Ed Sheeran loves to collaborate with other musicians, and he’s proud of his Irish heritage, so it may not come as a surprise that he’s collaborated with the biggest Irish band in the world.
Ed appears on U2’s new EP, Days of Ash, which was released, fittingly, on Ash Wednesday. It includes five new songs and a poem. Ed features on a track called “Yours Eternally“; you can hear him on the second verse. The seeds of the song were sown when U2’s Bono and The Edge traveled to Ukraine in 2022 at the invitation of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to busk in a metro station.
A few days before the performance, Ed connected Bono with a Ukrainian musician named Taras Topolia, who leads a band called Antytila. The three men then met in the subway and formed a friendship that continues to this day. Taras, who became a soldier following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inspired “Yours Eternally,” which is written in the form of a letter from a solider on active duty.
Feb. 24 will see the release of a 4 1/2-minute “Yours Eternally” documentary, which was filmed in December in Ukraine. Feb. 24 will mark the fourth anniversary of Russian’s invasion of the country.
Bono says in a statement that U2 plans to put out an album later in the year, but notes, “These EP tracks couldn’t wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow.”
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