Legendary rock band U2 have announced that they’ll be releasing “Songs Of Surrender” on Friday, March 17. “Songs Of Surrender” is set to be a collection of 40 seminal U2 songs from the band’s vast catalogue that spans nearly 50 years.
The twist to this collection is that all the songs were re-recorded and reimagined for 2023 in sessions over the last two years, and is to be released in full on Friday, March 17.
The first track made available from this brand 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 completely new recording of each track, to include the arrangements and, in some cases, new lyrics.”
The Edge, whose real name is 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.”