Can't Stop Us Now - u2 SONG LYRICS

Track 11 · Song meaning · U2 · Carnaval de Luz

Fifty years after four Dublin teenagers answered a drummer's note on a school noticeboard, "Can't Stop Us Now" sounds like the band talking about itself. The second-to-last song on Carnaval de Luz is the album's clearest statement of endurance, one of the four themes U2 said shaped the whole record.

Endurance is one of the four themes the band named for Carnaval de Luz.

Track: 11 of 12

Album: Carnaval de Luz, U2's 16th studio album

Album release: 13 November 2026

Producer: Jacknife Lee

Co-writing and synths: Brian Eno

Can't Stop Us Now Lyrics

Smell the coffee
Taste the rum
And to each other learn to bow
Open your lips, swallow the sun
Throw a revolution now
Would anybody come?
Well maybe if it was just for one

I see the tree in a tangle of vines
Let’s keep each other close
Let’s sharpen each other’s lines
Hotel Ambos Mundos
“My daiquiri at the Floridita
My mojito at the Bodeguita”

Can’t stop us now
Nothing can stop us now
Can’t stop us now
Nothing can stop us
Nothing can stop us now

I see a summer down the road
Of songs and a silver sea
Where the rainbow refuses the gold
And that’s revolutionary
Where the problems that can’t be solved
Are left a mystery
Why the leave won’t leave the branch
Til the branch becomes the tree

Can’t stop us now
Nothing can stop us now
Can’t stop us now
Nothing can stop us
Nothing can stop us now

Oooh
Ohhh
Ohhh

Can’t stop us now
(All of us are better than any of us all of us)
Can’t stop us now
(All of us are better than any of us all of us)
Can’t stop us now
(All of us are better than any of us all of us)
Can’t stop us now
(All of us are better than any of us all of us)
Nothing can stop us
Nothing can stop us now

(All of us are better than any of us all of us)

Endurance as the final act

Sequenced just before the quiet farewell of the closer, this is the record's last burst of full-band force. Brian Eno's involvement links it to Go (Carnaval De Luz): the two tracks frame the album's momentum, one starting the engine and the other refusing to switch it off. Where Silencio asked who gets silenced, this title answers with volume.

Who is "us"?

The pronoun does the heavy lifting. "Us" could be the band, the fans who have followed them for half a century, or anyone standing up to the forces the album keeps circling. The rallying spirit recalls the lift of Glorify, with a harder edge. Bono spoke of an imagination that can create monsters as easily as art, and of answering them by building the fire higher. "Can't Stop Us Now" is that fire at its brightest, right before the album's gentlest moment.