U2 announce ‘Songs of Surrender’, project featuring 40 re-recorded songs
LEGENDARY rock band U2 will be releasing Songs Of Surrender on March 17. Songs Of Surrender is a collection of 40 songs from the band’s catalogue that spans nearly 50 years.
The twist to this collection is that the songs were re-recorded and reimagined for 2023 in sessions over the last two years.
The first track from this new set of recordings is Pride (In The Name Of Love), which was made available on January 11.
A press release sent to IOL Entertainment explains: “Songs Of Surrender is curated and produced by The Edge, and sees the band revisit some of the most celebrated songs of their 40+ year career, including With Or Without You, One, Beautiful Day, Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Invisible, for a musical reimagining resulting in a new recording of each track, to include the arrangements and, in some cases, new lyrics.”
The Edge (real name David Howell
Evans), is the lead guitarist, keyboardist and backing vocalist of the band.
He added: “Music allows you to time travel, 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 added. “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.”