U2: Songs of Surrender

Today a new U2 album hits the light. Ot is not an album with new songs, but the band members own favourite songs in new versions. For us U2 fans, I habe followe the band since 1979, we take what we get. However, this time I think it is a brilliant idea since these songs, I can sing the lyrics anytime, comes to life again in these new shapes. I give the album 4/5.

When Bono and The Edge reinterpret, peel back and update 40 songs from the U2 catalog, the result is more urgent than should reasonably be possible.

The album could be interpreted as another sign of the creative indecisiveness that has characterized U2 the last years.

In addition, and perhaps above all: the U2 audience already has a strong relationship with the original songs. Why would they choose to listen to the new versions instead?

That question may still remain, but after hanging out with “Songs of Surrender” for a few days, I realize that I actually like quite a bit of it. 40 songs is without a doubt too much, especially as it is not exactly the same 40 songs as in the book and that point is thereby somewhat lost. But at the same time there is something… liberated about large parts of the album. hearing, for example, “Beautiful day” with basically just piano, choir and strings, or “City of blinding lights” without everything exploding in the chorus, highlights more clearly what good songs they actually are.

Bono and The Edge also seem to have viewed the album similarly. This is largely their pandemic project, recorded at The Edge’s home in Malibu and with a number of co-producers in various studios in Europe and the US when the band’s two central figures happened to be in the same city at the same time. Adam Clayton is only here and there and Larry Mullen Jr even less.

The idea was to reinterpret the songs, look at them from the perspective of two 60-year-olds. Bono often chooses to hold back on the delivery of the lyrics – even the liberating ones – and allows himself several times to change lines, either because he is ashamed of his twenty-nine-year-old self or to update the message.

Most of all in “Walk on”, which was originally written for Aung San Suu Kyi, the political prisoner and peace prize winner in Myanmar who, after she later gained political power, was heavily criticized for her inaction in the face of the government’s persecution of Muslims. Now the song is instead about Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyj, where the line “If the comic takes the stage and no one laughs” alludes to the fact that the president is an old stand-up comedian.

Interestingly, it is far from always the most immortal classics that shine most on “Songs of surrender”. “Stories for boys”, a rather forgotten song from the debut album, becomes a small highlight as a restrained ballad with The Edge on vocals. And enough that most of “The Joshua tree” can be considered quite classic, but here it is one of that album’s less well-worn songs, “Red hill mining town”, which actually hits the hardest.

Source: AB