Love Is All We Have Left
by U2

Album: Songs of Experience (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the opening track of U2's 2017 album Songs of Experience. Bono kicks off the song by singing:

    Nothing to stop this being the best day ever

    He described the lyric to Rolling Stone as: "My favorite opening line to a U2 album."
  • Bono croons in the second verse:

    Seven billion stars in her eyes
    So many stars
    So many ways of seeing
    Hey this is no time not to be alive


    Bono summarized the lyric as "innocence admonishes experience."
  • Love and love is all we have left
    A baby cries on a doorstep
    Love is all we have left


    Bono said: "In the chorus I was pretending to be Frank Sinatra singing on the moon, a sci-fi torch song."
  • The song was one of five Songs of Experience tracks produced or co-produced by Andy Barlow, best known for being one half of the chilled downtempo electronic duo Lamb. His other credits include records by David Gray, and Snow Patrol. Asked how he hooked up with U2, Barlow told Billboard:

    "Lamb was playing Russia and my manager called me just as we were to go onstage, so I knew it must be something important. He said, 'I'm going to tell you something and you can't tell anyone.' I was like, 'I can tell Lou, right?' And he goes, 'No. You can't tell anyone. You've got to promise. I've signed a non-disclosure. I've just spoken to U2's manager and they wondered if you would like to go to Monaco and do a two-week tryout?'

    The weird thing is, when I was 19 I had a premonition that I was going to one day produce a U2 album. And then the even weirder thing is, 24 hours before I got the call my best friend said to me, 'What do you want to do next?' And I said, 'I'd love to do a U2 album. Wouldn't that be something?' Literally 24 hours later my manager called with the offer."

Comments: 1

  • Bosal from San AntoIs the 7 billion stars reference to the earth's population at the writing?
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