From One To "40" -- We Have To Talk About The New U2 Album
March 22, 2023 7:43 PM Subscribe

It started out as Edge's pandemic project. [Rolling Stone] Why not remake some old songs in a new flavor? Larry's on light duty, at best, after back surgery, and it's lockdown anyway so let's just fuck around with a sort of front porch vibe. Two years later, and we have the totally unexpected (even by their label) new U2 project Songs Of Surrender [Wikipedia]. Forty songs spanning their career, organized into four albums. Tracks with major lyric changes marked with •. We begin with The Edge: One, studio version [from Achtung Baby], video, best live recording, most famous cover version

posted by hippybear (44 comments total) 83 users marked this as a favorite

damn. slow clap on this one, hippy.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:00 PM on March 22, 2023 [25 favorites]

I’ll admit to never having a U2 album (aside from the one Apple forced onto my phone), but if nothing else (and they *do* have some fantastic songs), seeing Until the End of the World here, and listening to the updated version reminds me that I still need to get the Criterion Blu-Ray of the movie, so I can enjoy it in all its fucked up desperate beauty.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:05 PM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

I am very, very, very protective of the "original" U2 versions. They dug on into me when I was a teenager and so, so many moments from my high school and college had their songs as the soundtrack.

But...they're right, they are older, and so am I. That's gonna be an interesting thing to face and deal with.

I'm going to be conflicted about this, but I promise my boys to keep an open mind. (Although that slowed-down version of "Pride" just still sounds SO SO WRONG - that is not a song to slow down and go quiet on, that song is supposed to be a god-damn ANTHEM and I stand by that.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:11 PM on March 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

I am very, very, very protective of the "original" U2 versions.

I'm left asking, have you never seen the band live, or never listened to any live albums or recordings?

The band itself has been recasting its own songs in new forms for decades, and while they claim not to want to look back, they seem quite willing to look back if they can reflect forward, especially with live tour arrangements.

I mean, going back to R&H they had a gospel choir sitting in on songs for ISHFWILF. Are you so bound to the album versions that this was anathema to you? And if it was not, then why would anything else be?
posted by hippybear at 8:19 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

No songs from October because they can’t be improved on I guess. It’s their best album.
posted by sineater at 8:55 PM on March 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Well,
I love their first album, Boy. Nothing after that has held any interest for me. I get that the world wide pandemic has caused much introspection. Hell even I have had moments when I thought about past mistakes (and discovered I was wrong, they weren't mistakes!). However, and I realize that other people feel differently about this (those people are wrong, but they are allowed to be), I just fucking hate acoustic, singer songwritery, weepy bullshit. So, after I get over my anger at this horrible re-imagining of songs that were fine just the way they were (and a huge pile of songs that nothing could save, well perhaps if they were covered by Johnny Cash...) I will probably give Boy another listen.
posted by evilDoug at 8:56 PM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

In most cases I consider the live arrangement of a U2 song to be the definitive version. They definitely have a habit of leaving their studio tracks "unfinished" in their own words. Unforgettable Fire was rushed, particularly the lyrics, it took them 30 years to figure out an arrangement for Red Hill Mining Town that worked outside the studio, Bono talked forever about how POP suffered because they booked the tour before they finished the album, and they basically abandoned the studio version of Every Breaking Wave, immediately recording a piano arrangement on the acoustic deluxe tracks that they stuck with live. So I'm with hippybear that they tend to treat their songs as iterative.

In the run-up to the release of Songs of Surrender, I've been thinking a lot about the episode of Song Exploder where Yo-Yo Ma talked about re-recording the Bach Cello suites. He said he wanted to re-examine a performance that defined him from very early in his career. In the same vein I understand Bono specifically looking at his earlier lyrics differently. Much of U2's music is about conveying a sense of yearning and incompleteness. Bono's performances convey a deep sense of emptiness. I feel a genuine sense of understanding and wisdom in his performances and arrangements on Songs of Surrender. Particularly on the re-worked Bad. The original is about the pain and anger of helplessness at the suffering of your friend. The new arrangement is about accepting your powerlessness.

I'm really happy to have several of these adaptations, and lots of others I'll just be glad for Bono that he got a chance to revisit them.
posted by dry white toast at 8:56 PM on March 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm left asking, have you never seen the band live, or never listened to any live albums or recordings?

Only pre-Achtung Baby. And no, I didn't squeal over the New Voices of Freedom in Rattle and Hum.

Dude, I SAID I was going to keep an open mind. I admitted to a hesitation and said I was going to try to overcome it. Why are you attacking me over that, that's mean.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:14 PM on March 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

Why are you attacking me over that, that's mean.

Not an attack. I just have known people in the past to be all "only the album versions work for me" but they're all "this live version that isn't anything like the album is so great" and they don't see that conflict within themselves. I was just working off that pattern I've seen in my past relationships. No offense or meanness meant.
posted by hippybear at 9:24 PM on March 22, 2023

I've long considered U2 to be the first band to become so awful they polluted the time stream and retroactively ruined how good their previous work was.

- via los pantalones del muerte in recent MeFi thread
posted by fairmettle at 9:32 PM on March 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

This is a labor of love, hippybear.

I don’t have anything to add to the re-imaging discussion. But I will definitely listen to two or three of these and dance wildly in my living room, to full-heartedly celebrate this incredible labor of love you shared with us.

Thank you!
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:44 PM on March 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

Mostly a no for me, but thanks for posting. Of the songs I've listened to so far, the only one I like is Two Hearts Beat As One. I want to like them, they start off kind of promising, but for me they are too acoustical and kind of improvisational, almost seem on some that Bono is not trying hard enough. Definitely need more Larry Mullen. I'm a great U2 fan, there is freshness and interest here, but it could have been much more in my opinion.
posted by blue shadows at 9:47 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bono and The Edge Tiny Desk Concert
posted by blue shadows at 11:05 PM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thank you hippybear. Although my face right now is similar to Kirk's in Wrath of Khan when Bones gave him the antique eyeglasses for his birthday.
posted by credulous at 11:08 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Amazing post. I kind of fell off the U2 wagon after Achtung Baby, but this post has sparked my interest in the new album. Thanks so much for this!
posted by jzb at 3:50 AM on March 23, 2023

Songs of Surrender on Spotify
posted by chavenet at 4:56 AM on March 23, 2023

"One" collaborations worth a listen: with R.E.M., with Mary J. Blige
posted by HeroZero at 5:11 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

But...they're right, they are older, and so am I. That's gonna be an interesting thing to face and deal with.

I was born in the same year as Bono (and Michael Stipe of R.E.M.) - 1960 - so, believe me, I feel your pain. (By my calculation, I am 29 days younger than Bono.) Watching old U2 and R.E.M. videos from the 1980s remind me of when I was that young, sigh.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 5:58 AM on March 23, 2023

The U2 Tiny Desk Concert makes me really appreciate just how excellent Nirvana was (and I am a U2 fan).
posted by srboisvert at 6:06 AM on March 23, 2023

Well, if this isn’t lovely I don’t know what is.

I am particularly fond of their early 90s work.
posted by zenon at 6:17 AM on March 23, 2023

Last night I watched Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with Dave Letterman on Disney+ (trailer), it helped give some more insight into the artistic process and reasons for them reworking these songs. I thought it was a pretty good show and worth the time.
posted by Cu_wire at 6:27 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Nice post, hippybear!

I've only listened to a few tracks so far. I was curious about the older songs like I Will Follow and Stories for Boys. I like that Edge sings SFB but so far nothing has really impressed me all that much. I did like The Fly and Two Hearts.

Perhaps my expectations are too high. I admit to being a lot less of a U2 fan than I was in the past but hearing "reworked U2 songs, mostly acoustic" is something that really excited me.

As for the Tiny Desk Concert, I'll probably watch it eventually. I started it and then saw the setlist and lost interest. I know it's cliche to say "I stopped liking U2 after album X", where the earlier X is the cooler you think you are, but I kind of wish they had done at least one song from Achtung Baby or earlier.

I always loved how they reworked Sunday Bloody Sunday, which is something they started doing way back around the Joshua Tree days. It evolved to where Edge often sings the intro. Much more powerful song, imo.
posted by bondcliff at 6:38 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

This version of One, covered by REM (with Michael Stipe in amazing voice) was one that worked into my brain in college when we could download whatever song we wanted on Limewire. Love this version.

I always had a soft spot for U2. My parents saw them in Buffalo on their first US tour when Bono was like 17. It was either that show or their next go around, where my dad said the upper balcony at Shea’s was visibly moving from everyone enjoying the music and Bono stopped the music mid-song and asked people to sit down because he was worried it would collapse. I know for a fact on their first tour my dad said at the end of the show Bono laid down onto the crowd’s hands and was passed around while singing like a living saint.

What a work of love, hippybear. Can’t wait to dig in.
posted by glaucon at 6:42 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Dammit hippybear.
Would you just make me some youtube playlists so I can save my clicky finger?

(amazingly thorough post, I appreciate the perspective and admire the thoroughness, even if it's gonna take too much clickying!)
posted by DigDoug at 6:57 AM on March 23, 2023

As a sort of b-side to Michael Stipe singing "One," I always wanted to hear REM's "Orange Crush" with Edge's dotted-eighth-note delay. It could very much be a late 80s - early 90s U2 song.
posted by secretseasons at 7:11 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Obviously, Bono can change his lyrics however he likes, but hearing familiar songs with slight differences to the words is giving me unfortunate flashbacks to the Kevin Rowland (of Dexy's Midnight Runners) cover of "Thunder Road."

(Not saying these are equivalent in quality!)
posted by HeroZero at 7:29 AM on March 23, 2023

I really like Kevin Rowland's version of Thunder Road. That whole album of covers is actually pretty good. I think people were put off by the cover art.
posted by ericthegardener at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Slower plus acoustic isn't really my favorite genre of music, but I salute them for keeping their songs alive through re-invention, and plenty of people in the world aren't me, so they can have these.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:36 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Came here for the Negativland reference and was not disappointed!
posted by cirhosis at 8:40 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

And I found this far too late to link in this FPP, but there's this ZooTV Outside Broadcast [1h20m] that is apparently official from the band and has great audio and visuals and it's hair raising in its execution.

Oh how that brought back watching that tour--I was lucky enough to see them three times in 1992-- and just how astonishing it was. I remember that one of the visuals was a quick scroll down of Usenet group names, so fast it was like the edges of the words (alt.whatever.etc) moved like a wave down the screen. Just an amazing production, even if they didn't give Jenny Holzer credit.

The music was pretty good, too.
posted by jokeefe at 11:10 AM on March 23, 2023

Flagged as fantastic. And after I realized David Cassidy would never call me, I fell in love with Bono and he's been my steadfast imaginary boyfriend for 40 years.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 11:14 AM on March 23, 2023

This album is like a monkey's paw wish for me. I've long felt that U2s older material is worth a reevaluation by them and even here I'd made a comment, maybe around the 30th anniversary of Joshua Tree, that I wish they could re-record their old albums to see what the band could do with those songs now. And now I've listened to the album a couple of times and my reaction is a uniform "Thanks, I hate it". And I guess there are a couple of reasons this album doesn't do it for me:

1. The "front porch" vibe. I get it, Larry isn't 100% and without a full drum kit it makes sense to go quiet but 40 songs of playing everything quiet gets old real quick and just feels like a Bono and Edge vanity project. I'd probably better enjoy a quiet re-imagining of a song if it was in the middle of more boisterous ones.

2. I've drifted away musically. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was the last album of theirs I enjoyed. But even that sounded too much like All That You Can't Leave Behind to me which after pretty much every previous U2 album sounding a lot different from the one before was not a good sign to me. I have listened to the newer albums but quickly moved on and forgot them because it's too similar to what came before.

3. I still want my music to be full of righteous anger. dry white toast's comment above hits on something for me:

In the same vein I understand Bono specifically looking at his earlier lyrics differently. Much of U2's music is about conveying a sense of yearning and incompleteness. Bono's performances convey a deep sense of emptiness. I feel a genuine sense of understanding and wisdom in his performances and arrangements on Songs of Surrender. Particularly on the re-worked Bad. The original is about the pain and anger of helplessness at the suffering of your friend. The new arrangement is about accepting your powerlessness.

Listening to the new version of Sunday Bloody Sunday didn't do anything for me. Bloody Sunday was just 10-11 years past when War was released. It's 50 years ago now how much have the band and Ireland changed since then? After 50 years you can still be angry but its going to be a very different anger and maybe that isn't something that I'm ready to hear from U2 yet. They're in their 60s now and it wouldn't be healthy for them to still be that angry anyway. I guess that's why I've been listening to the new Sleaford Mods album a lot more than this.

4. Some of the choices were just bad. I listen to The Fly and I can't help hearing All You Need is Love.

As a wise man once said "you glorify the past when the future's dried up" and maybe that's where we are now.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:24 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Oh my, there's probably more videos linked in this TED talk than I watched in all of last year.

I love it.
posted by flamewise at 12:36 PM on March 23, 2023

Well said, portmanteau. My feelings exactly.

...leading toward their Sphere residency in Las Vegas.

There had to be a money grab in here somewhere among the cover album and Dave Letterman thing, and there it is.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:48 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, there's the Sphere residency which is going to be an Achtung Baby/ZooTV sort of experience. Meanwhile they're apparently working on an aggressive punk guitar album which they're looking at getting out sometime next year.

I mean, the whole U2 press machine has been in full swing for a bit now, with Bono doing his book tour and this sudden secret album release (in so many formats I've lost count), and then Vegas, and then the new album...

They do keep reapplying for the job.
posted by hippybear at 1:01 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

This album was a big miss for me; none of the "reinterpretations" are improvements of either the original recorded versions or (depending) some of the live versions of the songs. I'm glad Edge and Bono had a hobby over the pandemic! But this doesn't add much for me.
posted by jscalzi at 1:14 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile they're apparently working on an aggressive punk guitar album which they're looking at getting out sometime next year.

Wow, that sounds interesting! I'll be looking forward to hearing it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:42 PM on March 23, 2023

Meanwhile they're apparently working on an aggressive punk guitar album which they're looking at getting out sometime next year.

They keep teasing me with statements like this before each album release and it never pans out.
posted by exolstice at 5:34 PM on March 23, 2023

I was a huge R.E.M. fan and a big U2 fan in the '80s. I collected B-sides and rare songs by both bands. R.E.M. lost me with Monster (1994), and U2 lost me with Achtung Baby (1991). I felt that both bands went from making their own way to following trends. I like some songs by both bands after those albums, but not very many.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:02 PM on March 23, 2023

“ R.E.M. lost me with Monster”

Same, but I came back for New Adventures in Hi-Fi. It completely bowled me over, especially “Leave.” I keep hoping that U2 has one more album I’ll love as much as that. I think there’s still some untapped great music there.
posted by jzb at 7:22 PM on March 23, 2023

I think they overthink in the studio and that's to their detriment. They've already stated that the songs really aren't done until they've lived in front of an audience for a while and find their real energy and form during that process. I guess much like a standup artist, they need the audience feedback to refine what they do. I don't know what the solution is for them, for this. I have seen bands do tours to write while they're on the road, testing out new material as they go from show to show. I can't really see U2 doing this. But maybe it would be good if they did.

I so very desperately want to get a new U2 record that entirely stuns me and sweeps me away. It's been a very long time since that happened, really. Although, going back through all these tracks to create this post, it was interesting to hear some of this material's original release for the first time in (in some cases) many many years. There's a lot of "there" there that is sort of inspiring me to go back and give things a fresh ear.

Another sense of fresh ear was my weird decision to include cover songs in this write-up. I guess because this post is essentially about a cover album, I thought it would be interesting to see what approaches others have taken toward this same material. There's a lot of really pedestrian covers out there, and some really surprising ones. The song that surprised me the most was The Fly, which as you can see I included a lot of covers because I couldn't choose just one. Plus, it's such an interesting song to begin with (being their reintroduction single years after Rattle & Hum had faded into an argued-about memory) and is SO not what they'd done before... I was thrilled with more than one of those covers.

Anyway, I'll go see them in Vegas, unless tickets are up into the body part price range. The most I've ever spent to go to a concert was to see U2, albeit to be fair it was with Pearl Jam opening for them in Honolulu, so it was a 2-fer show for me. But it also involved airfare and vacation hotspot lodging in peak season, so it was not cheap.

And yes, I know every time they're going into the studio, Bono declares this is their new guitar record. (Well, except for POP, which he talked about being a record that would merge club dance music with rock and roll. I think they sort of did that.) Doing the obligatory call back, I think maybe they should just record an album short and sweet live in the studio together, put it in the can for 6 months, and then listen to it and see how good the energy is. They just keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until it all gets lost. Axl Rose Syndrome.
posted by hippybear at 7:49 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, I'd like to say, thanks to me posting this thread, YouTube has been very kind to me and suddenly served me with two (2) of the concerts I attended over the years and then through some other searching I found a lot more of them.

In fact, I now have, either in audio only or maybe also video form, EVERY U2 show I have been to, other than one.

If anyone has a bootleg of the El Paso, TX concert of the ZooTV tour, please contact me.

(I'm sure you don't. It's never surfaced in 30 years of looking. That I just found all these others I count as a miracle of the modern age.)
posted by hippybear at 3:54 PM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

I had to drive six hours from central Oregon to Boise yesterday, and had just noticed this post the night before, so I loaded up the entire album for the drive. It's a great road trip album for floating through the snow-covered badlands. You've heard many, if not most, of the songs before, but these are new reimaginings of those old acquaintances, and a few are as broad and sprawling as the road and its environs.

The audio mix favors Bono's voice, and he seems to go to great pains to enunciate every syllable, so for once your ears don't have to fight the road noise to listen to the words. It's a fantastic driving album. It almost seems to have been made for traveling.

Speaking of the words, these guys have had forty years to hone their songwriting craft, and they started from an enlightened point to begin with, so each song is a gem. Many of the lyrics, as noted above, are refreshed in some way, so your interest is constantly piqued.

The first hour or so, I thought the album was a fun but ultimately forgettable novelty; the second became a much more interesting exercise in reminiscence and wonder. The last hour I succumbed fully to the brilliance and joy I was listening to, and even when Bono lapsed and became maudlin (come on, it's Bono), I found myself completely transported. At several points, I became teary. I mean, I haven't been along for the entire ride, but my first real concert was the Unforgettable Fire tour in Chicago, and this or that U2 song has been a soundtrack to my life at various points, and many of their lyrics talk about love and loss and life, and Bono has basically insinuated himself into everyone's consciousness at this point, so it was inevitable that my facade would crack at some point.

It's a six hour drive with rest stops, and the album is only about half that long, so the rest of the drive I bounced between Robert Glasper and Thievery Corporation and various dreamscapes, before recommitting and playing some old U2 standards. Bono was 16 years old when U2 started. He was 16 years old. He has been a rock star -- not just a singer, but a bona fide rock star -- for almost all of that time. The last song on the album is "40", that psalmic anthem centered around the lyric "How long / to sing this song?" In the context of the album, I felt that Bono et. al. were wondering how much longer they would be able to keep up this act, especially considering that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. has been at least temporarily held back from performing by back surgery. But the album as a whole had been so playful and experimental that it felt less a swan song or retrospective and more a big giant question mark, not unlike some of the works that the younger iteration of this band had come up with.
posted by vverse23 at 8:09 PM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

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