U2 presents its new compilation album with updated themes

u2 publishes this Friday a compilation work entitled “Songs Of Surrender”, which includes 40 of his songs “reimagined and re-recorded” to reflect on the transformation of the Irish band and its four members after almost 50 years of successful musical career.

The project, which sees the light of day on Saint Patrick’s Day -patron saint of Ireland-, complements the memoir “Surrender. 40 songs, a story”, published last year by Bono, and part of an initiative by the singer himself and the group’s guitarist, The Edge.

Both took advantage of the confinements due to the pandemic to look back and undertake a deep review of some of their great songs, many of which were composed when they were just teenagers.

The now sixty-year-olds Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen (drums) and Adams Clayton (bass) have chosen to deconstruct those songsauthentic rock anthems, retouching the music and lyrics to create a much more basic and acoustic work.

In fact, there is barely a trace of electric guitars and the voice with which Bono articulates religious or protest messages, his trademark, sounds even more intimate, far removed, for example, from the original versions of “Vertigo”, “Where the Streets Have No Name” or “One”.

The new songs of “Songs Of Surrender” are divided into four sections, one for each member of U2, and it does not follow a chronological order, since the first album, called “The Edge”, starts with “One” (1991) and the The last one, “Bono”, closes with “40″ from the album “War”, the one that launched them to stardom in 1983.

In between, “Larry” strips songs like “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” or “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)”, while “Adam” erases from “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” his iconic guitar riff and “The Fly” loses its distortion and disco beat.

Taken together, this new project not only addresses U2’s transformation from its origins in Dublin to its place among the greats of pop/rock history, but also underscores the individuality of each of its artists, at one time or another. in which Bono has confessed that he doesn’t know how long U2 will last and the band faces a period without their drummer.

The quartet announced their return to the stage last February to commemorate the more than 30 years that have elapsed since the publication of “Achtung Baby” (1991), one of his most emblematic albums, with a concert residency next fall in Las Vegas (USA) in which, for the first time, Larry Mullen will not be present.

After U2’s last live performance in December 2019, Mullen underwent medical check-ups to verify that he will have to undergo surgery if he wants to continue after the fanfare at 61: “I have many parts of my body that fall off: knees, elbows, neck…”he recently acknowledged.

Perhaps it was these ailments that led The Edge (Dave Howell Evans) to design “Songs Of Surrender”, in a process that began by sending 40 fans a letter suggesting the band was working on a new project.

In the letter, the musician recalled that many of U2’s best-known songs “were written and recorded when we were kids,” so they have changed over the years to “mean something quite different to us now.”

“Some have grown up with us. Some have gotten older, but we haven’t forgotten what led us to write those songs in the first place. The essence of those songs is still with us. But how do we reconnect with that essence when we have evolved and grown so much? asked The Edge.

The guitarist has already warned that the band wanted to update some old songs to “reinvent them in the 21st century”, in line with the evolution of Bono and U2, whose last studio album was “Songs of Experience” (2017).

With information from EFE