These 60 Songs Saved Bono's Life

U2 frontman shares list to mark his 60th birthday
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted May 11, 2020 5:00 AM CDT
These 60 Songs Saved Bono's Life
In this June 11, 2018 file photo, Bono of U2 performs during a concert at the Apollo Theater in New York.   (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

Bono turned 60 on Sunday, and to mark the occasion, the U2 frontman released a playlist of the "60 Songs That Saved My Life," CNN reports. "These are some of the songs that saved my life," he writes in a statement. "The ones I couldn't have lived without... the ones that got me from there to here, zero to 60... through all the scrapes, all manner of nuisance, from the serious to the silly... and the joy, mostly joy." He will also be writing an individual tribute to each and every song, but only six of those have been released so far. A sampling:

  • Daft Punk featuring Pharrell, "Get Lucky": "Dear Pharrell, you are a reason to believe in what's possible... you are a reason to believe in THE IMPOSSIBLE. ... A song like this shouldn't be, but it is. Hallelujah!"

  • Billie Eilish, "everything i wanted": "My ears long for such empty spaces to wander... to sneak away from the density of digital surfaces with too much information... I step inside your song and it's a black beauty, achingly awesomely vulnerable and terrifying, fearless and worrisome."
  • David Bowie, "Life on Mars": To Bowie's son Duncan, Bono writes, "When I heard your Dad's song LIFE ON MARS? on the radio in 1973, I was hiding under the covers of my bed in 10 Cedarwood Road listening to a pirate radio station called Radio Caroline. ... The song was answering a much more important question when I was 13... Is there intelligent life on earth? It was proof as far as I'm concerned."
  • Massive Attack, "Safe From Harm": "What a voice you have, what a song we have, what a picture you all paint, what a wicked world we sometimes walk through... and yes, we want to make it better for everyone but somewhere in that bargain we want a safe place to fall ourselves."
  • Kraftwerk, "Neon Lights": "NEON LIGHTS is a song that brought into being a future that has now become so familiar, it is easy to forget just how strange it was."
Access the full playlist here or scroll through the notes as they're released here. (More Bono stories.)

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