Shut your eyes, open your ears and it could be 2005 all over again. Madonna has just released a new album, Confessions II, chasing the glitter-bomb, leotard-clad dance-floor highs of her 2005 opus Confessions on a Dancefloor. <\/p>\n
Now here are U2<\/a>, dropping the first single on Tuesday from their forthcoming studio album, their first in nine years, and sounding for all the world like we\u2019re back in the era of their 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Street of Dreams is a buzzy, uplifting number that has the likable zip of the HTDAAB favourite Vertigo, and every bit of its radio-friendly sheen. <\/p>\n Unos, dos, tres, catorce? This time you\u2019ll be hitting up Google Translate to hear Bono<\/a> sing \u201cLa calle, calle de los sue\u00f1os \/ All the doors are open on the street of dreams\u201d against sun-dappled guitars from the Edge building firmly skywards. (La calle de los sue\u00f1os literally means the street of dreams.) <\/p>\n Positive, affirmative, a little self-helpy; it\u2019s musically neat as a pin and lyrically about as simple. \u201cYour dream needs you \/ Your life (gonna find you) \/ Your fear (not gonna blind you) \/ Random angels (gonna guide you).\u201d<\/p>\n The sound of ambition is writ large on the record. Unlike their politically strident and deservedly well-received EP Days of Ash, from earlier this year, Street of Dreams is an unmistakable stab at garnering radio airplay, one that alongside Madonna\u2019s Danceteria has a genuine shot of making it on to playlists around the world designed for both Gen X and Gen Z \u2013 no mean feat for either artist. <\/p>\n That\u2019s if the programmers are kindly disposed to the band, who in September will celebrate 50 years since their formation, when Larry Mullen jnr<\/a> posted a note \u2013 \u201cDrummer seeks musicians to form band\u201d \u2013 on the school noticeboard at Mount Temple Comprehensive in Dublin. <\/p>\n It helps that they\u2019ve been taking some notes from the Charli XCX playbook. <\/p>\n As the song opens, Bono\u2019s vocal arrives multitracked, stretched and slightly tweaked, layering and building until the Edge<\/a>\u2019s architectural guitars take over. The four-piece also follow modern methodology faithfully: don\u2019t bore us, get to the chorus. (This is a trick they didn\u2019t adopt on their other EP from this year, Easter Lily, whose six-minute song Easter Parade is a stunner.)<\/p>\n Modern music doesn\u2019t do long intros \u2013 no Phil Collins\u2019s In the Air Tonight here. That\u2019s for the live concerts, where U2 have always had the upper hand: their Las Vegas shows to launch the state-of-the-art Sphere venue ran triumphantly for 40 shows in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n If Street of Dreams could pass for apolitical, the more subtle machinery around the song might not be. Their use of Spanish echoes the decision made by Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl half-time show, where he performed primarily in Spanish, a first, in a move that some conservatives viewed as a protest against US policies. (US president Donald Trump called his performance an \u201caffront to the Greatness of America\u201d.)<\/p>\n