Credit: Apple TV+

The artist Bono thought “sounded like the Declaration of Independence”

Wed 3 June 2026 2:00, UK

There has always been much debate about the purpose of rock ‘n’ roll, but if you were to ask Bono, he’d probably say something about how it makes him feel. Or, as he once put it, “If it’s anything, it’s the sound of liberation.”

One of the first times Bono fell in love with the concept of rock ‘n’ roll was when he heard The Beatles’ ‘I Saw Her Standing There’… To him, there was something so easily poetic about it, but in a thought-provoking way that made him want to dig deeper into the inspiration behind it – who was the woman they sang about, and why was she just standing there?

There was a time when he, like many, thought the song might have been about this “girl next door type” that one of the “untouchable” Fab Four couldn’t shake. Before that, though, he thought maybe it could have been a sort of maternal figure, someone who made you feel safe and welcomed. But these specifics didn’t really matter anyway, not when it had a fun flair to it that felt “transcendent”.

Many of Bono’s favourite songs have the same appeal, that inexplicable pull that he doesn’t always understand; he just knows that it cuts somewhere deep. This, in essence, is why he argues that rock ‘n’ roll is a type of spiritual experience, or at least a conduit for accessing deeper personal and societal freedom.

Reflecting on its purpose to Time, he related this feeling to some of his favourite songs and singers, and why he felt compelled to create a playlist of all of these when he turned 60. While a lot of things in the world have changed since he got his start, many of his tastes remain the same, as does his opinion on why rock ‘n’ roll is the greatest thing anyone can ever discover.

After all, on his aptly titled ‘60 Songs That Saved My Life’ playlist are songs like David Bowie’s life-altering masterpiece ‘Life on Mars?’, which he said was “proof as far as I’m concerned” of the answer to the question in the title, and The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. He also included Sex Pistols’ punk classic ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and Patti Smith’s timeless generational anthem, ‘People Have the Power’.

However, a lesser-known gem he added might be Bob Dylan’s 1989 Oh Mercy deep cut ‘Most of the Time’. Now, Bono has praised Dylan multiple times, notably in the aforementioned piece, where he said the brooding troubadour sounded like “the Declaration of Independence, with a harmonica and guitar”. But he also once told Mojo that Dylan is “there for you at every stage of your life”, which likely better explains the inclusion of ‘Most of the Time’, a song about reflecting on something painful and attempting to heal from it.

As Dylan sings in the song, “I don’t cheat on myself /I don’t run and hide /Hide from the feelings /That are buried inside… I don’t compromise /And I don’t pretend /I don’t even care /If I ever see her again /Most of the time.”

Lyrically, the song has that emotional anchor that Bono loves, that same poetic flair he fell for in the earlier Beatles classic, and the kind that transforms pain and suffering into something timeless and beautiful. His love for Dylan has shifted over time, but when it comes to music that follows him through all life’s natural shifts and patterns, these are the constant companions that remind him of that familiar “sound of liberation”.