U2 | Songs of Surrender (2023)

U2’s newest release is Songs of Surrender. It will be released on March 17, 2023. The album will include newly recreated versions of older U2 songs. The album comes in multiple formats, with 40-tracks, 20-tracks, or 16-track versions available in most regions. A 17-track option in Japan. The album features old U2 songs, re-recorded and re-imagined by the full band during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It opens with “One” and closes with “40”. In an attempt to appeal to a wider audience a wide variety of colours and formats of the album were made available. The album is produced by The Edge, and co-produced by Bob Ezrin. Bono, Duncan Stewart, Declan Gaffney and Richard Rainey are also credited with production on various tracks.
News of the album and its title first leaked on April 1, 2022 via U2Songs.com. However, prior to that Adam Clayton revealed the band were working on such a project in 2021… U2Songs.com

U2: Songs of Surrender

…via U2 X-Radio, sharing, “Well, you know we are playing around with rearranging some of the songs that we have and setting them in a more acoustic environment. Edge got a bit of a bee in his bonnet and said you know, no pun intended, said let’s look at these songs and imagine them in a different context. So we are playing around with that. He’s putting a lot of work into changing the keys, and moving them onto piano and that sort of thing. And hopefully we will have something towards the end of the year that will show a different light on U2. I think it’s an opportunity to explore different versions of the band in a way. Because it’s very much the early days, it’s embryonic, it could go somewhere between Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash – very stripped down and bare – towards something that is very lush.” At the time Adam was not confident on how the material would be released, and whether it would be a single album, or a series of EPs… U2Songs.com

U2 have always dealt in grand gestures. No other rock artists from the world of post-punk chased megastardom with the same missionary zeal: they seldom made any bones about wanting to be the biggest band in the world, something they duly achieved in grandstanding style. Their tours have involved everything from stage sets so big they required aircraft warning lights to prank calling the White House to the highest-resolution video screen ever seen at a gig: the most recent one grossed $390m. Even when they screw up, it’s on a monumental scale: the PopMart tour of 1998, with its malfunctioning 40ft motorised mirrorball – or was it a giant lemon? – that got stuck; the debacle of Songs of Innocence’s unexpected appearance in 500 million iTunes users’ libraries. The Guardian

“This is a song of surrender,” Bono ad-libs on a low-key, acoustic version of U2’s 1984 epic “Bad,” one of many highlights from their fascinating new album, Songs of Surrender. Instead of the massive, impossibly moving showstopper about young heroin deaths that floored Live Aid nearly 40 years ago, “Bad” here becomes an acoustic ballad, complete with delicate cello and wildly different lyrics that transform the song into a meditation about giving in to the passage of time and the loss and resignation that comes with that process.
That sense of looking back and taking stock is all over Songs of Surrender, on which the band offers stripped-down, usually acoustic renditions of songs from throughout their career. The 16-song, single-CD version is a kind of alternative-history greatest hits; the expanded edition packs in 40 tunes (including, yes, “40”), divided into four, 10-song sections, one for each band member. Rolling Stone

CD EDITION:

VINYL EDITION:

Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.59 x 5.12 x 0.63 inches; 5.47 Ounces
Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Interscope
Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2023
Label ‏ : ‎ Interscope
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BS1LYF3Z
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 4