![]() ![]() “We’re one of the only acts that has this body of work where a project like this would be possible, with the distance of time and experience where it would be interesting to revisit early songs,” The Edge said. “New Year’s Day,” “Angel of Harlem” and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” are among the songs left alone. The band is fairly democratic in taking songs from throughout its catalog, although 1981’s “October” album and 2009’s “No Line on the Horizon” are not represented. “Two Hearts Beat as One,” the original a high-octane rock dance song, now has a slinkier, sexy vibe and is one of four songs where The Edge takes lead vocal. Lyrics are often rewritten, sometimes extensively in even a recent song like “The Miracle of Joey Ramone.” Some changes are more subtle but still noticeable: replacing the line “one man betrayed with a kiss” with “one boy never will be kissed” takes Jesus out of “Pride (In the Name of Love).”Īt the same time, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is rearranged to end with a question: “where is the victory Jesus won?”Ĭellos replace the driving guitar of “Vertigo.” Keyboards give “Where the Streets Have No Name” an ambient sound. There’s no need to shout, so he sometimes uses lower registers or slips into falsetto. Much of the intimacy comes through Bono’s voice. It doesn’t sound like there was a lot of hard work involved because it wasn’t.” “There was a lot of freedom in the process, it was joyful and fun to take these songs and sort of reimagine them and I think that comes across. “As we got into it and got into a groove, we really started to enjoy what was happening,” he said. The process began without a roadmap or commitment to see it through if it wasn’t working. He sticks primarily to keyboards, acoustic guitar and dulcimer. Given that his electric guitar and Bono’s voice are the musical signature of U2, there’s a certain irony in the absence of that guitar being the most immediately noticeable feature of the new versions. The Edge was the driving force behind “Songs of Surrender,” using pandemic down time to record much of the music at home. With this reimagining, we thought it would be fun to see intimacy as a new approach, that intimacy would be the new punk rock, as it were.” “The material has got to be pretty bold and even strident at times. “There’s a sort of gladiatorial aspect to live performances when you’re in that situation,” he said. The Edge told The Associated Press in an interview that U2 wanted to catch the attention of people seeing the band for the first time, perhaps in a festival or as an opening act. Particularly in those days, U2 songs were written primarily with concerts in mind. The four men of U2, now either 61 or 62 years old, revisit material written in some cases when they were little more than kids out of Dublin. That was one thought behind “Songs of Surrender,”coming out this week. NEW YORK - In reimagining 40 of their best-known songs, U2 recognized that many fans would experience them through earphones connected to a device in their pockets - rather than being belted out onstage.
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