Songs of Surrender

and lead vocalist Bono. Songs of Surrender comprises re-recorded and reinterpreted versions of 40 songs from U2's back catalogue. Recorded over a two-year period during lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic, the album was largely the effort of guitarist the Edge and lead vocalist Bono, with the Edge also serving as the record's curator and producer. The idea to re-record U2 songs had been circulating within the band for a while, as the Edge wanted "to see if [their] songs could be reimagined in a more intimate style, as if Bono was singing in your ear". The Edge acknowledged many of the group's earliest songs were written with the intention of winning over audiences during live performances, and that as a result, there was an intensity to their music, particularly in Bono singing at the top of his range. The Edge said: "There's a sort of gladiatorial aspect to live performances when you're in that situation. The material has got to be pretty bold and even strident at times." Ultimately, the confluence of two events convinced the Edge to pursue a re-recording project: the pandemic lockdowns resulted in more free time that he viewed as a creative opportunity; and Bono decided to structure his memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story into 40 chapters titled after U2 songs. Since U2's record label was not expecting a new album, the band agreed that they would only release the project if they were satisfied with the results. and improvised vocals that he would later play for Bono. Since the two share a similar vocal range, Mullen said in November 2022 that he needed surgery to continue performing, and although he contributed percussion for Songs of Surrender, he "didn't want to, or wasn't ready to" play a full drum kit at the time of the recording sessions, according to the Edge. As a result, drum loops previously recorded by Mullen were used; one of them was the origin of the new version of "Get Out of Your Own Way". The Edge said that the sessions in Los Angeles "fleshed out the arrangement" of the songs and "helped [them] get the project over the line". As vocals were being recorded for Songs of Surrender and preparations were being made to mix the album, Bono and the Edge were invited by Zelenskyy's chief of staff to visit Ukraine for a performance. They immediately halted work on the album and within 3–4 days boarded a train into Kyiv. They performed the new version of "Walk On" for Zelenskyy in a subway station during their 8 May visit. Over the course of recording Songs of Surrender, the Edge estimated that the group created 50 new song arrangements in total. ==Release and promotion==

Pre-announcement updates Clayton first mentioned a re-recording project during a June 2021 interview with Rocky O'Riordan on the band's U2-X Radio station on Sirius XM: "we are playing around with rearranging some of the songs that we have and setting them in a more acoustic environment. Edge got a bit of a bee in his bonnet and... said let's look at these songs and imagine them in a different context. So we are playing around with that. He's putting a lot of work into changing the keys, and moving them onto piano and that sort of thing." Clayton added that he hoped for a release by the end of 2021. , prior to a November 2022 performance by Bono on his Stories of Surrender tour Following the release of Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story in November 2022, Before Songs of Surrender was officially announced, Bono mentioned the album by name in a section of his memoir titled "After the After Words". After acknowledging he had rewritten some of his lyrics in the book, he wrote: "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.)" In late November 2022, in a Washington Post article profiling the band prior to their receiving Kennedy Center Honors, writer Geoff Edgers said that the group had recorded "40 stripped-down versions of the songs featured in the memoir" and that the collection was targeted for release in early 2023. The day after the project was announced, the track listings and release formats were confirmed. and a third song, "One", soundtracked the National Football League's presentation of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award prior to Super Bowl LVII on 12 February. A fourth song, "Beautiful Day", was released on 3 March. Formats and editions The album was released in the following formats: • Digital download – full track listing of 40 songs • Super Deluxe Hardback Collector's edition (4 CDs, or 4 vinyl LPs) – full track listing of 40 songs • Deluxe edition (CD) – 20 songs • Standard edition (CD, 2 vinyl LPs, or cassette tape) – 16 songs A dozen limited-edition coloured variants of the double-vinyl LP were produced, including: a blue-and-gold one themed after the University of Notre Dame; a green-and-white one themed after the Boston Celtics basketball team; a blue one available only to Sirius XM radio subscribers; and variants exclusive to Target, Amazon, and independent retailers. Among singles exclusive to Record Store Day 2023, it was the second-best-selling release at independent music retailers in the US. Companion projects and marketing On 21 February 2023, the group announced that they had commissioned 40 artists to create 60-second videos to accompany each of the album's tracks, and that they would be progressively released through a YouTube playlist. The week of the album release, the band announced a "40 songs, 40 cities" promotion, whereby fans could gather at a location in 40 cities worldwide to find a lyrical tribute to the album's songs, as well as access exclusive merchandise and a bespoke photo filter. . To coincide with the album's 17 March release date, Disney+ released the television special Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, with Dave Letterman. Directed by Morgan Neville, the programme features documentary footage of Bono and the Edge touring their native Dublin with comedian David Letterman, as well as a concert performance at Ambassador Theatre. The film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Variety Series or Special. Several radio programmes aired in promotion of the album. On 17 March, iHeartRadio broadcast "iHeartRadio ICONS with The Edge: Celebrating U2's Songs of Surrender", for which the Edge was interviewed by host Jim Kerr. On the band's U2 X-Radio station of Sirius XM, two specials were broadcast starting the day of the album's release: "Songs of Surrender: A Conversation with Bono and Edge", featuring a discussion with the two band members; and "Songs of Surrender Track-by-Track Hosted by U2", which played the entire the album. and NPR Music's Tiny Desk Concert series. ==Reception==

At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Songs of Surrender has an average score of 66 based on 15 reviews, 10 of which were mixed. At AnyDecentMusic?, which collates reviews from more than 50 media sources, the album scored 5.6 out of 10, based on 14 reviews. Tom Doyle of Mojo said that for U2, the album "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." Joe Gross of Rolling Stone said that the stripped-down song arrangements redeemed the Edge from any accusations of being over-reliant on guitar effects, and that his work on the album "reminds you these are sturdy songs that can be rethought without any sonic window dressing". John Walshe of Hot Press said the re-recordings mostly "work beautifully and occasionally surprisingly" and that: "Stripping these songs back to their core gives both band and listener a chance to re-connect with them, to hear them with fresh ears. For the most part, that also serves to remind us just how bloody magnificent they were in the first place." Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph said that "altered perspectives" such as the one from "Dirty Day" helped "make this measured, inventive, introspective collection so compelling, as U2 turn their own songs inside out in search of new nuances and meanings". Will Hodgkinson of The Times was struck by a "sense of the reworked music reflecting the inevitable ravages of age, and the greater degree of reflection that brings". He said that "modesty — a word I never thought I would write in relation to U2—is exactly what makes Songs of Surrender a gentle, rather moving reinvention". Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that the reimagined tracks removed too many of the group's strengths, with the "surging, cathartic peaks of songs like 'With or Without You,' 'Vertigo,' and 'Pride (in the Name of Love)'... far too muted." He thought the group's "Wild original impulses [had] been replaced by latter-day self-consciousness" and that they were better served looking forward than being reminiscent. Caryn Rose of Pitchfork opined that Bono's lyrical subversions did not improve the songs but rather were distracting, and she judged that musically "The arrangements are formulaic, regressing back to the stripped-down candlelit era of the original MTV's Unplugged." Damian Jones of NME said, "There is disappointment that a number of U2's big-hitters don't translate well", but he thought it was not a "totally fruitless endeavour: you just have to dig a little bit deeper to find the reimagined material that's truly worth savouring." John Garratt of PopMatters questioned the necessity of a quadruple album with minimal alterations to the songs and lamented the band's shift from previously surprising listeners to being predictable. He criticised the group for having the songs "repeat the same mistake made 21 years prior when The Best of 1990–2000 was regrettably peppered with 'new' mixes – they just aren't that interesting." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian believed the album was unwieldy, saying that when listening to it all at once, "it struggles to hold your attention", but that "Taken in smaller doses, there are great moments marked by a sense of genuine reinvention". Petridis enjoyed the reimagined deep cuts the most and thought the group's biggest songs "don't work rendered in soft-focus miniature". Helen Brown of The Independent called Songs of Surrender "an album of shadow versions that leave you yearning for originals", and she posited that an album of intimate, sombre songs might have resonated more had it been released during the pandemic "when time bent to make sense of such lengthy releases. But it's 2023 now, and we need the wide-horizon howl and electric ambition of U2's classic sound, not this sleepy faux-hipster slog." ==Commercial performance==

In the United States, Songs of Surrender debuted at number five on the Billboard 200, with 46,500 album-equivalent units earned. The figure was calculated from: 42,000 pure sales (comprising 19,500 vinyl copies, 13,500 CD copies, 500 cassette copies, and 8,500 digital downloads); 4,000 streaming equivalent albums (from 4.99 million on-demand streams); and 500 track equivalent albums. It was the band's 13th album to chart in the top 10 in the US. U2 became just the fourth group with a newly-charting title in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s, joining AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Metallica. In the United Kingdom, Songs of Surrender debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, with first-week sales of 20,569 units (comprising 11,042 CD copies, 6,000 vinyl copies, 1,008 cassette copies, 1,407 digital downloads, and 1,112 streaming equivalent units). It was the band's first number-one album in the UK since No Line on the Horizon in 2009, and overall was their 11th number-one album in the UK, tying them with David Bowie on the all-time list. The same week, the album also topped the country's Official Vinyl Albums Chart, while the group's 2006 compilation U218 Singles re-entered the UK Albums Chart at number 38. The record charted for just three weeks in the UK. In Ireland, Songs of Surrender debuted at number one on the Irish Albums Chart to become the group's 10th number-one album in their native country, and the same week U218 Singles jumped 28 spots on the chart to number five. ==Track listing==

Full digital and super deluxe physical versions Standard and deluxe physical versions • On digital releases, all tracks are suffixed with "Songs of Surrender" to differentiate them from the original recordings. ==Personnel==

Adapted from the liner notes. Track numbers correspond to the album's full 40-song track listing. U2 • Bono – vocals • The Edge – guitar, vocals, piano, keyboards, additional bass , additional bass guitar , Rhodes , bass programming , dulcimer , Wurlitzer electric piano , drum programming , ukulele • Adam Clayton – bass guitar • Larry Mullen Jr. – drums and percussion, piano Additional performers • Abe Laboriel Jr. – backing vocals and vocal arrangement • Bob Ezrin – synthesizer , cello , organ , acoustic guitar , sound effects , strings and string arrangement • Duncan Stewart – guitar , percussion , keyboards , backing vocals , Rhodes , synthesizer , additional keyboards , programming , organ , Wurlitzer electric piano , marimba , drum programming and synthesizer programming , acoustic guitar , flute , hand claps • Declan Gaffney – piano , synthesizer • Hauser – cello • Terry Lawless – additional keyboards • Anil Sebastian – choir • Anna Holloway – choir • Caitlin Sinclair – choir • Cerian Holland – choir • Connor Going – choir • Didier Rochard – choir • Jeremy Franklin – choir • Kate Westall – choir • Liv Barath – choir • Lydia Clowes – choir • Chloe Dale Poswilo – backing vocals • Hollis Howard – backing vocals • Peter Gregson – cello • John Metcalfe – brass band and horn arrangement , strings and string arrangement • Karsh Kale – bells , choir arrangement , orchestra • Hillspring Children's Choir (Mumbai) – choir • Kamakshi Khanna – choir • Ezra Mullen – tambourine • Dan Oestreicher – alto saxophone and baritone saxophone • Rori Coleman – brass band • Trombone Shorty – brass band • Yirmayah Yisrael – tenor saxophone • Andres Forero – percussion • Brian Eno – backing vocals • Daniel Lanois – backing vocals • Stuart Morgan – Fender bass • Andy Barlow – additional keyboards • Jolyon Thomas – guitar and additional keyboards Technical personnel • The Edge – production, engineering • Bob Ezrin – production , co-production , mixing • Duncan Stewart – production , additional production , engineering , mixing • Declan Gaffney – production , additional production , engineering , mixing • Richard Rainey – additional production , engineering , mixing • Bono – production • Alastair McMillan – engineering , mixing • Julian Shank – additional engineering • Bobby Mota – additional engineering • Jonathan Pfarr – engineering , additional engineering • Alisse Laymac – engineering • Nicole Schmidt – additional engineering • Toby Alington – engineering • Rab McAllister – additional engineering • Paul Schoen – engineering • Rob Kinelski – mixing • Eli Heisler – mixing assistance • Scott Sedillo – mastering ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications==