U2 Songs of Surrender

Released: March 17. U2 revisit their four-decade legacy with a collection of 40 of the band's best-loved tracks re-recorded for an all-new compilation ...

Perhaps we’re being harsh; within ‘Songs of Surrender’ is undoubtedly a strong album of material that could, if edited down to a concise 12-15 songs, have breathed new life into the material without becoming overbearing. But sometimes less really is more and at 40 songs, the album is less a spark of inspiration and more of an indulgence that doesn’t quite live up to its hype. New tempos, new keys, and in some cases new chords and new lyrics arrived.”

40 songs from their back catalogue, re-imagined, reborn and re-loved.

For the most part, that also serves to remind us just how bloody magnificent they were in the first place. There are some creative mis-steps, like the calypso feel to ‘Get Out Of Your Own Way’, while the reggae take on ‘The Miracle Of Joey Ramone’ doesn’t work at all. For the most part, these are more intimate, often acoustic readings of the classic texts, although some veer in a vastly different direction to the originals. They have also tampered with the lyrics on a few songs that Bono admitted in Surrender were “never quite written.” Thus, Boy’s big two are given more than a make-over. Thus, ‘Stories For Boys’ is a wonderfully restrained, piano-led ballad; ‘Every Breaking Wave’ showcases Bono’s ability to not just hit but hold a high note; and ‘Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’ becomes a balm for the soul. [U2](https://www.hotpress.com/u2) have always been more than a legacy band.

One word kept coming up when going through the forty songs of U2's mammoth release Songs of Surrender, and that word was: why?

Bono may switch a few lyrics and a few tunes may soar higher than the original, such as the marching drums and rising brass of the dramatic “Red Hill Mining Town”. That is the overarching point here, no song makes a listener forget about the classic originals. The resulting unwieldy quadruple album manages to be overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.

NEW YORK — In reimagining 40 of their best-known songs, U2 recognized that many fans would experience them through earphones connected to a device in their ...

“I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that we could go forward with different members,” The Edge said. Squeeze’s “Spot the Difference” makes sport of how they tried to make new recordings indistinguishable from the originals. “Two Hearts Beat as One,” the original a high-octane rock dance song, now has a slinkier, sexy vibe and is one of four songs where The Edge takes lead vocal. The band is fairly democratic in taking songs from throughout its catalog, although 1981’s “October” album and 2009’s “No Line on the Horizon” are not represented. “There’s a sort of gladiatorial aspect to live performances when you’re in that situation,” he said. That was one thought behind “Songs of Surrender,”coming out this week.

U2, that most widescreen of bands, are stripped back to a minimalistic intimacy on this mammoth career retrospective.

Dirty Day, the scuzzy industrial cacophony from Zooropa, is played on cello and features a half-whispered vocal that recalls Matt Johnson tearing himself apart on Soul Mining. Lesser-known tracks (Lights of Home, Every Breaking Wave, Invisible, Get Out of Your Own Way) do bloom under the new interpretations - and who among us thought I Will Follow would sound so damn good played on a dulcimer? On the same song, Bono also finally corrects his confusion between ante-meridiem and post-meridiem. But as this long album develops, things crystallise, and SOS begins to make some kind of sense. Always a spiritual experience for their fans, many of these reworked tracks come bathed in a luminous religiosity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.

There is plenty to find annoying about U2. The self-importance, the grandiosity, the world-saving tendencies of Bono and, most of all, the overriding ...

Songs of Surrender,” U2 (Universal) Imagine walking into your living room and all your stuff is there, but it's different. The sofa has moved, the bookcase ...

Bono extracted a great deal of surprise on last year's Surrender memoir. It would have been rude if he'd skipped the stories about Bowie, Sinatra and the ...

It seems that Edge has led with the making of this new album, a job of "reimagining". In the lyric of Stuck in A Moment You Can't Get Out Of, Bono tries to make a plea deal with Hutchence. It makes sense with the book on your lap, but otherwise, the album may not convince. A story that deeply resonated in Surrender was the death of Michael Hutchence and collateral hurt with Paula Yates, Bob Geldof and Helena Christensen. [Lou Reed](https://www.loudersound.com/features/lou-reed-best-album-guide) and his partied-out whisper and it serves him well across the record. Next up, Bono took liberties with the format of the audio book, accenting the life events with song fragments.

Zane Lowe joined Bono and The Edge of U2 on a road trip to Joshua Tree to discuss the group's new album, 'Songs of Surrender.'

“And in with this collection, we were sort of trying to listen to them again and trying to think, well, first of all, will they hold up? Will they stand up to being broken down outside of the firepower of a rock and roll band like U2? And this idea, I’d been knocking around for a while, to try some more of our songs in a stripped-down way that we had done over the years. We could just do it and see how it worked. I think it was a lot of opportunism because of the lockdown. This was a golden opportunity to see where it would take us.

"Reimagining and re-recording" 40 tracks sounded like an arduous task for U2 and their fans — thankfully, there are some gems to be found.

Altered lyrics to the ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ single ‘Walk On’ reference war-torn Ukraine, with Bono defiantly singing: “And if the dancer on the street wears a veil of tears / It’s a dance no army can defeat.” Early single ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’, which was produced by the late Factory Records legend Martin Hannett, has been modified with jaunty acoustic licks and twinkling keys for an alternative take that is both moving and uplifting. Sure, some of the Irish four-piece’s biggest songs (‘Pride’, ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, ‘The Fly’) have been stripped of their epic brilliance, but a number of U2’s early tracks and deep cuts have been thoughtfully reworked here through older and wiser eyes. Further uninspiring takes on ‘With Or Without You’ and ‘One’ followed, as did the increasingly unshakable belief that maybe these songs shouldn’t have been messed with in the first place. Backed by just a cellist, a harpist and musical director Jacknife Lee, the frontman breathed new life into his band’s stadium classics by breaking them down into stirring, heartfelt stories of his own. The youthful post-punk urgency of ‘Stories For Boys’, for instance, has been transformed into a poignant, plinking piano ballad which gives off an air that life has become complicated with age.

With their first release in six years, Ireland's Finest reinterpret forty (!) songs from their catalog—a big swing from a group that's never been afraid to take ...

The Edge has said that Songs of Surrender was made with the awareness that most people listen through earbuds now, which is a telling explanation of the trade-off being made on Songs of Surrender. Author and music journalist Alan Light is the former Editor-in-Chief of Vibe and Spin magazines. It’s obvious to say that the earliest and latest material benefits more than the big hits, since most of us are less invested in them, and because the underwhelming response to U2’s last few albums means there are still gems to uncover (“Cedarwood Road” is certainly a keeper, though “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” is an improved arrangement of a still-uninteresting song). “Get Out of Your Own Way” adds a charmingly knockabout groove, while “Two Hearts Beat As One” (one of four songs featuring Edge as lead singer) gets lightly disco-fied. (Songs from almost [all fourteen of their albums](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/g28448100/best-u2-albums-ranked/) are included; nothing from 1981’s October or 2009’s No Line on the Horizon made the cut.) [Elvis](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/g32668583/elvis-presley-life-in-photos/) in the boxing ring on the “comeback special” to the MTV Unplugged series to pretty much every time Bob Dylan steps on stage.

Songs of Surrender finds the Dublin band remaking no fewer than 40 of their songs. The concept is linked to Bono's recently published memoir Surrender, whose 40 ...

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The collaborative project U2SOS40, featuring 40 new visual interpretations of U2's music, has been launched by Island Records and Interscope to mark the ...

[U2](https://www.udiscovermusic.com/artist/u2/)’s music, has been launched by Island Records and Interscope to mark the release today (17) of the band’s [Songs of Surrender](https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/u2-announce-new-album-songs-of-surrender/) album. [Pride](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/faw4nbi0T18) [Sunday Bloody Sunday](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tc2fuvPFsCs) The Irish Examiner asks: “What is left when you strip everything away? [Forty artists and creators](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL80sr_OFD9CEFSpXyOd9ePokYOzxIUdOO) from around the world were invited to create a 60-second piece of content, each of them soundtracked by one of the new recordings from the album. [The record](https://u2.lnk.to/U2sos), featuring 40 of their most seminal songs re-recorded and reimagined, has been praised as “a stunning showcase” and “ uniquely revealing and emotionally resonant.” [Shop the best of U2’s discography on vinyl and more](https://shop.udiscovermusic.com/collections/u2).

With “Songs of Surrender,” an album of 40 reimagined songs, and “A Sort of Homecoming,” a documentary on Disney+, the Irish band pauses to reflect.

But for most of “Songs of Surrender,” less is simply less. [“Out of Control,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4u83iwMTpU) which in 1979 had jabbing, buttonholing electric guitar and bass lines, has become a cozy, cheerfully strummed self-affirmation, very much in control. “Songs of Surrender” does have a few clever second thoughts about U2’s catalog. The remakes on “Songs of Surrender” often strip away too much. One of U2’s enduring strengths has been the way its songs ennoble yearning and turbulence. In the 1990s, leery of its own pretensions, U2 remade itself with electronic beats and artifice until it came to a dead end with its 1997 album, “Pop.” In the 2000s, it circled back to rock beats and sincerity, but its music was pervasively infused with the latest technology. And the more we’ve taken a song to heart, the more its sonic details resonate. “Unplugged” was MTV’s tribute to the recording-business cliché that a great song only needs chords and a voice to reveal its quality, as if everything else is embellishment. “A Sort of Homecoming” also digresses, pointlessly, with attempts at comedy recalling Letterman’s “Late Show” shticks. “Songs of Surrender” is an act of renunciation, drastically scaling down songs that once strove to shake entire stadiums. In a startling change, the band will have a substitute drummer, Bram van den Berg, rather than Mullen, who has been dealing with injuries to his [elbows, knees and neck](https://www.iheart.com/content/2022-12-05-larry-mullen-jr-has-fans-wondering-if-he-plans-to-leave-u2/). And now, in the pandemic era, U2 is looking back even further.

Roll your eyes if you want (and plenty will) — but the Irish icons' four-disc collection of 40 reimagined classics is far more enjoyable and satisfying than you ...

The Edge adds: “Hearing the songs interact, and finding the running orders for the four albums was really thrilling; finding the surprising segues, getting a chance to DJ. The Edge says of the project: “Music allows you to time travel, and we became curious to find out what it would be like to bring our early songs back with us to the present day and give them the benefit, or otherwise, of a 21st century reimagining. What started out as an experiment quickly developed into a personal obsession as so many of our songs yielded to a new interpretation.