U2's new single to be played at Brit Awards

U2 ARE to debut their new single Get On Your Boots next month at the Brit Awards, the first time they will play the song live to an audience.

The show at Earls Court in London takes place on February 18th, 11 days before the release of the band’s much anticipated new album No Line On The Horizon, their first since the 2004 release of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.

Ged Doherty, chairman of the Brits committee, said: “We’re thrilled to be able to confirm that U2 have chosen the Brits for their first global TV performance of their new album. Their addition to the line-up for this year’s show makes it possibly the best we have ever had.”

The single has been kept under wraps to date, although one fan managed to record several tracks from the new album using his mobile phone when Bono played them too loudly from his beachside home in the village of Eze-sur-Mere, near Nice, during the summer. The songs were placed on the video-sharing website You Tube, but were quickly taken down. Nevertheless, some enterprising fans have recreated the guitar lick for the new single and posted it on the website.

Rolling Stone magazine, which has heard the new album, said Get On Your Boots was a “blazing, fuzzed-out rocker [which] picks up where [a previous single] Vertigo left off”.

No Line On The Horizon has been in gestation for two years. Earlier sessions with Rick Rubin, the man known as a super-producer for his work with Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers among others, were scrapped and the band teamed up with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who have worked on some of U2’s most successful albums in the past.