U2 Reworks 40 Songs For New Album ‘Songs Of Surrender’

U2 reworked and re-recorded 40 of their previously released songs for inclusion in a new album entitled Songs Of Surrender. The Irish band slated the album to arrive on St. Patrick’s Day, Friday, March 17.

The pending reimagined album was conceived alongside U2 frontman Bono’s recently published memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. Bono named each of the book’s 40 chapters after the title of one of the band’s songs and those songs make up the Songs Of Surrender tracklist. Bono mentioned the project in his memoir, writing:

“During lockdown we were able to reimagine forty U2 tracks for the Songs of Surrender collection, which gave me a chance to live inside those songs again as I wrote this memoir. 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.)”

As Consequence notes, some U2 fans reported receiving a photocopy of a handwritten letter from U2 guitarist The Edge that further detailed the project. The note read in part:

“Music allows you to time travel and so we started to imagine what it would be like to bring these songs back with us to the present day and give them the benefit or otherwise, of a 21st-century re-imagining. What started as an experiment quickly became a personal obsession as so many early U2 songs yielded to a new interpretation. Intimacy replaced post-punk urgency. New keys. New chords. New tempos and new lyrics arrived. It turns out that a great song is kind of indestructible. Once we surrendered our reverence for the original version each song started to open up to a new authentic voice of this time, of the people we are, and particularly the singer Bono has become. I hope you like our new direction.”

Bono will bring his Stories Of Surrender Tour back to The Beacon Theatre for an 11-date residency at the famed New York City venue. The residency begins on April 16 and currently ends on May 8.

Watch a trailer for Songs Of Surrender featuring a reimagined recording of “Beautiful Day” below: