U2’s Bono & The Edge Deliver Surprise Performance At Woody Guthrie Prize Ceremony

Irish rockers U2 received the 2025 Woody Guthrie Prize on Tuesday at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the home state of the legendary folk singer. U2 vocalist Bono and guitarist The Edge accepted the award on the band’s behalf, delivered a surprise performance and sat down in conversation with T Bone Burnett.

Presented by the Woody Guthrie Center, the Woody Guthrie Prize is awarded to those who embody “the social-conscious legacy of Woody Guthrie through music and message,” as per press materials for the event. Like many artists of his generation and beyond, Bono came to the music of Woody Guthrie through Bob Dylan.

“Bob Dylan really did bring us to the place where the song was an instrument to open up worlds,” he said during the ceremony. “And the world of Woody Guthrie, I wouldn’t have entered if not for Bob.”

“America is the greatest song still yet to be written,” Bono continued. “The poetry is there but it’s still being written… don’t imagine it will continue to be extraordinary on its own, that if you fell asleep and woke up in twenty years, the world would be fairer or freer. It won’t, that’s not the way it works.”

Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter Anna Canoni also delivered remarks: “Woody and U2 have been aligned for decades… Whether it is protesting against war and violence, standing up for humanitarian rights, singing about greed, corruption and injustice.”

In conversation with legendary producer and musician T Bone Burnett on writing protest songs, Bono read lyrics to a song that is in the works about the killing of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and consultant who was murdered by an Israeli settler in July 2025. According to the press materials: “It’s been widely reported that U2 is in the studio working on new music and this was the first glimpse of any content.”

Read the lyrcis below:

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
ONE LIFE AT A TIME

Bono and The Edge’s surprise performance at Cain’s Ballroom, their first at the famed venue since U2’s 1981 tour around their debut album Boy, began with “Running To Stand Still,” which included portions of Woody Guthrie’s “Bound For Glory.”

The duo also worked elements of Woody’s “Jesus Christ” into “Pride (In the Name of Love).” Watch that performance along with “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “One” below: