U2 Beats The Mexico City Rain In New Video

After months of cryptic teases, surprise EPs and a highly publicized video shoot in Mexico City, U2 has officially returned with “Street of Dreams,” the first single from the band’s still-untitled new studio album, due later this year. The project will mark Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.’s first full-length album of new material since 2017’s Songs of Experience.

Produced by longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee, “Street of Dreams” is accompanied by the aforementioned video, which was filmed earlier this spring in Mexico City. According to the band, filming near Plaza Santo Domingo drew a large crowd despite thunderstorms and heavy rain, with a power failure eventually leading a local family to invite the group into their apartment so scenes could be filmed from a balcony.

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Lyrically, “Street of Dreams” mixes prayer, protest and optimism, with Bono singing, “All the doors are open on the street of dreams,” before pivoting to the refrain “Justice, an obsession on the street of dreams.” The bilingual chorus — “La calle, calle de los sueños” — gives the song a distinctly Latin American flavor, while lines such as “Don’t you give up on your dream for the many not just the few” place it squarely in U2’s familiar territory of collective hope and social conscience.

The video was directed by Cliqua and produced by Somesuch & Co., with executive producer Daniella Manca and producer Roisín Audrey Moloney. Beyond the storm-soaked street scenes, the clip captures the chaotic intimacy that has long fueled the band’s best visual work: fans pressed against barriers, improvised filming locations and the four members huddled together in the middle of a city that seemed to adopt them for a night.

U2’s upcoming album is the long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Songs of Experience, but the band has not been shy about dropping new music in recent months in the form of the surprise EPs Days of Ash and Easter Lily. In a spring note to fans, Bono described the band as being deep in “wilderness years,” still working toward a “noisy, messy” full-length album meant for the stage. In the meantime, the EPs are meant to function as raw, thematic snapshots from the veteran Irish quartet.

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