Due March 17 and curated and produced by The Edge, the package delivers 40 songs from the group’s extensive history that were re-recorded during sessions over the past two years and includes “a musical reimagining” resulting in a completely new recordings of each track, to include the arrangements and, in some cases, new lyrics.
"Music allows you to time travel," explains The Edge, "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. Intimacy replaced post-punk urgency. New tempos, new keys, and in some cases new chords and new lyrics arrived. A great song, it turns out is kind of indestructible.
"The process of selecting which songs to revisit started with a series of demos,” he continues. “I looked at how a song would hang together if all but the bare essential elements were taken away. The other main aim was to find ways to bring intimacy into the songs, as most of them were originally written with live concert performance in mind. Reviewing these sketch recordings with producer Bob Ezrin, it was very easy to see the ones that worked straight off the bat and those that needed more work. We all got into the sensibility of ‘less is more.’"
The 40 newly recorded tracks are collected together under each of the four band member names across four separate 'albums'.
"Hearing the songs interact, and finding the running orders for the four albums was really thrilling," adds the guitarist, "finding the surprising segues, getting a chance to DJ. Once we had four distinct albums it was easy to see who would be the figurehead for each one."
The package comes on the heels of Bono’s 2022 memoir, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” whose subtitle is a nod to the book’s forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song and accompanied by forty original drawings by the singer which appear throughout the book.
U2 are previewing “Songs Of Surrender” with a lyric video for the 2023 version of their 1984 classic, “Pride (In The Name Of Love).”
Pick up your copy of the new version here.
See also:
U2 frontman Bono performs on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
U2 frontman Bono to guest and perform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
U2 frontman Bono announces Surrender memoir book tour
U2 frontman Bono to publish memoir Surrender
Search U2 at hennemusic
