Songs of Surrender (2023)
Disc One 1. One 2. Where the Streets Have No Name 3. Stories for Boys 4. 11 O'Clock Tick Tock 5. Out of Control 6. Beautiful Day 7. Bad 8. Every Breaking Wave 9. Walk On 10.Pride (In the Name of Love Disc Two 1. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses 2. Get Out of Your Own Way 3. Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of 4. Red Hill Mining Town 5. Ordinary Love 6. Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own 7. Invisible 8. Dirty Day 9. The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) 10.City of Blinding Lights Disc Three 1. Vertigo 2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 3. Electrical Storm 4. The Fly 5. If God Will Send His Angels 6. Desire 7. Until the End of the World 8. Song for Someone 9. All I Want is You 10.Peace on Earth Disc Four 1. With or Without You 2. Stay (Faraway, So Close) 3. Sunday Bloody Sunday 4. Lights of Home 5. Cedarwood Road 6. I Will Follow 7. Two Hearts Beat as One 8. Miracle Drug 9. The Little Things That Give You Away 10."40"
Good grief. What on earth possessed them?
By the time Songs of Surrender arrived, it had been nearly a decade since U2's infamous iTunes giveaway debacle, a public relations disaster so spectacular that people who didn't even dislike the band suddenly found themselves irritated by them. Still, U2 had survived worse. They remained one of the most successful and influential rock bands in history, with a catalogue most artists would happily trade their entire careers for. One would therefore assume that any large-scale retrospective project would be approached with at least some degree of caution.
Apparently not.
The concept itself is not entirely without merit. Forty songs from throughout the band's career are stripped down, reimagined, and presented in a quieter, more reflective fashion. In theory, this sounds perfectly reasonable. Artists revisiting older material can occasionally uncover nuances hidden beneath the original arrangements. Johnny Cash did it. Bruce Springsteen has done it. Even U2 themselves have occasionally reinvented songs successfully in concert.
Unfortunately, Songs of Surrender largely serves as an example of how not to undertake such a project.
One immediate problem is the baffling song selection. How exactly were these forty tracks chosen? There appears to be no overarching theme, no chronological logic, and certainly no artistic consistency. The process feels suspiciously similar to placing every song title from the U2 catalogue into a hat and drawing names until enough material had been assembled. Consequently, wildly different eras and styles collide with one another, often with disastrous results.
Take 11 O’ Clock Tick Tock, for example. Did anyone genuinely spend years hoping for a somber, stripped-down acoustic rendition of that song? One gets the distinct impression that Bono and company are attempting to demonstrate that every composition they have ever recorded can be transformed into an intimate meditation and somehow emerge more profound. There may be a philosophical argument buried somewhere in that notion, but many longtime fans are unlikely to find much comfort hearing beloved favorites reconstructed beyond recognition.
To be fair, not every experiment collapses entirely under its own weight. Bad, All I Want is You, and Every Breaking Wave survive the treatment reasonably well, largely because they were strong songs to begin with. Yet even here one is left asking the obvious question: what exactly has been gained? These tracks were already excellent in their original form. Re-recording them merely reminds the listener how much they enjoyed the originals.
Which leads to another question. If record companies insist on endlessly reissuing classic albums every decade with expanded editions, deluxe packaging, alternate mixes, demos, live recordings, and enough bonus material to sink a small fishing vessel, why not simply include these reinterpretations there? A handful of alternate versions tucked away as curiosities would have been interesting. Forty consecutive tracks of this material, however, becomes an endurance test.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Songs of Surrender is that it feels entirely unnecessary. Nobody was clamoring for this. Nobody was demanding that U2 dismantle large portions of their catalogue and rebuild it as a collection of introspective campfire performances. The band clearly invested considerable effort into the project, but effort and inspiration are not always the same thing.
In the end, this stands as one of the more misguided releases in U2's extensive catalogue. What may have seemed clever on paper ultimately comes across as self-indulgent, occasionally pretentious, and far less rewarding than simply listening to the original recordings. Let us hope that other veteran artists observe the reaction to this experiment and decide that some ideas are best left on the drawing board.