U2’s New Songs Refigured In a World That’s ‘on Fire’
Back in March 2016, U2 was outside of Dublin, finishing the follow- up to its 2014 album “Songs of Innocence.” But then, British and American elections shook the world, delaying the album and eventually bringing a darker, more directly political cast to some of the lyrics.
“The world had changed,” Bono said. “We needed to put things on pause to take in the scale of the change.”
The album, “Songs of Experience,” is scheduled to arrive December 1.
It appears at a moment when popular culture is gathering its spirit of righteousness and resistance — a moment that could well be suited to U2, whose pealing guitars and martial beats have, through the years, become rock’s sonic signature of idealism. “Songs of Experience” merges personal reflections with tidings from the wider world, and it calls for compassion, empathy and rectitude. “The wickedness in the world, we just let it perforate the album,” Bono said. “But it still had to be a very personal album, not a polemic.”
U2 released “The Blackout” as a performance video in August. It’s a thumping rocker that begins, “Dinosaur wonders why it still walks the earth” and later wonders, “Is this an extinction event.” In writing the song, Bono said, “I made it about democracy, not an aging rock star.”
Ever more aware of its status as a rock band that has started its fifth decade with its original lineup, the group constantly weighs both its past and its determination to move ahead.
When U2 released “Songs of Innocence,” it immediately promised a follow-up with the title readers of William Blake would expect: “Songs of Experience.” But “Songs of Experience” isn’t exactly a sequel.
“Songs of Innocence” was as autobiographical as U2 had ever been, including one song named after Bono’s mother, “Iris,” and another citing the street where he grew up, “Cedarwood Road.” In contrast, “Songs of Experience” returns to the broader strokes that fill U2’s catalog: love, fear, mortality, responsibility and hope.
Many of the songs, Bono said, are like letters addressed to specific recipients: his family, his friends, the audience, America. Above all, the new album posits “joy as an act of defiance,” Bono said.
The new songs rove from U2’s arena anthems to celestial hymns, echoes of 1950s rock and glimpses of disco and new wave.
For “Songs of Experience,” Bono and the band’s guitarist, the Edge, both spoke about hearing more innovation outside rock than within it: in R& B, hiphop and pop.
“Seeing the demise of a certain kind of songwriting, particularly in rock, it made the band determined to go there,” Bono said.
The Edge offered a simpler criterion: “On this record, we went, ‘Is it going to be played by people in a bar in 25 years?’ ”
“Songs of Innocence” was released as a free album that suddenly appeared in the libraries of iTunes users worldwide, only to be greeted by many people not as a gift but as an invasion of their private music collections — an exercise in hubris rather than generosity. Yet band members believe the giveaway introduced U2 to the newer, younger fans they see at their recent concert audiences.
“Songs of Experience” is being presented as a more old-school album, released through standard channels. U2 has been playing one of its songs, “The Little Things that Give You Away,” on its “Joshua Tree” tour, and it just released the album’s first studio single, “You’re the Best Thing About Me.” It’s as straightforward a love song as anything by U2 — sparked, band members said, by the example of Motown songs, though it ended up sounding far different.
“You’re putting out a song about your girlfriend when the world is on fire?,” Bono asked. “Yes. Joy is an act of defiance.”