The 1997 song U2 found “impossible” to perform after the September 11 attacks: “Your own pain”As much as U2 frontman Bono likes to view himself as a man of many talents, no songwriter can predict the future and how their creation may be shaped by global events many years down the line. In the case of U2 and their 1997 song ‘Please’, it falls into neither of those categories. Instead, the lyrics were unintentionally too close to the bone in a post 9/11 world, which sent us all into a collective state of mourning that the US has never quite recovered from. Bono added in U2 by U2, “It was the Docklands bombing in London that it referred to and the breakdown of peace talks in Northern Ireland but after 9/11 it became impossible to sing.” While it wasn’t in the form of ‘Please’, U2 would also become integral to the rebuilding process for New Yorkers.