New Album Discussion 10 - Songs of Sir, this is a Wendy's, durr

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I’ve been coming around more and more on the songs. A few moments of cringe with Bono’s voice but overall starting to fall into the over vibe.

U2 acoustic has usually been pretty bland, so it’s nice to hear a different range out of the Edge on these previews.

Definitely look forward to hearing the full versions of them all but especially

Invisible
Miracle of Joey
Until the end of the world
The fly
Two hearts
Dirty day
 
I’m loving most of these clips. The only ones that don’t work for me so far is GOOYOW and Streets. With Get Out it’s like they knew their hardcore fanbase hates that song and they trolled us by making the worst possible version of it. And then with Streets I feel like they missed the opportunity of giving us something truly different but still epic. I also wasn’t really looking forward to hearing new versions of Vertigo and The Miracle but wow they both sound incredible. I can’t wait for Friday now. I’m going to get wine drunk and listen to this and watch the Disney plus special afterwards. I’m looking forward to these songs the most

Bad
Invisible
Ordinary Love
The Miracle
Vertigo
COBL
Stay
Sunday Bloody Sunday
SYCMIOYO
Out Of Control
 
Anyway, I was listening to a few songs on youtube last night that I would love to hear re-imagined:

Street Mission
Cartoon World
The Fool
And anything else from this period.
 
JamietheEdgefan said:
Really liking the previews, there's some really strong stuff in there. I think Dan was right about this project working better as a whole.

I suspect there are far better songs than what they've chosen as singles (Invisible, Bad and ISHFWILF come to mind), but perhaps wouldn't have been as 'radio friendly ' (if only because they're longer).

One thing that strikes me about the production is that it's so sparse, and so much is acoustic guitar or piano, that when the bass or drums come in, they really pack a punch. I hope they bring some of that dynamic and power to the upcoming rock album.
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I’m pretty excited about this now.
 
This version of Two Hearts would have been great live on b stage of PopMart tour.
 
I will obviously withhold judgement until I hear all of the songs in their entirety, but my initial impressions are largely very positive. Some real hits, but also a few misses.

Hits:

Bad
11 o' clock tick tock
Out of Control
Beautiful Day
Walk On
Pride
Wild Horses
Ordinary Love
Invisible
Dirty Day
Miracle
COBL
Vertigo
Electrical Storm
If God will Send
Desire
UTEOTW
Song for Someone - better than the original
Light of Home
I Will Follow
Two Hearts
40

Misses (songs that I hoped/expected more from):

One - I really don't like the way Bono sings some of the lyrics in the chorus.

WOWY - probably the biggest disappointment of the entire album for me, as it's one of the best songs from their back catalogue but is far too bland. There's so much more they could have done with this

Streets - I'll need to hear the entire song before making a proper judgement, but from the clip again I would hope they'd have done a bit more. I really hope in some way they incorporate the main riff (which is the most epic part of U2's catalogue), even if it's done on acoustic guitar, piano or cello. If they do have that, and it just isn't in the section of the song I've heard, then this could still be a hit.

Stuck In a Moment - quite bland, not all that different from the acoustic version we've heard live many times. Also don't like the way Bono sings this one.

Red Hill Mining Town - nothing bad about this, but it's very similar to the 2017 version from the clip. They could easily have taken this one out and replaced it with another song.

Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own - again, quite bland.

GOOYOW - never liked this song, it always baffled me why it was the most played song live from SOE when there were so many other better tunes on that album. This version doesn't salvage it.


Ones I'm not sure about and will need to hear the full version, these are neither hits nor misses yet:

Sunday Bloody Sunday
Stay
All I Want is You
The Little Things
The Fly
Stories for Boys
Peace on Earth
 
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'One' is such a missed opportunity to me. The instrumental sounds great - very expressive and very well produced. But I hate the way Bono songs the chorus so much (that 'slide up' melody "one looooOOVE" etc) that I just can't listen to it.

Any other track on SoS that I'd describe as a 'miss' I'd say is just a bit bland, but One is actively unlistenable for me.
 
JamietheEdgefan said:
'One' is such a missed opportunity to me. The instrumental sounds great - very expressive and very well produced. But I hate the way Bono songs the chorus so much (that 'slide up' melody "one looooOOVE" etc) that I just can't listen to it.

Any other track on SoS that I'd describe as a 'miss' I'd say is just a bit bland, but One is actively unlistenable for me.
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Agree, it makes this version of One almost unlistenable. Such a shame. Don't know why he's singing it that way.
 
I've got a ~4 hour car ride on Friday so I'm looking forward to listening to this thing a couple of times.

I've mostly held off on listening to anything except what's been released in full, not to avoid spoilers, but because I'm lazy and don't care that much. Really excited to hear what they've done to The Miracle.
 
I find this to be a nice project. I'm linking almost all the clips as I'm listening to this as it is. Other versions of our favourite songs.

That being said... I still can't stand Get out of your own way.
 
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/u2-songs-of-surrender-album-review/

U2, ‘Songs of Surrender': Album Review

Michael Gallucci
Published: March 14, 2023

The milestone moments of a four-decade career that U2 revisit and reinvent on Songs of Surrender tell a story of a group that's cultivated an image, and then wrestled with that image more than a few times over the years. This latest re-imagining of what the band is, to themselves as well as to their fans, surveys both the ups and downs, the successes and the failures, and the massive hits and those that should have been that are at the center of U2's story.

Songs of Surrender breaks a quiet period for the band; their last album was 2017's Songs of Experience. And like that previous record and its predecessor, 2014's equally weighty Songs of Innocence, Songs of Surrender is viewed from the perspective of a band that presents its past as a way of understanding its present and future. But here they go all in on that past, re-recording 40 songs from their illustrious catalog to better understand the changes and growth that have occurred along the way.

Divided into four parts – one for each U2 member – Songs of Surrender doesn't follow any chronological pattern. It starts with 1991's "One" and ends with "40," the closing track to their breakthrough album, 1983's War. In between is an assortment of hits ("I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "With or Without You") and lesser-known songs ("Dirty Day," "Miracle Drug") from one of the greatest catalogs of the past 50 years, presented from a fresh viewpoint. But just how necessary is it?

That depends on your feelings regarding re-recorded songs that were pretty much perfect the first time. The updated versions have the passage of time on their side, so some gain worn-in qualities not heard in the originals. This proves once and for all that U2 were always old souls, no matter their ages. But it often strips the youthful vigor from songs like "Stories for Boys," "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "I Will Follow," while also forcing even more gravitas on "Every Breaking Wave" and "If God Will Send His Angels."

The album could just as well be titled Songs of Reflection, given the stripped-back, mostly acoustic arrangements and performances of the songs. You're often waiting for deliverance that doesn't come on songs like "Bad," which hinged on the force of its final cathartic minute. Bono's staid delivery means that minute never arrives in this reworked version. But Songs of Surrender isn't about that sort of release; it's about contemplation of the years between then and now, between innocence and experience, and between boys and men. Four decades on, U2 is still redefining the parameters of their music.
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https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/new-music/u2-reviewed/

A typically grand gesture: U2 revisit their songbook and rediscover themselves

U2

★★★★

Songs Of Surrender

FOR A BAND who’ve tended to avoid the past, U2 have turned to face it in recent years. There have, however, been certain self-imposed conditions. 2017’s The Joshua Tree revival tour sought to find the modern resonances in 30-year-old songs, and so again it proves here with this mammoth 40-track, “re-imagined” and re-recorded deep dive into their back catalogue – the idea being life-experienced perspectives on material that is sometimes more than four decades old.

Originally conceived as an audio accompaniment to the song-themed chapters in Bono’s Surrender memoir, this being U2, the project soon grew and became a “personal obsession” with erstwhile Lou Reed/Pink Floyd overseer Bob Ezrin). In fact, 11 of the tracks here differ from the ones in the book: Red Hill Mining Town instead of Bullet The Blue Sky; Stay (Far Away, So Close!), but no Mysterious Ways.

Style-wise, these new versions tend towards the acoustic and the ambient and are pared down and led by Bono and Edge. Many of the tracks feature no rhythm section at all, leaving Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. to sit them out. A beats-free Where The Streets Have No Name is cushioned on a bed of synths and reverb, while Every Breaking Wave (a song they struggled with for years before it emerged on 2014’s Songs Of Innocence) is retrofitted with Satie-like piano arpeggios and is all the more affecting in its intimacy.

Along the way, there are weird, but worthwhile diversions. A full band take on Songs Of Experience’s Get Out Of Your Own Way seems to take its rhythmic cues from The Zombies’ Time Of The Season, but is left purposely rough, like a busked acoustic jam. Other inclusions are even groovier – The Fly comes over like a murky Meters; Desire is dark, falsetto funk, and sounds like another band’s cover version. In fact, you’d hardly be able to tell it was U2, which is perhaps the point. On a few songs, Edge takes over the lead vocal, with his Stories For Boys (icy, atmospheric) a particular standout.

Artists rework their back catalogues for different reasons. For Taylor Swift, it’s been a way to escape contractual constraints. For Kate Bush, on 2011’s Director’s Cut, it was an exercise in correcting niggling production and arrangement choices of the past. For U2, it sounds like a kind of liberation. If their creative missteps in the past two decades have generally been caused by their twin determinations to keep up with modern pop and relentlessly pursue music that works in stadia, then here they’ve cut themselves free from all of that. Ultimately, it may be a watershed moment. By stripping it all back down, in some ways, they’re bigger.
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If their creative missteps in the past two decades have generally been caused by their twin determinations to keep up with modern pop and relentlessly pursue music that works in stadia, then here they’ve cut themselves free from all of that. Ultimately, it may be a watershed moment. By stripping it all back down, in some ways, they’re bigger.
Click to expand...

a lot of reviews have made similar points - and it's something that i have been hoping for when the scope of the project started becoming clearer in the fall.

time will tell - but here's hope.

there's no doubt that the band is promoting this and trying to get people to listen (and collectors/diehards to buy every damn color of the rainbow)... but there's one thing that is starkly missing from this entire project - a push to get things played on the radio.

yes - they've released a few tracks - but with no real push behind any of them. we'll see if some of that changes with the release here - but there's nothing that's pandering towards "the kids" here. i think the U2 of 10 years ago would have rethought 40 songs by putting, like, Jay-Z on Sunday Bloody Sunday. this feels different. this feels mature.

it's only gotten me more excited for the new album.
 
Sounds like this interview may have actually been done a while ago considering the comment about Larry:

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/u2-interviewed/

“It will be called Songs For Fighting!” U2 Interviewed

U2’s Adam Clayton speaks exclusively to MOJO about their latest album, the long-awaited Songs Of Ascent and the forthcoming ‘noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable’ new U2 record.

This week, U2 release their new album Songs Of Surrender, an often stripped back re-recording of songs from across their career, including Where the Streets Have No Name, The Fly and Every Breaking Wave. MOJO spoke to bassist Adam Clayton about the genesis of the project, whether the band will tour without drummer Larry Mullen Jr, their much-touted Songs Of Ascent LP and the forthcoming ‘noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable’ new U2 album...

It sounds like Songs Of Surrender was a simple idea that got complicated?

“That’s fair enough. It was very much a Bono and Edge project. It started out being, ‘How could we do something that mirrored the chapters in Bono’s book?’ The songs had to show some sort of perspective and development. So, something that may have been maybe better conceived as 15 or 20 songs started to mushroom into these 40 tunes.”

There are quite a lot of tracks without drums and bass…

“I just put tracks down. I didn’t know whether they were going to use them. Some of the songs, I thought of them as how those Simon & Garfunkel records were made… essentially acoustic guitar tracks that there were some rhythmic elements added to…”

Larry has said he can’t play live with U2 this year due to imminent back surgery. Would you go out with a different drummer?

“We have to wait and see what the doctors tell us and what he feels comfortable doing. We are itching to get back out there. It will, of course, be very sad if we don’t have our lifelong friend and drummer with us.”

Bono has been talking about the next U2 record being a “noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable” rock album.

“We are turning the amps on. I certainly think the rock that we all grew up with as 16- and 17-year-olds, that rawness of those Patti Smith, Iggy Pop records… that kind of power is something we would love to connect back into.”


This will be distinct from your long-touted ‘Songs Of Ascent’ album?

“Well, ‘Songs Of Ascent’ is a much more meditative, spiritual record. This will be ‘Songs For Fighting’, I’d say (laughs).”
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I’ve been thinking they should self-produce a record for awhile. Just to test it out, rely on themselves and their own instincts. Sounds like this is that. Maybe worth trying with new songs.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
a lot of reviews have made similar points - and it's something that i have been hoping for when the scope of the project started becoming clearer in the fall.

time will tell - but here's hope.

there's no doubt that the band is promoting this and trying to get people to listen (and collectors/diehards to buy every damn color of the rainbow)... but there's one thing that is starkly missing from this entire project - a push to get things played on the radio.

yes - they've released a few tracks - but with no real push behind any of them. we'll see if some of that changes with the release here - but there's nothing that's pandering towards "the kids" here. i think the U2 of 10 years ago would have rethought 40 songs by putting, like, Jay-Z on Sunday Bloody Sunday. this feels different. this feels mature.

it's only gotten me more excited for the new album.
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about this. I think in a way, there may be almost a sigh of relief from some critics who have actually been fans of the band for a long time. This could have been an album of remixes with the likes of RedOne and Will.I.AM, with a Chris Martin doing some EDM version of Streets. But I think this is the first time in a long time that they are actually releasing something where they don't really care about it success in terms of sales of whatever. They made something that was just interesting and fun at the time for them, which is refreshing.
 
https://www.wokv.com/entertainment/unusual-step-u2/FNKZE4G7ZH3DHN2H2UJMSGDLIY/

In unusual step, U2 reinterprets 40 of its best-known songs

By DAVID BAUDER
March 14, 2023 at 10:33 am EDT

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.

That was one thought behind "Songs of Surrender,"coming out this week. 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.

Particularly in those days, U2 songs were written primarily with concerts in mind. 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.

“There's a sort of gladiatorial aspect to live performances when you're in that situation,” he said. “The material has got to be pretty bold and even strident at times. 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 Edge was the driving force behind “Songs of Surrender,” using pandemic down time to record much of the music at home.

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. He sticks primarily to keyboards, acoustic guitar and dulcimer.

The process began without a roadmap or commitment to see it through if it wasn't working.

“As we got into it and got into a groove, we really started to enjoy what was happening,” he said. “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. It doesn't sound like there was a lot of hard work involved because it wasn't.”

Much of the intimacy comes through Bono's voice. There's no need to shout, so he sometimes uses lower registers or slips into falsetto.

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)."

At the same time, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is rearranged to end with a question: “where is the victory Jesus won?”

Cellos replace the driving guitar of "Vertigo." Keyboards give "Where the Streets Have No Name" an ambient sound. "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.

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. “New Year's Day,” “Angel of Harlem” and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” are among the songs left alone.

“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.

Throughout music history, bands have occasionally re-recorded material for contractual reasons. Taylor Swift is the most famous example, putting out new versions of her older songs in order to control their use. Squeeze's “Spot the Difference” makes sport of how they tried to make new recordings indistinguishable from the originals.

Live recordings and archive-cleaning projects like Bob Dylan's “bootleg” series gives fans the chance to hear familiar songs differently.

Many older artists don't see the point of making new music, since there's little opportunity to be heard and fans are partial to the familiar stuff, anyway, said Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone contributing editor.

“Revisiting your body of work in a creative way is a means of sustaining interest in your career,” DeCurtis said. “Older fans might not be interested in another collection of your hits, but reworking them in a meaningful way could prove enticing. Younger fans don't have the same investment in your classics, so these new versions offer a route into your catalog.”

The Edge encourages fans to give the new versions a try, suggesting they may even grow to prefer some of them.

“I don't think there's a competition between these and the original versions,” he said. "It's more of an additive thing than a substitution. If you like the new arrangements, great. If you prefer the originals, keep listening.

“It's no problem either way,” he said. “They're both valid.”

The Edge said he's working on new music for U2, “and we've got some great stuff in the pipeline.”

The quartet that met in drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s kitchen when they answered an ad placed on a high school bulletin board is a remarkable story in longevity. A passage toward the end of Bono's book “Surrender,” where he talked about looking around onstage at the end of their most recent tour in 2019 and wondering if it was the end, raised natural questions about how long U2 would continue.

“There are many reasons why U2 has stayed together for so long, but one of the main reasons is that it works so well for us as individuals,” The Edge said. “I think we all shine the brightest as part of this collective. I certainly would not like to hang up the guitar.”

This year will provide a test for a band that can count on one hand the number of times it has performed without all four members. U2 has committed to a run of shows in Las Vegas without Mullen, who is recuperating from surgery.

Would U2 continue if one of the original quartet decides it's time to hang it up?

“I wouldn't rule out the possibility that we could go forward with different members,” The Edge said. “But also, equally, I could imagine us deciding not to. It would be a big challenge. But I think at the time we would know what felt right.”
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