Bono shares playlist of "60 songs that saved my life" to mark 60th birthday
Bono has shared a new playlist of the “60 songs that saved my life” to mark his 60th birthday today (May 10).
The U2 frontman has also announced that he plans to write a “fan letter” to the writers of each song to thank them, including Billie Eilish and Kraftwerk.
“These are some of the songs that saved my life…” Bono wrote. “The ones that I couldn’t have lived without. The ones that got me from there to here, zero to 60, through all the scrapes, all manner of nuisance. From the seriously to the silly… and the joy, mostly joy.
“I wanted to thank the artists and everyone who helped make them. They were doing the same for me. I am writing a fan letter to accompany each song to try and explain my fascination.”
Listen to ’60 Songs That Saved My Life’ in full below.
Along with the announcement of the playlist, Bono has today shared the first handful of letters, including one to Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas. Talking about the song ‘everything i wanted’, which is included on the playlist, Bono wrote: “My ears long for such empty spaces to wander… to sneak away from the density of digital surfaces with too much information.
“I step inside your song and it’s a black beauty, achingly awesomely vulnerable and terrifying, fearless and worrisome… but you are not worried by that. You express it so you can own the feeling that nags.”
Also included in the first round of notes is a message to David Bowie‘s son Duncan Jones about the song ‘Life On Mars?’. “Thanks for sharing your father with so many souls, like me, who he filled up to the brim,” Bono wrote.
Other messages in the first batch include to Daft Punk, Pharrell and Nile Rodgers for ‘Get Lucky’, to which he remarked: “How could I not be a fan of this collaboration?”, and to Kraftwerk for ‘Neon Lights’.
Read all the messages in full and listen to the playlist here.
Bono recently entered into an effort to help his homeland of Ireland obtain vital supplies in the fight against coronavirus, reaching out to the likes of South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, and Apple boss Tim Cook.
