U2’s Larry Mullen Jr. diagnosed with dyscalculia: “I can’t count, I can’t add”

nme.com:

U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. has revealed he has been diagnosed with dyscalculia.The musician opened up about his recent diagnosis in an interview with Times Radio, revealing it also explains why he makes a “pained” face when performing, as he finds counting along to music extremely difficult.“I’ve always known that there’s something not particularly right with the way that I deal with numbers,” Mullen Jr.

said. “I’m numerically challenged. And I realized recently that I have dyscalculia, which is a sub-version of dyslexia. So I can’t count [and] I can’t add.”“I am pained because I’m trying to count the bars,” he said. “I had to find ways of doing this — and counting bars is like climbing Everest.”According to the British Dyslexia Association, dyscalculia “is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics”.

It occurs across all age ranges, levels of education and abilities and affects around 6 per cent of the population.Mullen has also said that U2 were working on new material that would mark a change in sound for the band, who he hopes will tour in 2026. “I don’t think it will be what we normally do,” he said.