For forty years, Bono has been one of the loudest and best-known advocates for globalization. So how is he feeling as a wave of nationalism has swept across the globe? For our summer 2025 cover, I headed to the South of France—where the U2 frontman shares a vacation estate with his bandmate, The Edge—to find out. What I found was a reflective, candid, pissed-off activist struggling to make sense of his new surroundings. We also, if you can believe it, had a lot of fun—and talked about his new movie and getting U2 back in the studio. You can read my full piece right here, at the link below.
– Madison Vain, senior digital director Plus: |
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The U2 frontman spent the past few years reexamining his life and career. Now he's back with new projects, new music—and a fresh sense of urgency to change the world. |
The last several years have been a time of recovery and reckoning for Bono, who turned sixty-five this spring. He made it past a serious health scare (one that he'd played down in public) and emerged with a more balanced perspective on how to enjoy the everyday pleasures in life. He faced demons from his youth that have fueled him throughout his career. And he reassessed his role in the nonprofit work that has captured so much of his passion and energy over the decades. He's gone deep within himself and come out different. Better. But as much introspection as Bono may have done here by the Mediterranean, it's not in his nature to sit idle or live in the past. The relentless drive that has propelled the singer and his band for nearly fifty years now is very much still there. And much like in his early years in the South of France, where we are sitting down for this interview, he's feeling newly energized. U2 is in the studio working on songs—perhaps the band's first album of new music in nearly a decade—and his excitement about the material is palpable. Bono, it's clear, has more stories to tell. And he believes the world needs to hear them. "I still think that we can create a soundtrack for people who want to take on the world." |
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I used to take underwear as seriously as the next guy. Which is to say I would go to Target every six to 12 months and pick whatever was on sale and fit me. It works, sure, but every shopping trip is a struggle to remember what I like and which generic or licensed clothing brands make underwear that's actually good. I was never a guy with a go-to pair of underwear. All it took to change that was a pair of Calvin Klein boxer briefs. Now I realize I never needed to get more "serious" about my underwear at all. What I needed was a seriously comfortable pair I could keep going back to every time I needed more. |
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We've doled out our fair share of advice in the Big Black Book, but we don't presume to know everything. So we reached out to 50 of the most interesting people we know—performers, designers, editors, CEOs, photographers, jet-setters, and more—to ask them for one piece of advice they'd like to share with the world. Here are their collected words of wisdom, the inaugural edition of a project we're calling the Knowledge. From expert travel tips to new philosophies on personal style, consider this your guide to a life well lived. |
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