have the public and political support to spend up to 6 per cent of GDP. There will be areas that will require more spending because of the new nature of warfare, he added. 'Today there are also new opportunities for us to look at other low-cost options to complement what we have and what we need,' he said. 'We will continue on that trajectory.' On adopting new technology, Mr Chan said the SAF is constantly looking at emerging tech such as artificial intelligence, but does not want to be caught up in fads. 'We've been looking at many of these technologies for many years. We want to be able to apply them to what we call 'tangible use cases',' he said. 'So, it's not applying things in general, but very specifically how it helps us.' While the SAF constantly tracks changes to warfare, such as the increased use of drones and cyber attacks, its challenge is to predict what new threats will emerge in the future, Mr Chan said. This is so that the SAF can put in place programmes to develop capabilities to counter these threats even before they emerge and be able to deal with them by the time they do. He made the point that the SAF does not build new capabilities just because there is a new defence minister. After a recent Cabinet reshuffle, Mr Chan took over the portfolio from Dr Ng Eng Hen, who was defence minister from 2011 to 2025 and retired ahead of the 2025 General Election. 'Many of the capabilities that the SAF has today are built up through the generations,' he said, including those that were mooted during or before his stint as chief of army from 2010 to 2011. That is why many SAF projects are classified, so the force remains ahead of the curve, he said. 'We don't always publicise all that we do, but at the appropriate time, we will reveal those capabilities to let Singaporeans have the confidence that we are ready,' he said. 'And there'll be many capabilities in the SAF which we will never reveal. The fact that we don't have to reveal them, we don't have to use them by the time they get retired – to us, that is success.' Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction Discover how to enjoy other premium articles here
Time Magazine
4 days ago
- Time Magazine
In Season 4, 'The Bear' Has—Quite Literally—Lost the Plot
This article contains extremely minor spoilers for The Bear Season 4. You can't go wrong putting delicious-looking food and the perfectionist chefs who cook it on TV. That was the lesson of Food Network's rise in the 1990s. It held true throughout the Y2K reality boom; stalwart competitions like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen are still on the air after more than 20 seasons. Anthony Bourdain created his own subgenre of culturally aware, personality-driven food-travel shows that has persisted, since his death, in variations on the format from Padma Lakshmi, Stanley Tucci, Phil Rosenthal, and others. The streaming era has yielded a cornucopia of beautifully shot food programs: Chef's Table, Omnivore, High on the Hog, Salt Fat Acid Heat. All of which is to say that, though it's understood to have been a surprise hit, FX's The Bear was well placed to become the phenomenon it is. The rare scripted series set in a restaurant, its first two seasons combined all the enticements of the best nonfiction food TV with the propulsive tale of a grieving, Paul-Newman-lookalike master chef (Jeremy Allen White) who toils to transform his family's Italian beef joint into a fine-dining mecca worthy of a Michelin star. Like many popular food shows, The Bear makes for satisfying comfort viewing even when the narrative is lacking. Be that as it may, its fourth season, now streaming in full on Hulu, so exacerbates the stagnation that set in during Season 3 that it's bound to make all but the least demanding fans impatient. The show still looks scrumptious. But it has, quite literally, lost the plot. Following the frenzied efforts of White's Carmy Berzatto, in Season 1, to save The Original Beef of Chicagoland, formerly operated by his recently deceased brother Mikey (John Bernthal), and Season 2's transformation of the space and its staff in preparation of its rebirth as culinary destination The Bear, the third season chronicled the new spot's rough start. Carmy chose his work over his burgeoning relationship with Claire (Molly Gordon), pushing himself towards artistic excellence—and his employees towards madness—with a new menu every day. His unwillingness to compromise made the restaurant unfeasibly expensive to run, infuriating his investor, family friend Uncle Jimmy (a.k.a. Cicero, played by Oliver Platt) and making his sister and business manager Sugar's (Abby Elliott) life difficult as she welcomed a new baby. It also heightened Carmy's perennial conflict with Mikey's best friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), whose charm eased his evolution from managing The Beef to running front of house for The Bear. Their fights in the kitchen threw dinner services into chaos. Said chaos forced Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), a talented and self-possessed young chef who once idolized Carmy, to consider leaving this restaurant she helped create to accept a job offer from a more stable competitor. But by the end of the season, no problems had been solved and few questions answered. Maybe this was a manifestation of the same streaming bloat that has also, recently, produced maddeningly incomplete seasons of hit shows like The Last of Us and Squid Game. To give The Bear the benefit of the doubt, which it had earned, was to interpret 10 episodes' worth of wheel-spinning as a stylistic choice underscoring the characters' own poor communication and fundamental stuckness. When the finale made the contents of a Chicago Tribune review its cliffhanger, it seemed as though movement was finally imminent. Unfortunately, Season 4—whose thematic throughline is Carmy and his family and colleagues mending broken relationships and making amends for the hurt they've caused each other—is just as inert. Carmy acknowledges as much in a premiere that finds him gloomily watching Groundhog Day on TV and complaining to pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce) that he feels 'stuck in the same day.' The Trib headline reads: 'Bear Necessities Missing: The Bear Stumbles With Culinary Dissonance,' and the gist is that, while the food is interesting and ambitious, a lack of harmony behind the scenes makes the overall experience a crapshoot. Or, as Syd sums it up, 'The Trib ate here three different times at three different restaurants… They didn't like the chaos.' As usual, Carmy sees the situation through his own, depressive and self-absorbed, lens: 'I wasn't good enough, and I need to be better.' Whatever the core problem may be, the need for improvement is urgent. Spooked by the review, Jimmy and his numbers guy, The Computer (Brian Koppelman), come into the kitchen with a giant digital timer, counting down two months' worth of seconds. That's how long The Bear has to change its financial outlook or close. This challenge should've been enough to get the show cooking again. Weirdly, it isn't. Though the timer keeps ticking and graphs charting the restaurant's progress periodically flash across the screen, little of what actually happens has much to do with this race towards profitability. It's as though creator Christopher Storer has forgotten how to do the kind of thrilling service scenes that once made The Bear so addictive, painting plot beats and character development into the larger panorama of present-tense panic. Instead, in too many formless episodes, Season 4 favors quiet solo scenes (Syd perfects a dish amid dramatic lighting and a haunting St. Vincent track, in a set piece that looks lovely but has nothing new to say) and earnest two-handers. These one-on-one conversations sound remarkably similar to one another. Everyone is always expressing profound truths from the very bottom of their soul. And what they're conveying, more often than not, are truisms or self-help koans: 'People are not so different.' 'It's realizing the capacity to love that matters.' 'There is probably one really true thing about restaurants… You are never alone.' As awards pundits never fail to notice, The Bear resists categorization as a comedy. Now, it's not only seldom funny; it also takes itself way too seriously. That shift in tone, from early seasons that moved fluidly between humor and wonder and angst to the relentless solemnity of the past two, has been particularly frustrating with regard to our hero. It's not hard to believe Carmy's a culinary genius, nor would the show work if he wasn't one. What's growing tiresome is his depiction as the ultimate tragic hero, noble and beautiful but cursed by the tragic flaw of his perfectionism, and specifically of his need to compensate for a bad childhood by proving he's the best to ever tweezer microgreens onto a blanket of foam. The camera lingers for too long on his pained, Grecian-bust features. His every line is freighted with meaning. White does as great a job as is probably possible of making this overly aestheticized archetype into a believable human being. It's not his fault that Carmy has gotten so boring. For proof, look to Season 4's best episode, in which he isn't even a presence. Directed by Zola filmmaker Janicza Bravo (every other episode this season credits Storer as director or co-director), it follows Syd on a day off spent getting her hair braided at the home of a stylist pal, Chantel, played by Danielle Deadwyler. A pragmatic, emotionally intelligent contrast to Carmy, Syd is still agonizing over whether to leave The Bear or become one of its partners. When Chantel has to run to the beauty supply store for more hair, Syd entertains—and, of course, tenderly cooks a meal for—her 10-year-old daughter, TJ (Arion King), who happens to be navigating a painful transition of her own. The episode is refreshing, thanks in part to Bravo's lighter hand and in part to the respite it offers from Carmy's wallowing. Standout installments of previous seasons have also spotlighted secondary characters, from Season 2's Richie-focused 'Forks' to line cook Tina's (Liza Colón-Zayas) origin story in 'Napkins,' from Season 3. The Bear should be leaning more and more on this great supporting ensemble, whose characters are rich with potential storylines, for longevity. To Storer's credit, the new season does dial back the distracting celebrity-chef cameos and, with Deadwyler among the few exceptions, shiny A-list guest stars. (A wedding episode features many of the same characters we met in Season 2's divisive family Christmas blowout, 'Fishes,' to which this sometimes-wonderful but excessively long, 70-minute montage of confessions and reconciliations is trying a bit too hard to be a sequel.) Still: Carmy's brooding leaves little time to venture into the lives of, say, Tina or Marcus. Like its predecessor, this season ends with the tantalizing suggestion of big, overdue changes to come. If the twist that's teased in the promising finale really does happen, it will be The Bear's most substantial—and, I think, most inspired—reset to date. If not, a show that has now been in decline for half its run risks devolving into a mess as self-indulgent, morose, and, well, dissonant as its title character.
