Irish rockers U2 have released a short album on Ash Wednesday titled Days of Ash, with a track celebrating radical anti-ICE activist Renee Good and ripping Trump supporters as “the people of the lie.”
The song, “American Obituary,” is dedicated to Good, who was shot in January by ICE agents after she tried to use her SUV to run one officer over on January 7 in Minneapolis.
The band begins the song claiming that Good was crushed “like a coffee cup” and goes on to exclaim that “Renee Good born to die free.”
“American mother of three,” Bono signs on, “Seventh day January / A bullet for each child, you see.”
He next memorializes Good, singing, “Three bullets blast, three babies kissed / Renee the domestic terrorist???”
Bono then claims that Donald Trump and those who support ICE are “the people of the lie.”
“What you can’t kill can’t die,” he sings, with ever-so-subtle imagery of a crucifix displayed at this point in the lyric video. “America will rise / Against the people of the lie,” he continues.
Bono told the U2 fanzine Propaganda that he was influenced by Bob Dylan with the anti-police song. “The rhythm of the lyric is a nod to one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),’” he says. “In his song the child is singing to the mother, and in ours the mother is singing to her children: ‘I love you more than hate loves war.’”
The band also included a pro-Palestinian song in the group of six new songs, titled “The Tears of Things,” ripping Israel for putting violent Hamas terrorists “into a cage” and hinting that the band thinks Palestinian “rage” is justified. “If you put a man into a cage and rattle it long enough,” Bono sings, “A man becomes the kind of rage that cannot be locked up.”
The other four songs on the new release include a song about the 2022 schoolgirl uprising in Iran, “A Song of the Future;” one about unrest in Africa, “Wildpeace;” another anti-Israel song, “One Life at a Time;” and “Yours Eternally,” a song featuring Ed Sheeran and a Ukrainian singer named Taras Topolia.
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