A beautiful day dawned for U2 fans last week when pop’s preachiest stadium fillers surprise‑released a new EP that zoomed in on some of the world’s hottest political flashpoints. Days of Ash is U2 doing what they do best – blending epic guitars and call-to-arms lyrics that square up to the big issues of the day, from political crisis in America to war in Palestine and Ukraine.
U2’s detractors are unlikely to be swayed by these new songs. But whether you’re pro‑Bono or no‑Bono, there is something both heartening and sobering about the fervency with which Days of Ash condemns ICE thuggery in Minnesota and the fatal shooting of Renée Good (“American Obituary”) or mourns the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen by an Israeli settler on the West Bank (“One Life at a Time”).
Heartening, because U2 still understand that one of their duties as a generation‑defining band is to be loudly political and to confront, head‑on, the pressing issues of the day. It’s a lesson that Bruce Springsteen likewise remembered when, in late January, he rush‑recorded his own protest track about the killing of Good by an ICE agent, “Streets of Minneapolis” – a sort of homecoming to Springsteen’s blue collar political roots.
But these songs are sobering because they confirm that protest rock is now a boomer‑only zone. Springsteen is 76 and Bono 65. And yet, when it comes to war in Ukraine and the Middle East or civil strife in the United States, it feels like they’re the only ones prepared to pick up a loudhailer and tell it as they see it.
Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” is about the ICE killing of Renée Good (Photo: Star Tribune via Getty Images)Younger artists have an altogether different take. You can’t accuse Gen Z of ignoring politics: Dua Lipa has spoken out about Gaza, Billie Eilish condemned ICE at the Grammys, and Olivia Rodrigo has donated proceeds from her Guts world tour to pro‑choice charities in the United States. But for all that outspokenness, they are reluctant to put their politics in their music where its message would surely resonate the strongest. They talk the talk but they won’t sing it.
Why this should be so says a lot about the place of music in our lives today. For many listeners, these artists have become a refuge – a way of shutting off the struggles of an increasingly challenging 9 to 5 existence. As rents soar and the cost of living continues to be a bad joke at all our expense, our favourite singers are an escape hatch from the sheer hassle of getting from one end of the day to another.
They are no doubt aware of this too – so while Billie Eilish, for instance, will condemn ICE at the Grammys, she won’t do so in her lyrics as that would break her implicit agreement with her audience that her music will keep the tiresome noise of everyday life at arm’s length.
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Eilish and her peers would no doubt see this as a noble calling – and let’s be honest, few of us are loudly demanding that our favourite artists write political songs. And yet it’s hard not to feel that this generational turn away from overtly polemical songwriting is a huge downgrade. We’ve rewound back to the 1950s when music was less an art form than a catchy distraction.
There are exceptions, of course. The entirety of Bad Bunny’s recent Super Bowl performance was a political statement: by singing in Spanish and listing, from Argentina to Canada, all of the countries in the Americas, he was refuting Donald Trump’s vision of one specific part of the continent (ie the USA) as a fortress of white identity. The message is that the Americas contain multitudes – and that it isn’t up to Trump and his MAGA cronies to say who is American and who is not.
Other examples of politically engaged songwriting include Kneecap – whose lyrics draw on their upbringing in post-Troubles Belfast – and Bob Vylan, who document their experiences as working-class black people in a Britain ravaged by austerity. But of course for all their notoriety, these are underground acts and their music is the 21st-century equivalent of the punk rock that sparked a moral panic in the late 1970s. Not that they would necessarily even want it, but they will never have the cultural clout of U2 or Springsteen.
With all of that going on, you have to credit U2 for taking a stand – of reminding people that rock music isn’t just about entertainment. It is supposed to be a rallying cry, a call to arms, a plea (no matter how hokey) to grapple with the world beyond the four walls of our own lives. U2’s commitment to that mission runs deep.
Tellingly, the catchiest number on their new EP is a collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Ukrainian singer Taras Topolia. “Yours Eternally” is sung from the perspective of a Ukrainian soldier on the front line of the war with Russia – not something you would associate with Sheeran, an artist generally synonymous with soppy ballads played during slow sets at weddings.
He is well aware of how he is viewed and, according to Bono, was reluctant to make an overtly polemical song. “He said, ‘I love the song, I love Ukraine. But I’d rather not be a part of any political polemic right now.… You’re not going to get me involved in politics, are you?’ ‘No, of course not, Ed.’ I might have been bluffing there.”
Bluffing or not, Bono took Sheeran out of his comfort zone and had him sing about something other than his love life. How depressing that so few of his peers want to join him in the protest‑rock trenches.
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