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Sunday, January 22, 2017 10:30am ET by  

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U2 on the music world supporting political activism

Rockers U2 have opened up about their new album and revealed that they're just cementing the tracklisting and are conscious of the message their songs contain. 

Chatting to Q magazine about the project, bass player Adam Clayton confessed that the main challenge is finding a set of songs that everyone is happy with where the final tracklisting is concerned: "We've an abundance of great ideas and it's really about identifying what to finish and how to finish it.''

Member The Edge added: "That's the gift and the curse of this record. The ordeal is getting all four members to agree on the same dozen songs."

He also weighed in on the idea that musicians have some kind of responsibility to address social and political issues in their work and admitted that while they don't feel a pressure to do that, they are aware that they have a huge platform from which to use their collective voice:

"I don't know if we feel a responsibility so much. Just that there are moments where you just feel like, 'Wow, someone has got to write a great song about this and hopefully it will be us, so let's have a go.'"

"Coming out of the post-punk era, we were inspired by The Clash, Patti Smith, Television - innovators who also had one foot in the worlds of poetry and literature and the other in political activism. That's deeply embedded in our band. One of the reasons we write a song is to crystallise something of significance for ourselves and, hopefully, other people."

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Watch a trailer for the band's forthcoming tour here:

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