U2 have released a new song, “Your Song Saved My Life.”
The piano ballad will appear on the soundtrack to the upcoming animated sequel Sing 2, which hits theaters on Christmas Day. You can hear the track below.
Front man Bono will make his animated screen debut in the film as a rock-star lion, Clay Calloway. The movie’s director, Garth Jennings, recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the tune, saying, “It’s just full of so much emotion and heart. … It just says, ‘Okay, here’s how we want your audience to feel as they leave the cinema.’”
The Sing 2 soundtrack also features covers of three U2 songs: “Where the Streets Have No Name” (performed by actors Tori Kelly, Taron Egerton, Scarlett Johansson, Reese Witherspoon and Nick Kroll), “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” (Johansson) and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (Johansson and Bono.)
U2 previewed the song earlier this week on Instagram and TikTok, marking their debut on the latter platform. This month, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the band’s 1991 album Achtung Baby, U2 will be posting archival footage from performances and tours over their career to TikTok.
In 2020, U2 guitarist the Edge revealed he and Bono had turned their attention to making new music just before the onset of lockdowns. “I was actually working on some new songs with Bono,” he told Jo Whiley on her BBC Radio 2 show. He and Bono were in Dublin writing new material before the pair split for quarantine. “I had a decision,” he noted. “Am I going to go to Dublin, or am I going to head to California where my wife was? So I opted to head for the wife, which I think was the right call.”
Bassist Adam Clayton suggested this summer that multiple acoustic U2 songs may be on the way. “We have been recording acoustic versions of some of our catalog in different keys and different tempos as a challenge,” he said.
U2 do not currently have any concert dates scheduled and haven’t performed live since fall 2019.
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