On Friday (1.27), U2 returned to the 1980s with the re-recorded version of their 1987 #1 American hit “With or Without You.”
Featured on their upcoming LP Songs of Surrender, the legendary Irish quartet’s 2023 version of their very first U.S. chart topper is the one of several songs refreshed for today’s audience and the forthcoming full length will be a companion piece to Bono’s memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
Offering insight into Songs of Surrender, a number of U2 fans have already received handwritten letters from the band that, including one signed by the Edge that read in part: “The fact is that most of our work was written and recorded when we were a bunch of very young men. Those songs mean something quite different to us now. Some have grown with us. Some we have outgrown, but we have not lost sight of what propelled us to write those songs in the first place.”
Born Paul David Hewson, Bono teased the project at the end of his recently released book, writing that the sessions for Songs of Surrender took place during lockdown, stating that the project “gave me a chance to live inside those songs again as I wrote this memoir,” he explained. It also meant I could deal with something that’s been nagging me for some time. The lyrics on a few songs that I’ve always felt were never quite written. They are now. (I think.)”
Back in a November 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, the Edge (born David Howell Evans) said, “We are firmly locked in the tower of song and working away on a bunch of new things. I’m just having so much fun writing and not necessarily having to think about where it’s going to go. It’s more about enjoying the experience of writing and having no expectations or limitations on the process.”
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Author: Saul Goode
Photo: Paul Jones