Songs of Experience vol. 29: No More Acronyms

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Status
Not open for further replies.
Anyone know (Registered Dude?) if those reported recording venues marry up to what we knew last year prior to iHeart, when we thought the album was imminent?

Or are these sessions all from the last 12 months?
 
lazarus said:
Oh boo fucking hoo. The band used samples on half the songs from Pop, to great results. Who cares if they used someone else's work as a jumping-off point? Kendrick borrowed an element from U2's sessions and wound up making a brilliant track out of it, it's nice to see artists being inspired by each other, and to see an older band not too stuck in their ways to incorporate something a younger band came up with.

Experimentation is a good thing.
Click to expand...

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different”.

Yeah, it's not uncommon in the songwriting world to be influenced by something while writing a song.
 
Nick66 said:
Wow! It's going to be a double album! Just like SOI!

And no one can convince me otherwise.
Click to expand...


Literally no one said or claimed this.

FWIW - SOI released 15 complete, original songs across the deluxe version. Claiming SOE might have 16, when multiple band members have cited 16 completed songs is fairly reasonable...
 
kiwilad said:
Anyone know (Registered Dude?) if those reported recording venues marry up to what we knew last year prior to iHeart, when we thought the album was imminent?

Or are these sessions all from the last 12 months?
Click to expand...

Electric Lady (for SOE) session was definitely in the last 12 months, they were there in March of this year, I don't think they had been there since the SOI sessions.
 
Whoever doesn’t like that Haim song. Or worse yet doesn’t like that bass break that U2 based theirs off of, is insane. It’s fucking sick. They are a great band and really cool to see them on it. What a thrill it must have been for them.
Kendrick thing is cool. They could get a charting song just from his involvement. Could be a really cool collaboration.

Looks like the band was readin Interference. Changed up a title! And it’s a good one! There is a Light. Very cool.
Score one for our incessant complaining.
This must replace the title for Love is Bigger... since it’s a letter to the sons.

Great info. Can’t wait to see the scans of the Q issue.
 
I like the narrative flow from song for someone (there is a light, don’t let it go out) to The Lights of Home and There is a Light. Although they are very similar titles...
 
It's here already.

In the wake of U2 controversially releasing iTunes freebie Songs of Innocence in September 2014, Bono was already talking up the imminent arrival of its [counterpart?] in a letter to fans on the band’s website: ‘It should be ready soon enough… although I know I’ve said that before.’ Three years on, Songs of Experience is finally to be released on 1 December, created during an intense and turbulent period where progress was delayed by Bono’s New York bike crash in November 2014 (in which he suffered numerous fractures that required months of recuperation) and U2 subsequently completed two major tours, Innocene + Experience and The Joshua Tree 2017.

At the beginning of this year, guitarist Edge said work on Songs of Experience had been put on pause so that the lyrics could reflect the political changes in the world following the election of Donald Trump. A month ago, though, he admitted that there was an additional reason why the project had to be put on hold: [namely?] that Bono had in 2016 suffered a ‘brush with mortality.’

‘Edge wasn’t fibbing when he said we had to stop and take account of what was going on in the world,’ Bono tells Q now. ‘He just didn’t want to mention what was going on in my world.’

The singer, however, refuses to be [drawn on?] the specifics of his serious health scare. ‘I don’t want to get too into the details of it, for fear of the melodramatic reality TV kerfuffle,’ he laughs. ‘A lot of people have these moments. I’ve had a few. Not quite at this level.’

‘It was serious enough that he genuinely had a major fright,’ says Edge. ‘But where that brought him [to as an artist?] was an amazing place.’

As a result, Songs of Experience — which sees Bono following the advice given to him by Irish poet Brendan Kennelly to ‘write as if you’re dead’ — is largely conceived as a series of final letters to [his?] family and friends and fans. ‘It’s just one of those moments when nothing else matters,’ he says. ‘[So?] what [do?] you have to say for yourself, and what do you want to say to the people that you love?’

Recent single You’re the Best Thing About Me an the dreamily atmospheric Landlady are addressed to Bono’s wife Ali Hewson, Get Out of Your Own Way to the singer’s daughters, and the closing There Is a Light to his sons, and, like much of Songs of Experience, to the singer himself. The opening lines of the [?] blues of The Lights of Home are starkly [confessional?]: ‘I shouldn’t be here cos I should be dead, I believe my best days are ahead.’

The album is still obliquely political — in Get Out of Your Own Way the Statue of Liberty gets a ‘smack in the mouth’ — but is overall far more personal than anything Bono has previously written. ‘The personal and political apocalypse came together,’ he says. ‘But I think, if we’re honest, the personal elbowed the political out of the way.’ Edge explains that the musical plan for the record was to capture the band’s live in the room chemistry and colour it with 21st century production techniques. Bono’s voice in opener Love Is All We Have Left, singing to himself from the imagined perspective of his younger self, is enhanced with digital effects as he sings, ‘Now you’re at the other end of the telescope/Hey, this no time not to be alive.’

'It’s so poignant, your innocence singing in you,’ he says, ‘It’s really very hard for me to listen to it.’

Recording locations for Songs of Experience included a [mansion?] in Killiney, Dublin, Ireland, Electric Lady Studios in New York, and even Bob Dylan’s former tourbus, now planted in the garden of Shangri-La Stadium in Malibu. [Returning?] to the U2 production team are the band’s long time studio stalwart Steve Lillywhite, Songs of Innocence collaborator Ryan Tedder and Jacknife Lee (2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb), while the new faces include Jolyon Thomas (Royal Blood) and Andy Barlow (Lamb).

As for guests, Kendrick Lamar makes a cameo in the segue between Get Out of Your Own Way and American Soul as what Bono calls a ‘[cracked?] preacher,’ while Haim lend their voices to the gospel chorus of The Lights of Home — not least since the track’s main riff is based on a [bass?] breakdown from their 2014 single My Song 5.

‘I said to Edge, “well, sample stuff is you want. Why not?”' Bono recalls. ‘Sampling stuff is great freedom. Freedom to have fun. To make it a playground again where you have access to a wider palette of colours.’

Other highlights include the Bo Diddley-[via?]-The Clash Red Flag Day and the beautifully melodic, ‘60s echoing Summer of Love, both indirectly tackling the Syrian refugee crisis. ‘We weren’t trying to write a war story of a song,’ Bono stresses, referring to the latter. ‘We just wanted to write a romantic song with really dark clouds overhead. They’re both related to being down in the beautiful bay of Eze (in the south of France where Bono and Edge have houses] and just knowing when you’re having your vacation that on the same sea people are fighting for their lives, attaching themselves to bits of wood and rubber tyres.’

Though the making of Songs of Experience was eventful and sometimes difficult, the songs spark with energy and vitality. ‘What I love about the album is that it’s got that energy,’ says Bono. ‘It’s not punk rock, but it’s got the defiance.’

There’s no sign of U2 slowing down either — the Innocence + Experience Tour is due to resume in the late spring/early summer of 2018. ‘We’ve had a hell of a year,’ Edge [grunts out?], meaning the five month long [workload?] of The Joshua Tree tour. ‘I don’t think any of us wants to try and rush out. But we’re really excited to get back to that format.’

Proof of Bono’s enduring stamina [meanwhile?] came recently by way of Noel Gallagher, who admitted that he couldn’t compete with the singer’s drinking prowess when he opened for U2 on The Joshua Tree Tour. Gallagher confessed, ‘I was gonna do a runner. I mean, I was in a mess.’

‘Look, I would never have outed him as a lightweight,’ Bono chuckles. ‘I’ve so much respect for the man. But when I go out… yes, I do go out.’ And as for Bono’s general health now? ‘I’m way better. I’m on top form. I’m singing like a little girl.’

Or, more accurately, a man with more ‘experience’ due to his recent troubles than he really could have expected.
Click to expand...

01e3faae9c3d9a3067f7e9aee0a42f48.jpg

28c1e5c5b00b31d3a7cb6274febe9f2f.jpg
 
Damn, I am getting excited now. Though it is weird that we see know mention of the Little Things. It probably just got re-arranged in the running order as There is a Light has taken its spot. (though I do love the thematic connection to SOI with that song title)

Man, it really sounds like Bono had a serious scare. It's almost hard to believe with how energetic he has been on this tour.
 
As someone with two sons of my own, I’m very excited to hear There is a Light. Know if it’s about Bono’s sons will give that song a completely different perspective for me when listening to it.
 
This article fills me with so many different emotions. It's exciting because all the details sound amazing; I mean, just to begin with: Kendrick and HAIM as features? Yes.

But then I simultaneously worry deeply about what they're saying about Bono's health scare. They're half laughing it off, while on the other half stressing that it was serious, and will not disclose what it was. And it just worries me that it's not just something that was, but still is or could be again.
 
Obviously energetic hyperbole precedes any U2 announcement when you're an uber-fan like all of us here.
That said, what is really exciting me about this album - so far - is that U2 keep explaining it's a series of genuine messages to real people. Not imaginary constructs to help Bono get past a period of writers block. These are real messages to real people.
Marry that to the reports we're getting back from people who have heard it. It's moving them. They're buying its authenticity, it seems.

Also I'm becoming aware of what's not being said here. So far there's no sweeping statement about re-applying for the job of biggest band in the world. Or about it being punk rock from god knows where. Or about it being basically their first record. They just keep talking about the songs. They're not trying to preface its release with a narrative about it being this or that. They seem more comfortable this time to let the songs talk for themselves.

So yeah. I'm getting excited.

I mean, if U2 had spent 40 years writing and releasing songs like Best Thing I wouldn't be a fan. Not that the song is terrible, I don't mind it, but it isn't great. But there could be some real gems in this album, and within that context Best Thing might make more sense.

We'll see. But I'm fucki*g excited!
 
JoRu said:
This article fills me with so many different emotions. It's exciting because all the details sound amazing; I mean, just to begin with: Kendrick and HAIM as features? Yes.

But then I simultaneously worry deeply about what they're saying about Bono's health scare. They're half laughing it off, while on the other half stressing that it was serious, and will not disclose what it was. And it just worries me that it's not just something that was, but still is or could be again.
Click to expand...

Well, if it *is* still something then it would be hard as hell to tell... right? I mean, they've had a hell of year and it will probably continue to be busy through the end of it. He even says in the article that he's feeling at "top form" which is certainly encouraging. And judging by their tour this year I don't doubt him when he says that. Hell, they're already talking about the tour next year!

Going to do my best to enjoy the ride.
 
JoRu said:
But then I simultaneously worry deeply about what they're saying about Bono's health scare. They're half laughing it off, while on the other half stressing that it was serious, and will not disclose what it was. And it just worries me that it's not just something that was, but still is or could be again.
Click to expand...

Yes. But Bono's of an age where things like prostate cancer, for example, become statistically much more common. Checks can be done, things can be found, test done, things can be benign or not, treatable or not.
And at no part of that journey would any family want (I suspect) those details to be public.
So yeah, I hear you. But these guys are mortal, ageing, and we're incredibly lucky it's still the same 4 guys from Mt Temple.
 
JoRu said:
This article fills me with so many different emotions. It's exciting because all the details sound amazing; I mean, just to begin with: Kendrick and HAIM as features? Yes.

But then I simultaneously worry deeply about what they're saying about Bono's health scare. They're half laughing it off, while on the other half stressing that it was serious, and will not disclose what it was. And it just worries me that it's not just something that was, but still is or could be again.
Click to expand...

Well Bono seems healthy now. I'm sure if it's something really bad as in something terminal like cancer he would disclose that info. Obviously it could have been something very bad but to me it seams like something that is behind him. Maybe something like a wrong cancer diagnosis? Maybe we will never know but he does seem happy and very energetic in his JT shows so there is that.
 
JoRu said:
This article fills me with so many different emotions. It's exciting because all the details sound amazing; I mean, just to begin with: Kendrick and HAIM as features? Yes.

But then I simultaneously worry deeply about what they're saying about Bono's health scare. They're half laughing it off, while on the other half stressing that it was serious, and will not disclose what it was. And it just worries me that it's not just something that was, but still is or could be again.
Click to expand...

My sister, 45 , has bone cancer. I am not really into knowing what Bono has. Of course i hope my idol has nothing serious. However, normal life takes it over. I love my sister over all.
 
And yes after loosing Gord Downie to cancer just this week, makes you really think how mortal we all are/ how one minute you are fine then the next you are handed with a diagnosis and they tell you you only have a year to live. I agree u2 are up in the age group where health issues and scare arise. I hope that whatever it was for Bono it is behind him. I still think though if it was something ongoing like cancer Bono would disclose this and they probably wouldn't embark on another year of touring. So there is hope.
 
dabiggestu2fan said:
And yes after loosing Gord Downie to cancer just this week, makes you really think how mortal we all are/ how one minute you are fine then the next you are handed with a diagnosis and they tell you you only have a year to live. I agree u2 are up in the age group where health issues and scare arise. I hope that whatever it was for Bono it is behind him. I still think though if it was something ongoing like cancer Bono would disclose this and they probably wouldn't embark on another year of touring. So there is hope.
Click to expand...

The fact that they are locking down plans for a tour next year that will probably extend into 2019 leads me to believe it's probably (hopefully) behind him.
 
CosmoKramer said:
Really? Just curious, which songs?
Click to expand...



Are you for real?

DYFL, Disco, LNOE, WUDM and Playboy Mansion are all credited with using samples. But DYFL and Playboy use the samples very liberally and the songs were actually written around them. Other samples were used to write other songs, but they didn’t have the permission so they recorded the beats themselves.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

dan_smee
I listened to No Line on the Horizon right through tonight for the first time in about 10 years…
2 3
Replies
83
Views
2K
lazarus
lazarus
Reggie Thee Dog
Are we NOT discussing the Dolby Atmos Mix of Achtung Baby?
Replies
13
Views
1K
count rushmore
count rushmore
Headache in a Suitcase
  • Locked
Songs of Songs, Books & Fat Puns - New Album Discussion #8
33 34 35
Replies
1K
Views
53K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
O
Better late than never “they” say…
Replies
1
Views
300
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
dan_smee
New Album Discussion 1 - Songs of..... - Unreasonable guitar album
60 61 62
Replies
2K
Views
102K
MattD
M

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom