Bono Opens Up About New ‘Songs of Experience’ Album and Defying Mortality

U2 had planned to release their 14th studio album, “Songs of Experience,” in late 2016. But the world changed so much in the months since recording the album, they decided to postpone and rework the effort.

Unlike their latest release, “Songs of Innocence,” which focused on the band’s youth in 1970s Ireland, “Songs of Experience” is a collection of letters written by Bono to the people closest to him.

In an interview for “Written In My Soul” on VOLUME, host Bill Flanagan asked Bono about imparting wisdom onto his four children based on his own life learning.

Bono explained that his writing process began by asking himself what he would say to his children if he could only say one final thing.

“I came up with the phrase, ‘Love is bigger than anything in its way.’ And I mean it,” he said. “And that is not an airy-fairy, flowers-in-the-hair version of love. I mean that most of the songs in the album are details of emotional landscapes rather than physical landscapes.”

He continued, “The thing that experience has taught me, above all else, is the primacy of fun and frolics and devilment and mischief and joy as a defiant act against our mortality, and that brings us back to rock ‘n’ roll. That’s where U2 came from.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bono talked about the writing process behind “Songs of Experience,” the people and events in his life that inspired those songs, and candid discussions about his family and charity work.