One Life at a Time by U2
Released: February 18, 2026
EP: Days of Ash
Producer: Jacknife Lee
Featured as a standout track on the surprise Days of Ash EP, "One Life at a Time" transforms what was originally an acoustic sketch into a fully realized studio anthem.
While the record culminates in the collective resistance of Yours Eternally, this track serves as the EP's quiet, individual heartbeat.
Produced by Jacknife Lee, the studio version adds a layer of sonic urgency, anchoring the EP's theme of specific loss amidst global chaos. The song cover features the face of Awdah Hathaleen, ensuring the activist's memory is physically bound to the music.
Lyrics
How much is enough
You can screw or fix things up
The world will align
One life at a time
One life at a time
One life
One life
One life at a time
Look around
What you see depends on where you stand
How you fall depends on where you land
What you know is more than you've been told
What you're feeling shapes all you see
To find the map and lose the territory
Is our story
You say you wanna save the world
Well how you gonna get that right
You say you wanna save the world tonight
You say you wanna save the world
And perfect love drives out all fear
Well how's that gonna happen here?
How's it gonna happen here?
One life
One life at a time
At a time
One life
No crime?
No crime?
Look around
What you have depends on what you hold
What you buy is what you're being sold
How you hope depends on what you dream
What you imagine is your destiny
What you forget might set your spirit free
To be the changes that have to be
A heart that listens is a mind that grows
Time doesn't pass it waits in place
Until it meets you face to face
A peaceful place is never still
The faith to crawl up every hill
Every hill
You say you wanna save the world
Well how you gonna get that right
You say you wanna save the world tonight
You say you wanna save the world
And perfect love drives out all fear
Well how's that gonna happen here?
How's it gonna happen here?
One life
One life at a time
At a time
At a time
If there's no law is there no crime
No crime?
Origins & Meaning
The Woody Guthrie Premiere
Bono first revealed early lyrics to this song at the Woody Guthrie Award Presentation in 2025. It began with a father, not a soldier. Children follow, the only witnesses. Law breaks, language buckles, hope shakes. The question is simple and brutal: If the structures fail, what remains?
One father shot
three children crying
if there is no law
is there no crime
if there is no hope
what's there to rhyme
history is written
one life at a time
A Response to Tragedy
The song was written in direct response to the July 2025 killing of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
Deconstructing Heaney
The line regarding "rhyme" is a direct dialogue with Irish poet Seamus Heaney. The famous line "Hope and history rhyme" comes from The Cure at Troy.
However, in this song, Bono asks: "if there is no hope / what's there to rhyme?" He doesn't borrow the phrase; he questions it. What happens when hope fails? When art isn't enough? The answer offered by the song is quiet but firm: History is told through lives, one by one. The repetition fixes it in memory, refusing to let it slip away.
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