U2 tip their hat to Rosalía on Carnaval de Luz

Nearly a decade on from Songs Of Experience, the first named track has been confirmed, and Bono has joked that the subject became famous faster than the record.

U2 have confirmed that their forthcoming album *Carnaval de Luz* includes a track titled ‘The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)’. Bono has called the Spanish singer an “extraordinary artist” and noted that the band normally write about people in jail or the dead, adding it is “just a little embarrassing that she became so popular before we put out the song”.

The album is the follow-up to 2017’s *Songs Of Experience* and is due on 13 November. The tracklist detail and Bono’s comments emerged this week. The song is one of several new compositions. No additional singles or tour plans have been announced.

A long gap in the studio

For a band formed in Dublin in 1976, the wait between full albums of new material has stretched further than at any previous point in their career. U2 — Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. — began in post-punk and built a sound that remained anthemic even as it evolved. Bono’s open, declarative vocal style and the Edge’s chiming, effects-heavy guitar have been at the centre, with lyrics that have long mixed the personal and the sociopolitical and often carry spiritual imagery.

The early sequence still defines how each new release is measured. *Boy* arrived in 1980, *October* in 1981, *War* in 1983, then *The Unforgettable Fire* in 1984, the same year as the live album *Under a Blood Red Sky*. Wide-awake EPs and later stadium-era records followed; the group’s reputation as a live act, built on elaborate productions across decades of touring, has rarely dimmed even when the studio pace slowed.

In the years after *Songs Of Experience*, the catalogue has focused on reworkings and archival releases rather than a straight successor. *Songs of Surrender* arrived in 2023, recasting earlier songs in new arrangements. The single *Atomic City* came the same year. Live and “Virtual Road” packages have continued to appear, drawing on the Zoo TV and PopMart eras and on the *iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE* run, with a *Zoo TV (Live in Dublin, 1993)* EP in 2024 and the *Stories Of Surrender* EP, featuring the Jacknife Lee Ensemble, in 2025. Against that backdrop, *Carnaval de Luz* is the first full album of new songs the band have scheduled in nearly a decade.

A living subject, named in the title

Bono’s aside about the band’s usual subjects — people in jail or the dead — makes the choice of Rosalía stand out. Naming a contemporary artist who is still in the midst of her career, and putting that name in the title in parentheses, is a clear departure from the memorial and political frames that have often shaped U2’s writing. The remark about her popularity landing before the song is out reads as wry rather than defensive: a recognition that the subject moved faster than the record.

What the rest of *Carnaval de Luz* holds is still unknown. Whether the album leans back toward the widescreen rock of the classic period or stays closer to the more reflective tone of later work has not been revealed. Production credits, remaining titles and any sequencing details remain under wraps. Release plans, further singles and a tour that might follow have not been set out.

For listeners who have followed the four from the early Dublin records through the stadium years, the wait for new songs has been the longest of their career. A named track, a living dedicatee, and Bono’s willingness to explain the awkward timing are the first concrete signs of how that wait may end. Until a date and a full tracklist arrive, ‘The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)’ is the marker — a song about craft and admiration, written by a band that has spent most of its life on other kinds of subjects.