U2 fans have a lot to keep them busy this weekend. The band’s new album, Songs of Surrender, is out now, featuring 40 rerecorded and reimagined U2 classics. The opening track is the Achtung Baby classic “One,” while the album closes, appropriately enough, with the War song “40.”
Curated and produced by The Edge, each of the album’s four parts are named after one of the band members. Each song on the album is a completely new recording, with new arrangements and in some cases new lyrics.
“It’s both a vanity project and a grudge match,” Bono tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of their reason for making the album. “The grudge match is, [what] we were trying to prove, or else maybe obfuscate, was if our songs could stand up with the best songs, our favorite songs. And so that was it. We wanted to see.”
The Edge adds “just serving the songs … was the overarching idea for this collection. And to serve the song, but to serve the voice, which meant the voice was the centerpiece of every single arrangement.”
In addition to the album, U2 and The Edge star alongside David Letterman in the new Disney+ special Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, which premieres Friday. The special finds the longtime bandmates returning to their hometown of Dublin, Ireland, while being interviewed by famed talk show host.
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