{"id":740020,"date":"2026-08-16T17:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T17:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740020\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T17:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T17:52:12","slug":"the-1980-song-bono-loved-for-being-unconditional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740020\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1980 song Bono loved for being “unconditional”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bono<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ MUBI<\/p>\n

Sun 16 August 2026 15:00, UK <\/p>\n

U2 were certainly never a bona fide overnight success. But there was something in those early days, the rugged hopefulness of it all, that Bono<\/a> found infinitely more endearing than any number one. <\/p>\n

In a way, that would probably be the same for any band. They may know that the quality of their work would never compare to what they are now, but the complete lack of jadedness and pretension, coupled with a sweet dose of naivety, is a chalice to the point that it\u2019s crushing to know you\u2019ll never receive it back. <\/p>\n

Undeniably, it\u2019s a rose-tinted way of looking at things, but even still, the fondness with which Bono and The Edge both reminisced on their early days<\/a> was so powerful that it was impossible not to jump on the nostalgia train. They had scores of chart-topping hits and albums to come, but there was one rudimentary song that firmly secured a place in their hearts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To all intents and purposes, Boy was a bit of a ramshackle attempt at a debut album, leaning solely on the material of U2\u2019s rather shoestring 40-song repertoire. However, \u2018I Will Follow\u2019 always felt a cut above the rest, clearly manifested in the fact that it\u2019s the only song from that early time period that the band will still happily play today. <\/p>\n

At that specific moment in the beginning of the \u201880s, Bono frankly didn\u2019t know what the hell he was doing as a musician or a writer, something he freely admitted to later down the line. \u201cI didn\u2019t really begin spending a lot of time on lyrics until halfway into the \u201880s, so this and a lot of the early songs were written very quickly \u2013 in just minutes in many cases,\u201d he confessed. <\/p>\n

But there was an unbridled approach to \u2018I Will Follow\u2019, not least because of the fact that it was tenderly written in memory of his mother, who sadly died when the frontman was just 14 years old<\/a>. In this sense, the whole of Boy was a reflection on his early years and what it took for him to become a man. It\u2019s just that no one expected that man to become a world-beating rock star.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bono spoke in general terms, but the true crux of his intended message was always more than evident. \u201cThe idea here was really just a very personal feeling, a song about unconditional love: \u2018If you walk away, I will follow\u2019. It would be high up on my list,\u201d he said, proving how the songs with the most personal memories attached are always the ones to last a lifetime. <\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

It was a sentiment echoed by The Edge, who noted he \u201cwas happier with that song than anything else\u201d that featured on Boy. Its strength was found in its simplicity, which spoke volumes to the type of songwriting that U2 would go on to create in later years. Their words have always been laid bare, with no second thoughts about it. <\/p>\n

In this sense, \u2018I Will Follow\u2019 may not be the band\u2019s most powerful or sonically technical song, but all of those things pale into insignificance when you consider what lies at the heart of it. This was a young man grieving his mother, and no matter where his lavish career would end up taking him, deep down, he would always remain that little boy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ MUBI Sun 16 August 2026 15:00, UK U2 were certainly never a bona fide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[208905,30275,10864,58176,96,128,932,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-740020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-208905","tag-1980s","tag-bono","tag-classic-rock","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-u2","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}