Bryan Alexander
USA TODAY
Published 6:17 PM EDT Mar 18, 2020
Bono is harnessing his emotions amid the coronavirus, writing and releasing a stirring new song he’s calling “Let Your Love Be Known.”
The song is the U2 frontman’s first release in three years, and is dedicated to “doctors, nurses, carers on the front line. It’s you we’re singing to,” Bono wrote on a St. Patrick’s Day Instagram post featuring the tune.
Bono added that it was “for the Italians who inspired it,” a nod to viral videos of Italian citizens who have been pictured in news footage bursting into collective song while quarantined in their homes. Bono also dedicated the song to the Irish and “ANYONE who this St. Patrick’s day is in a tight spot and still singing.”
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Wearing purple sunglasses with the sun streaming in the window behind him, Bono played the piano and sang the tune, which he said he had written “about an hour ago.”
He called it a “postcard from bubblin’ Dublin.”
Lyrics include:
You can’t touch but you can sing/Across rooftops/Sing down the phone/Sing and promise me you won’t stop/Sing your love, be known, let your love be known.
Last week, videos circulating on social media showed talian residents singing out windows or off balconies onto deserted streets after Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte placed the entire country on lockdown to combat coronavirus.
One of the most widely shared videos shows the abandoned streets of Siena, in central Italy’s Tuscan region.
A seemingly solitary voice begins singing “Canto della Verbena” – “And While Siena Sleeps.”
Other voices soon join in as the song crescendos.
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