U2 will release a compilation entitled Songs of Surender in March containing 40 reworked version of tracks from throughout their 40-plus year career. The collection, a companion to singer Bono’s recent memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, is slated to drop on March 17 and feature revamped takes on such beloved hits as “One,” “Bad,” “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “Desire,” “With Or Without You” and “I Will Follow,” among others.
The news was announced on Tuesday (Jan. 10) in a minute-long trailer (which featured the word “new” slashed out and replaced with “re-imagined” to describe the album) set to an unplugged, intimate version of the band’s soaring 2000 anthem “Beautiful Day.” The video features a Sgt. Pepper‘s-like animated montage of pictures from throughout the group’s career to hype the album that features 10 selections from each member.
Sone lucky fans said they got a physical letter (in numbered envelopes) from guitarist The Edge that explained the inspiration behind the album, with some posting what is purported to be a personal message tied to the hashtag #U2SOS40.
Trending on Billboard
“When a song becomes well known, it’s always associated with a particular voice,” The Edge’s handwritten letter begins. “I can’t think of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ without the reedy timbre of Bob Dylan or ‘All the Time in the World’ without the unique voice of Louis Armstrong. So what happens when a voice develops and experience and maturity give it additional resonance? U2 have been around long enough to know what that is like. It’s true for us all, but it’s particularly true for Bono.”
It goes on to note that most of U2’s songs were written and recorded when the quartet were a bunch of “very young men,” and that they mean something different to the now 61- and 62-year-old members. “Some have grown with us. Some we have outgrown. But we have not lost sight of what propelled us to write those songs in the first place,” he wrote. “The essence of those songs is still in us, but how to reconnect with that essence when we have moved on, and grown so much? Music allows you to time travel and so we started to imagine what it would be like to bring these songs back with us to the present day and give them the benefit or otherwise, of a 21st century re-imagining. What started as an experiment quickly became a personal obsession as so many early U2 songs yielded to a new interpretation.”
The guitarist known for his epic, echoing riffs said the post-punk urgency of the originals has been replaced with intimacy, with new keys, new chords, new tempos and even some new lyrics. “It turns out that great song is kind of indestructible,” he said. “Once we surrendered our reverence for the original version each song started to open up to a new authentic voice of this time, of the people we are, and particularly the singer Bono has become. I hope you like our new direction.”
In a press release issued on Wednesday morning (Jan. 11), the band’s label, Island Records/Interscope, confirmed the news, revealing that the Edge-curated and produced collection of “re-recorded and reimagined” song from across U2’s catalog were laid down in sessions over the past two years. The first track from those sessions, a stripped “Pride (In the Name of Love),” was released on Wednesday as well (listen to it below).
Bono has been on a cross-country press tour for his memoir in 40 songs, with RS noting that at the end of the book released in Nov. the singer noted that the Surrender sessions happened during the COVID-19 lockdown. He said that the project gave him a chance to “live inside those songs again as I wrote this memoir,” as well as revisit some lyrics that have been “nagging me for some time. The lyrics on a few songs that I’ve always felt were never quite written. They are now. (I think).”
U2’s most recent album was 2017’s Songs of Experience.
Listen to the revamped “Pride” and see the Songs of Surrender trailer, one of the letters and the full track list below.
Songs of Surrender track list:
Side 1 – The Edge
1. “One”
2. “Where The Streets Have No Name”
3. “Stories For Boys”
4. “11 O’Clock Tick Tock”
5. “Out Of Control”
6. “Beautiful Day”
7. “Bad”
8. “Every Breaking Wave”
9. “Walk On (Ukraine)”
10. “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”
Side 2 – Larry
1. “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”
2. “Get Out Of Your Own Way”
3. “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”
4. “Red Hill Mining Town”
5. “Ordinary Love”
6. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”
7. “Invisible”
8. “Dirty Day”
9. “The Miracle Of Joey Ramone”
10. “City Of Blinding Lights”
Side 3 – Adam
1. “Vertigo”
2. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
3. “Electrical Storm”
4. “The Fly”
5. “If God Will Send His Angels”
6. “Desire”
7. “Until The End Of The World”
8. “Song For Someone”
9. “All I Want Is You”
10. “Peace On Earth”
Side 4 – Bono
1. “With Or Without You”
2. “Stay”
3. “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
4. “Lights Of Home”
5. “Cedarwood Road”
6. “I Will Follow”
7. “Two Hearts Beat As One”
8. “Miracle Drug”
9. “The Little Things That Give You Away”
10. “40”