U2: EASTER LILY

A song by song look at U2's Easter EP... cross, resurrection and Psalms as a resistance to the world... and maybe they've broken free of the curse of commerce too!

A number of years ago I declared a weakness in U2. They were a band, I pontificated, who were so interested in being both the best and best selling band in the world that their art was compromised as a result. I suggested that they need to get away from the best selling temptation and start being led simply by the art. Send out music with less contriving.

During Lent 2026 U2 let go of the sales stats in the industry machine and put art first. The freedom to release the EP Days Of Ash and then just forty four days later Easter Lily is wonderful news to U2 fans intrigued by much more than a number 1 album.

Twenty five years ago I wrote a book about U2 - Walk On; The Spiritual Journey of U2. I wrote it because someone had come in to my earliest website and condemned the band as non believers or immature believers at best. There is no sign of faith in their work he continued in deepest error.

I was irritated by such lack of listening to U2 songs that I jotted down a book and told my wife Janice that someone needed to write it. U2 were for sure coy about their faith so an apologetic to that faith within the music and concerts and interviews would be an idea.

Believe it or not that very same weekend, out of the Florida blue, Relevant Books asked me if I had any thoughts about writing a book. So, I suggested U2. We were thinking that too, they answered. It was done.

It sold in wild numbers for various reasons but it would not be needed today. A band that drops a record on Ash Wednesday called Days Of Ash and then another one on Good Friday called Easter Lily with titles like Scars, Resurrection Song, Easter Parade and COEXIST: I Will Bless the Lord At All Times suggests to me that no apologetic is any longer needed. Nothing coy about these releases. They book end the days of the Christian Season of Lent.

Easter Lily has been described as more personal than the world events critique of Days Of Ash. That is true for sure. For me it was less immediate but richer after more plays. It is like a religious retreat where you gain more the longer you spend there.

Musically, it is all early millennium U2. The guitars sparkle below the lyrical complexities of All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Edge is showing off in his own shy way, while even shier Larry Mullen Jr is throwing inventive rhythms and Adam Clayton is conjuring robust bass grooves. Bono? Well, he is in his usual magpie building with couplets and rhyme and daringly declaring:

If love is in the air, let’s take a breath

If I sound ridiculous, I’m not done yet

The opening tribute to their creative collaborator, producer Hal Willner touches grief and hope and I love its poetic suggestions of heaven:

And slip into a dream that takes you to the other side

Of the songs in your head

Dizzy as a musical

Stupid songs you can’t forget

Beyond pretty, beyond beautiful

Wherever the strange is on parade

Wherever the music is made

You’ll be there

That last line riffs of Steinbeck’s words about Tom Joad in Grapes Of Wrath, a juxtaposition of life going on in heaven and in earth.

In A Life is about friendship, its importance in a world at war and how much we learn in our interactions:

In a life

We catch a glimpse of someone else

In your eyes

Caught a glance of myself

Scars then touches a theme that has been there in U2 down the years. Original Of The Species and Get Out Of Your Own Way have been about being yourself. Scars is a similar call:

It’s your scars that give you beauty

You’re a beauty

Don’t cover your scars

But then Bono handbrake shifts and we are at the Easter cross and the scars are those of Jesus, being crucified by the dangerous combination of church and state:

Put your hands on my hand

Feel the nails of the state

Punch holes in the innocent

To fill them with hate

When the town hall cries

For someone to blame

Making laws out of lies

And legal robes out of shame

Put your hand in my side

Feel the contours of control

The silver spikes of friendship

Traded for a soul

The touch and the taste of me

Vinegar sweet

Jesus is no sooner on the cross than Bono is singing Resurrection Song, but not detailing the events around the Garden Tomb on Easter Sunday but five good minutes of spiritual rumination to take for your retreat in the desert. Surely Richard Rohr’s influence at play:

“Love extravagantly and without regret

If there’s anything better, I’ve not heard it yet

Love is in the air, so let’s take a breath

Fear to love, my friend, and remain in death”

Like the light in Song for Someone, Resurrection is hope for holding on to.

It bleeds into Adam’s bass driven Easter Parade.

Something in me died

But I was no longer afraid

Easter parade

There’s fear again but now conquered and the Easter trilogy ends with worship:

Kyrie Eleison

Kyrie

This Greek liturgical chant meaning Christ, Have Mercy had me back thinking Gloria in excelsis Deo from October 45 years ago.

The worshipful feel and wording continues into the closer, a kind of benediction. To a soundscape of Brian Eno’s reminding us of Unforgettable Fire terrain we find ourselves singing the opening verse of Psalm 34 - “I Will Bless The Lord At All Times”.

In the sombre beauty of worship we are taken across Gaza and other world war zones and with the Psalmist, not ignoring the tragic going on around us, but holding on to God, the mercy of Good Friday, the hope of Resurrection Sunday.

That Christianity, Islam and Judaism all sing “I Will Bless The Lord At All Times, all joined by Abraham as their patriarch perhaps draws us to the question mark at the song title’s end. There is whole other layer of meaning. COEXIST is the big question rather than the blowing of each other’s civilisation off the face of the earth.

For me on an EP of strong slow burn beauties this is an astonishing wonder, one moment Leonard Cohen, next David Bowie, moody, dramatic, spiritual and dense with Psalmic resistance.

Just what we need in the soul right now. Easter Lily indeed!