Last week, after Bono and Edge accepted the Woody Guthrie Prize on behalf of U2 and performed a six-song acoustic set, they sat with fellow musician and producer T Bone Burnett for a conversation on art and activism.

Bono said, “You can’t write a song to order,” before sharing new lyrics from a work in progress, written after the July 2025 murder of Awdah Hathaleen, the Palestinian activist and consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, directed by Israeli Yuval Abraham and Palestinian Basel Adra.

Adra had described the killing of a friend in South Hebron Hills by an Israeli settler as an attempt to erase his people off the face of the earth “one life at a time.”

Bono said he called Edge, because Adra’s phrase "one life at a time" was haunting him. "The phrase can work both ways. You can break or make the world one life at a time.” Edge had some music that fit what started to become this "haunting" song, with Bono adding, "We didn’t have much choice about this… That’s how songs work.”

Here are the lyrics:

One father shot

Three children crying

If there is no law

Is there no crime?

If there is no hope,

What’s there to rhyme?

History is written

One life at a time

One life at a time

Look around

Who stole Abraham who stole his words?

Stole the colors from the flowers

Stole the song from the birds?

Who stole Mohammad locked him in a cage?

Made God a mirror of our own rage?

“Don’t shoot my father” his three children are crying

Innocence flees the scene of the crime

We can make or break the world

ONE LIFE AT A TIME

U2 have been working on a new album, their first studio effort of original material since 2017's Songs of Experience.

Triple A Daily

Keefer