Synopsis

Bono performs a stark, personal interpretation of Marvin Gaye's "Save the Children" against the restless nighttime streets of Times Square. Positioned near a peep-show entrance and in a shadowed doorway, he watches pedestrians, street characters, and staged passersby move through the urban landscape. The video avoids conventional charity imagery, placing the song's concern for vulnerable children within a crowded city where loneliness, poverty, and indifference coexist. Bono's restrained performance gives the clip a somber, observational mood.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made to accompany Bono's cover of Marvin Gaye's "Save the Children," released on the 1995 tribute album "Inner City Blues: The Music of Marvin Gaye."

• Bono recorded the track at STS Studios in Dublin in late 1994. Nellee Hooper produced the recording with Bono, and Marvin Gaye's spoken voice is incorporated into the arrangement.

• Rather than film Bono in Africa surrounded by children, the concept presented him as part of a wider urban population facing shared danger and uncertainty.

• The Times Square shoot took place before the neighborhood's later redevelopment and cleanup. Filming was kept discreet, running overnight from midnight until 8 a.m., with Bono moved out of public view between takes.

• Bono is shown smoking while seated outside a peep show, an intentionally unglamorous image that reinforces the video's downbeat portrait of the city.

• The footage was also connected with the television promotion surrounding the "Inner City Blues" project, a larger Marvin Gaye documentary and music special.