U2 TO WORK ON NEW ALBUM SOON, RYAN TEDDER SAYS MAKING IT "WILL BE EASIER"

In an interview today with the Italian music news site Rockol, Ryan Tedder said U2 asked him to meet them in Los Angeles to start work on U2's next album.
"I spoke to them just last week. We will work together on some new pieces when I am in Los Angeles," Tedder told Rockol.
 "I think it's their intention to make a record the last two. It will be easier. You know, it's like a pendulum.
When you make a very produced album, with so many instruments in it, the next project you want it more what if the disc had the sound of four musicians playing in a room?" Tedder, whose songwriting, production and performance credits on hits for U2, Beyoncé, Madonna, Adele and Taylor Swift have elevated him to an elite status, is also man to releasing a new One Republic album next month and a new tour in the summer of 2020.
"Working with a band like U2," comes with difculties Tedder said in his interview with the Italian language site Rockoi. "Bono and The Edge are like conductors. They assemble the songs by taking the melody from a demo, the chords from another, the strings from a third audition. With them a song is never nished."
 "U2 are the best group on the planet, but with them it is not uncommon to produce 70 versions of a single song," Tedder said. There is no indication at this time as to when Tedder will be in Los Angeles to work with U2. One Republic has not announced any performances for Los Angeles for t U2's The Joshua Tree Tour 2019 begins November 8 in Auckland, New Zealand.
 As a matter of speculation only, U2 might choose to conduct some tour rehearsals in and could work on new songs with Tedder as soon as next month. Tedder's previous credits with U2 are for production and performance on Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017). Though uncredited as a songwriter said he and One Republic bandmate Brent Kutzle wrote part of U2's song "Summer of Love."

source:@U2

U2 THROUGH THE LENS OF FRIENDSHIP: AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIAN LENNON

 'Someone To Look Up To'– Copyright Julian Lennon 

Photo used with permission. 

Throughout the years, U2 has collaborated with many fellow artists, from legends they admire to fresh talents emerging on the scene. One such artist is their contemporary — acclaimed musician/photographer/humanitarian Julian Lennon. In addition to photographing the band over the years, Lennon is a backing vocalist on the track “Red Flag Day” from Songs Of Experience. In the following interview, conducted via email, Lennon shares details of their history together as artists and friends, his contribution to their current album, and the thousands of photos he still has of the band, which have yet to be released.



TK: When did you first meet/become friends with U2? 

JL: To be honest, I couldn’t tell you the first time … it could have been at the Formosa Cafe in L.A. about 30 years ago. We kept bumping into each other until eventually they asked me if I’d like to come to one of their shows, and I think the first time I went was because we had a security guard in common, Jerry Mele, who used to work for me, but was now working for them. I recall Oasis were their opening act, it was in the U.S. many, many moons ago … but I have a terrible memory, so can’t be sure. ;)

[Editor’s note: Oasis only opened for U2 twice, so the show Lennon references must have been in Oakland in 1997.]

TK: In an interview a few years back, you mentioned a treasure trove of U2 photos you took that weren't released because they were being saved for possible use on an upcoming U2 album. Since they don't appear on Songs Of Experience, will they be held for a future album or released in a different way? 

JL: Well, I have about 8000+ pictures, not all good by any means, as I was just starting to get into photography then, so a lot of blurry shots! But sometimes that can work too as a medium, as a more artistic slant to the conversation, so to speak. There are a few plans in the works with some of the images, for potential one-offs and limited edition images, but I really do need a month to go through all of them again, as I’ve had so many other projects to deal with in between. I’ll get around to them sooner than later ...

TK: If/when they're released, is there any chance of an exhibit of U2 works, exclusively? Is there any way to purchase any of your U2 prints that have already been displayed?

JL: I’ve already had exclusive U2 exhibitions, one as part of my first-ever exhibition, at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in NYC. I’ve had many since with them in Europe too, in Paris, when they were also performing there. The “Timeless” Collection (U2 inclusive) has been available for sale and to view on my photography website since 2010.

TK: I had the pleasure of interviewing artist Morleigh Steinberg in December, who co-owns the Arcane Space in Venice, California. She spoke of wanting to display a diverse array of artists/photographers. Any chance of exhibiting there (U2 content or not)?

JL: I had the pleasure of dining with The Boys a few nights ago, and Edge mentioned this too … it’s always a possibility.

TK: Fans were delighted to hear your backing vocals on "Red Flag Day.” How did the band approach you to work on that track?

JL: I went to visit U2 whilst they were working on the track, whilst they were still playing with the vocal arrangements, and B just said, “Jules, try this melody, it’s more suited to your tonal range” and that was it, I just sang along. Sometimes with Bono and Edge, sometimes solo, and my voice was blended into their background vocal tracks. I can’t really hear myself in there, but hey … happy to be part of it, regardless … ;)

TK: Throughout your musical career, you've collaborated with several of your contemporaries. What's it like working with U2 compared to others with whom you've recorded? 

JL: Well, I’d hardly say I was working with them, as such, it was more like a little bit of fun for 5 minutes … The Boys are pretty low key when recording, and don’t often like having people around, so it’s always a pleasure to get the odd invite, if we’re in the same city, to hang out, talk about the World, and music, etc. etc.

TK: Any chance of you joining U2 on stage when they (presumably) sing "Red Flag Day" on their upcoming tour?

JL: Ha … Doubtful … If it was a “Proper” Duet as such, maybe there would be, or even an old classic like “Stand By Me,” which Bono and I have sung together now on quite a few occasions, but I think that decision is always last minute with Bono. He, and the rest of the guys, have to be feeling it, so to speak … I think it’s a show-by-show experience and decision.

TK: Would you ever want U2 to contribute to any of your future songs?

JL: I play them the odd song, here and there, listen to what they have to say … I think we’re both quite particular in our approach to songwriting, but never say never … who knows?

TK: As a fan, do you have any favorite U2 songs or albums?

JL: Of course … too many to mention … “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “One,” “Vertigo,” “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” … the list goes on. It’s more a case of which few I don’t like ... that would be easier! ;)

TK: In addition to musical gifts, you also share a common spirit with U2 in the humanitarian sense. Your White Feather Foundation does everything from bringing clean water to African communities to preserving indigenous people's territories in Australia. Tell us more about your foundation and how our readers can help if they'd like to get involved.

JL: In all honesty, the easiest way to know what we do, and to learn the story behind The White Feather Foundation is to go to our website, and read up on our projects … otherwise I’d be writing a few pages out for an answer.

TK: Your new children's book, Heal The Earth, was just released. Tell us about it.

JL: Well, it’s part of a trilogy to help children understand, in story form, the problems we face as a society, on a humanitarian and environmental level, and what we can do about those problems … but it’s more about starting a conversation with the next generation, at an early age, so they understand what’s happening to the world that they are going to inherit, and that there are possibilities for change, for the betterment of all life.

TK: Heal The Earth is the second in a trilogy. When can we expect the third book to arrive?

JL: Same time around, in the 3rd year … ;)

TK: At one point it was mentioned you may be writing an autobiography ... is that in the works? You seem to always have a lot on your plate.

JL: I’m never not busy, one way or another. If I don’t have a project, or 2, or 3 on the go, at any given point in time, I start to worry that I’m not doing enough, for Myself, for My art, for the World. The autobiography is still a consideration, but I’ve just [got] too much going on to consider that as an option right now.

TK: Fans of your Instagram feed (myself included) have really enjoyed your stunning photos from Cuba. Will those also become an exhibit? 

JL: Most of the Instagram shots that were seen were shot with an iPhone, so not really the quality that’s needed to put a show together, but I did take along a new camera that I recently purchased, the Sony AR7 III. Though the pictures won’t be identical to the iPhone pics, there are many that are very similar, so yes, there’s every chance they may become an exhibition at some point, but I’ve just finished editing all of my Cuba/Havana images, which will become a “Collection” on my photography website very soon ...

TK: What's the one question that journalists never ask you that you wish they'd ask?

JL: Am I happy? :)



(c) @U2/Kokkoris, 2018.

 Lennon’s new book, “Heal The Earth,” will be released on April 3 and is available now for pre-order on Amazon. The third book in the trilogy will be released on or around Earth Day, 2019. A direct link to his U2 photography is here.

‘Songs of Experience’ by U2 Review: Rocking Its Classic Sound

The raw, lean authority at much of the new disc’s core harkens back to some of U2’s best albums.

By Jim Fusilli

U2's new album is ‘Songs of Experience’ PHOTO: OLAF HEINE

As its title suggests, U2’s new “Songs of Experience” (Interscope), out now, is kin to the band’s 2014 release, “Songs of Innocence.” Because the group took a different approach to recording the latest album, “Experience” surpasses its predecessor and connects to some of U2’s earlier, superior works.

The titles allude to William Blake’s late 18th-century poetry collections of the same names. “Songs of Innocence” is Blake’s rumination on an idyllic childhood that too soon exists only in memory. Similarly, on U2’s recording, Bono explored his teen years in Dublin, his burgeoning awareness of a larger world, and his appreciation of family and the musical heroes of his youth.

But as compelling as were Bono’s narratives, some of the “Songs of Innocence” music was at a distance from U2’s best instincts. The band has long incorporated the latest techniques in music-making into its sound, but here the muddied environment was unnecessarily overburdened with additional instrumentation contributed by the album’s five producers. Played by just the quartet when U2 took them on the road, as documented in the 2016 film “Innocence + Experience: Live in Paris,” the songs hit with power.

For “Songs of Experience,” U2 again deploys a battery of producers, thus hinting it is following the previous album’s template. When it played the beefy new ballad “The Little Things That Give You Away” earlier this year on tour, the song opened with the Edge on piano and the dull huff-ting of a drum machine. But that arrangement isn’t the one on “Songs of Experience.” Instead, the track builds to a fury with the classic U2 sound under Bono’s voice.

It’s been reported that U2, not satisfied with the new album’s direction, went into a New York studio in March with longtime associate Steve Lillywhite and re-recorded the music live without additional musicians. The raw, lean authority at the core of much of the album supports that claim. Instrumentation retained from earlier sessions and appended to the live tracks distracts as often as it enriches. But “Songs of Experience” confirms that bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. can still create a bottom so supple and sturdy that the Edge has ample room to chug, chime and roam above them on guitar.

That rhythm section is relentless on “The Blackout,” which blends the punch of rock with the snap of funk. “Summer of Love” and “Red Flag Day” are crisp and clear with the bass and the Edge’s guitar in pleasing relief. After Kendrick Lamar’s riff on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount kicks off “American Soul,” the song profits from the band’s heaviest performance on the disc. If “Songs of Experience” peters out with the cliché-ridden ballad “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way” and soppy “13 (There Is a Light)”—both of which seem to have been made by committee—the band hasn’t lost its instinct for clever pop: “The Showman (Little More Better),” which features the Edge’s acoustic guitar and a seductive performance by Mr. Mullen, is as catchy as can be.

In his “Songs of Experience,” Blake posits mankind as trapped and forlorn but able to transcend its dire circumstances through love and a refusal to submit to hypocrisy. Bono’s storytelling has long reflected a parallel view. Here, after acknowledging in “The Little Things That Give You Away” that “Sometimes I’m full of anger and grieving / So far away from believing that any sun will reappear,” in “13 (There Is a Light),” he sings, “You start with nothing / You start with a void / Love is all we have left.” The theme of “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way” is its title.

Bono tackles big issues, including his own mortality. Addressing his recent health problems in “Lights of Home,” he writes, “I shouldn’t be here ’cause I should be dead.” He restates his love for America: “This country is to me a thought that offers grace for every welcome that is sought,” he sings in “American Soul,” while conveying a sense of despair in “The Blackout”: “Democracy is flat on its back, Jack / We had it all and what we had is not coming back.” That Bono can be both a pontificating, steel-willed figure and a musician who opens his heart to admit self-doubt serves well a quartet whose great strength is its mastery of musical melodrama in the rock idiom.

Thus, at its best, “Experience” is in line with “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” and “No Line on the Horizon,” U2’s finest 21st-century albums. Now in its fifth decade, it remains a great band that works best when it’s self-reliant and rocks with clarity and determination.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.

https://www.wsj.com

U2 confronts the dinosaur within on new album 'Songs of Experience'

by Greg Kot


dinosaur wonders why it still walks the earth," U2 sings on “The Blackout.” It’s not the best song on the band’s new album, “Songs of Experience” (Interscope), but it may just be the most revealing.

It’s also an encouraging sign that U2’s latest crisis of faith — and there have been many in the Irish quartet’s storied if fractured career — comes with a dollop of “Jurassic Park” humor, a send-up of its own natural tendency toward bombast and overstatement. U2 lives in constant fear of turning into a classic-rock dinosaur, though it often behaves like one, and it’s refreshing to hear Bono and his bandmates confronting and poking fun at the stodgy old beast that lurks inside the decades-long stadium rockers.

“Songs of Experience” tries to remind listeners that U2 still has a few surprises left to unveil: It’s unusually subtle and low-key at times, it’s frequently self-deprecating, and it has one or two powerful moments that rank with the band’s better music. In sum, it’s kind of a mess, which means it’s a heck of a lot more interesting than its predecessor, the ill-fated 2014 album, “Songs of Innocence,” now best known as the dud that invaded iTunes user’s libraries in a poorly conceived marketing stunt cooked up by the band and Apple.

Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. have made some of their finest music when they act like they have nothing to lose. That was particularly true during the ’90s, which produced a mix of noisy, jumbled, occasionally confusing and confused albums that veered between accidental masterpieces such as “Achtung Baby!” and half-finished tangents such as “Pop” and the “Passengers” side project. It was a great time to be a U2 fan, with music that was both raw and ridiculous, with bursts of unexpected poignancy, humor and why-the-hell-not? experimentation.

The ’90s, and “Achtung Baby!” in particular, also marked the first of several “comebacks” in U2’s career. It was followed by an era of more conservative albums that recycled the band’s best ’80s moves once the experiments started to lose luster with a fan base yearning for more “Joshua Tree”-style guitar anthems.

“Songs of Experience” tries to make amends for “Songs of Innocence” by easing back slightly on the slick pop production that sucked all the character out of the earlier album’s songs. The new album was initially conceived as the “adult” sequel to the childhood memories of “Innocence,” but that plan ran aground as the album churned through nine producers and several revisions. It was finally revamped for the final time after Bono’s mysterious “brush with mortality,” as described by the Edge in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

The initial impression left by “Experience” is of a more tempered and low-key U2, with Bono delivering some unusually warm and intimate vocals that suggest a man who has indeed faced some sort of personal reckoning. The singer has suggested that several songs were conceived as letters to his wife and children in the aftermath of his near-death experience, and that reflective tone lends a haunted quality to “Love is All We Have Left” and an aura of stunned gratefulness in “Lights of Home.”

In “You’re the Best Thing About Me,” ostensibly one of several love songs on the album that Bono addresses to his wife, the band wrestles with self-doubt over Adam Clayton’s foundation-crashing bass line. Clayton’s bass, long the band’s secret weapon, was largely muted on “Songs of Innocence,” but it resumes its Godzilla-like presence on several “Experience” songs. “I have everything, but I feel like nothing at all,” Bono sings, and later wonders, “Why am I walking away.” Is he talking about his wife? His family? The band itself?

Yet the best that can be said about lesser tracks such as “Get Out of Your Own Way” and especially “American Soul” is that Kendrick Lamar’s bleakly humorous reinterpretation of the biblical beatitudes walks away with both of them. “American Soul” wants desperately to shift the perspective to world events and the refugee crisis, but it’s a heavy-handed stomp that provides a forum for some of Bono’s most face-palm-worthy lyrics: “For refugees like you and me/A country to receive us/Will you be our sanctuary/Refu-Jesus."

Yet two subsequent tracks addressing the same issue leave a far more favorable impression. There’s the nuance of “Summer of Love,” a sparse tribute to the Syrian citizen who continued to nurture his garden amid the carnage of Aleppo. And there’s the fierce conviction and melodic propulsion of “Red Flag Day,” anchored by another shattering Clayton bass line.

The album toggles between extremes, sandwiching strong songs amid ponderous throwaways. As it winds down, the missteps pile up: a lesser husband-wife love song (“Landlady”), a bloated would-be anthem (“Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way”), and, in “13 (There is a Light),” a rewrite of “Song for Someone” from “Songs of Innocence,” apparently appended to the album to create a false sense of symmetry with its predecessor.

And yet there are also two brash tunes that sound like U2 talking to itself, and by extension its fans, about what it means to be a rock band in 2017. In the shaggy, loose-limbed “The Showman (Little More Better),” Bono suggests that all those we pay for entertainment — including, presumably, the singer in the biggest Irish rock band of all time — shouldn’t be trusted for anything. “I lie for a living, I love to let on,” Bono sings. “But you make it true when you sing along.”

Similarly, “The Blackout,” parodies arena rock with its groaning guitars and, yes, another city-stomping contribution from the irreplaceable Clayton. All doubts are extinguished “when the lights go out” and the music takes over. The takeaway: Dinosaurs really aren’t extinct. They’re alive and well and living inside Adam Clayton’s bass.

Greg Kot is a Tribune critic.

greg@gregkot.com

Twitter @gregkot

“Songs of Experience”

U2

Two and a half stars (out of 4)

http://www.chicagotribune.com

U2 at Jimmy Fallon's

Bono and The Edge Talk Inspiration for U2's Album Songs of Experience

Blistering performance of ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’, written thirty years ago and never sounding more in the moment. 

Could have been a newsflash. 

Looks like the band decided to run the lyrics through 2017. 

Here they are, from tonight.

In the howlin' wind
Comes a stingin' rain
See it drivin' nails
Into the souls on the tree of pain.
From the firefly
A red orange glow
See the face of fear
Runnin' scared in the valley below.

Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue
Bullet the blue.

In the locust wind
Comes a rattle and hum.
Jacob wrestled the angel
And the angel was overcome.
You plant a demon seed
You raise a flower of fire.
We see them burnin' crosses
See the flames, higher and higher.

Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue
Bullet the blue

Suit and tie comes up to me 
Face orange as a rose on a thorn bush 
Skin as thin as orange crush 
And he's peeling off those dollar bills 
Slapping them down 
One hundred 
Two hundred 

I can see those fighter planes 

I can see those fighter planes 

WMD in their veins 

Ground shakes but the children can’t weep
Vaporized in a single tweet 
The emperor rises from his golden throne
Never knowing, never BEING known  
The lights are on the presidents home
Oh my god I’ve never felt so alone
Outside its America
Outside its America

In a far off palace in a far-fetched land 
Another baby plays a baby grand
Fingers on the keys of a siren song
Finger on the button of oblivion
And all I can think of is my son

All I can think of is my son
He misses his ma, misses his da
And he runs 
And he runs 
And he runs 
Into the arms of america

www.u2.com

Edge talks brand new U2!

In an extended chat, Edge discusses U2's new album 'Songs Of Experience'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05f95rg

Hear U2's Lustrous New Single 'You're the Best Thing About Me'

Band debuts official lead single from upcoming 'Songs of Experience' album

 U2 released "You're the Best Thing About Me," the gleaming lead single from their upcoming album Songs of Experience on Wednesday 6th September.

"You're the Best Thing About Me" is a joyous ear-worm about romantic dissatisfaction. Larry Mullen Jr. holds time with a firm, stuttering pattern on drums, and the Edge carries the chorus with pretty shards of melody from his guitar. High backing vocals echo many of Bono's lines, and the singer shows off his own falsetto during a gliding, multi-tracked bridge.


But underneath that appealing surface, Bono is playing the part of a malcontent. "I'll be crying out, how bad can a good time be?/ Shooting off my mouth, that's another great thing about me/ I have everything, but I feel like nothing at all," he sings. "You're the best thing about me," he admits, before adding, "the best things are easy to destroy."


"You're the Best Thing About Me" is the second song U2 have shared recently. The band released "The Blackout" last week.


Speaking with Rolling Stone about Songs of Experience in May, Bono said, "I thought it was done last year," but admitted that the extra time in the studio "has made [the album] better.""The problem is we have 15 songs and to get them down to 12," he continued. "We don't like long players. The actual track listing is not set yet, but we have some proper, proper fuck-off songs."


http://www.rollingstone.com

Rolling Stone on 'The Blackout'

U2 unveiled "The Blackout," a dynamic new track from their upcoming album Songs of Experience on the band's Facebook page. The album follows 2014's Grammy-nominated album, Songs of Innocence.

"The Blackout" video was covertly filmed during the European leg of the Joshua Tree 2017 tour, U2gigs reports, at Amsterdam's Westerunie venue in late July. The allegorical lyrics about the destruction of the Earth and renewal appear to have political undertones, as Bono sings: "Dinosaur wonders why it still walks the Earth, yeah/ The meteor promises it's not gonna hurt" ... "When the lights go out/ In the darkness where we learn to see."

"The Blackout" is the first offering from Songs of Experience, which the band will detail in full on September 6th, the day that the official first single "You're the Best Thing About Me" arrives. U2 previously teased the impending arrival of "The Blackout" with cryptic mail the band sent to fans.

U2 also debuted new song "The Little Things That Give You Away," another track expected to feature on Songs of Experience, during their recent tour.

Bono recently told Rolling Stone of the difference between the band's last two LPs, "the theme of Innocence and Experience has a line from a song called 'Rejoice' which is 'I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me.' I wrote that at 22. That's the spirit of Innocence. But the spirit of Experience is actually I can change the world, I can't change the world in me."

The singer added in May that they were in the process of cutting down the album's tracklist from 15 songs to 12 and promised "we have some proper, proper fuck-off songs. 'Little Things That Give You Away' is one of them."

http://www.rollingstone.com

The Blackout:The new video from the upcoming Songs of Experience

U2 has just premiered the new song and video in their Facebook page: The Blackout, from  Songs of Experience.  First single, 'You're The Best Thing About Me coming Sept. 6thE. The complete video can be seen in U2's official FB.

Adam and Walk in my shoes

Adam: "We've been working on a record and we've been humming and hawing on whether it's finished or not. We've decided it's not finished -- we're going to work up until Christmas...I wish we were a little bit more definite about our scheduling because people have been expecting it. But it'll be out next year -- maybe March/April. That's the plan, but I'm not confirming it."

Complete interview here 

RTE2fm
http://www.walkinmyshoes.ie/

The Edge Says U2’s Next LP Is Coming Soon, Sounds Like ‘Zooropa’

After U2 released 2014’s Songs of Innocence, they promised that the record’s companion album, Songs of Experience, would drop soon. Now, in a new interview with Q magazine (via DIY), guitarist the Edge has confirmed that U2 is in fact completing the William Blake-inspired Experience during the downtime between legs of their Innocence + Experience tour.

The Edge also compared the recording process to how they made their 1993 album, Zooropa, adding that its producer Brian Eno “would love to see us making albums a bit more like that. Where we go, ‘You know what? We’re not going to second-guess any of this. Let’s just go for it.’ I think there’s a quality you get when there’s a certain momentum to the process.”

Bono also noted that his 2014 bike accident had a lot to do with getting Experience out the door in a timely manner: “The gift of it was that I had time to write while in the mentality that you get to at the end of an album. There is a reason why all the great groups made their best albums while in and around touring, because the ideas have to come out of your head.”

http://www.spin.com/

Songs of Innocence: Official TV Spot

Universal Music

After U2's "Songs Of Innocence" was made available for over half a billion iTunes Music Store customers on September 9, 2014, the new studio album from Bono and Co. will now appear as a standard and deluxe version.

"Songs Of Innocence" is U2's most personal work: It includes seventies rock with the first influences of the band, featured beyond punk rock of the early eighties, but also ambient music. It also provides information about how and why the band originally came together. The first single "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)" deals with the Ramones frontman Joey Ramone, who died in 2001. Bono and Joey admired not only the music of the other, but were also good friends.

The album revolves around the home of the band and their families, but also about relationships and discoveries. It was recorded in Dublin, London, New York and Los Angeles, after it was produced by Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney and Flood.

In addition to the 11 tracks on the standard CD, the Deluxe contains a total of 21 songs, including the acoustic versions of selected album tracks and four bonus tracks. The double vinyl includes 11 tracks of standard and one bonus track.

https://www.youtube.com/user/UniversalAustria

"Lucifer's Hands" and "The Crystal Ballroom"

The "controversial" album "Songs Of Innocence", the newest musical record of the Irish band U2 which shocked the market last month  with will be released next week, in physical format.

The novelty is that  the album l will come  with some extra songs and two unreleased acoustic versions that did not make the official tracklist of the disc. They are "Lucifer's Hands" and "The Crystal Ballroom".

Although good, the tracks seem not to have the same approach of  the other eleven . Perhaps, that's why they  were left out. 

To listen to the two tracks, click here.

U2: That Album. The Inside Story

“To be able to put this out there into half a billion iTunes accounts says something to me. It’s very dangerous and I like the balls of it.” In an exclusive interview, Bono,  Edge and Adam Clayton discuss the creation of new album Songs Of Innocence and the global reaction to giving it away to music fans via Apple… whether you liked it or not.

More on this , click here. And to read the complete article, Q magazine

http://www.qthemusic.com/

"Songs of Experience" : 70 % Done!

U2 have completed ''70 per cent'' of their 14th studio album.

The Irish rockers recently released their 13th LP, 'Songs of Innocence', but bassist Adam Clayton has revealed the group are nearly ready to go on their next release, 'Songs of Experience', insisting it should be ''relatively easy'' to finish.

Speaking in the new issue of Q magazine, he said: ''I think we've probably got 70 per cent of the material that we think will go onto it.

''The 30 per cent that we're missing I think we'll be able to generate relatively easily."

''But the amount of energy it will take to refine the perspective of those songs is hard to predict.''

The band - also made up of Bono, The Edge and Larry Mullen, Jr. - caused controversy when they released 'Songs of Innocence' through Apple which saw it automatically land into the iTunes library of millions of people, but Adam admitted the group will be opting for a different delivery method next time.

He added: ''Y'know what, depending on how long it takes to be completed, there may be a whole new delivery method invented by then ... I think we just have to wait and see."

''There'll be a bit of water under the bridge before we get to that point. But yeah, I think it would be a bit predictable to do the same thing."

''And y'know, the law may have changed by then and we'll have to find some other way of doing it.''

Contactmusic

http://www.contactmusic.com/

No surprise that U2's new album impresses

Everything about U2's new album is unexpected. Like its very existence, for one, after the Irish rock band dropped it on iTunes users in a surprise move.
Then there's its intriguingly narrow and personal scope. And its playful musical adventurousness: The band smo-othly shifts gears over variable terrain on a road course as it works through songs inspired by things that seemingly have little do with each other. Each, however, is an experience from youth and young manhood for singer Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.
Anthemic opener "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" is a tribute to The Ramones, the band that fired Bono's imagination as a teen. The band wraps punk-like power chords in its usual finery and transforms a monosyllabic garage rock "ohohohoh" chorus into an ethereal gospel-tinged hallelujah. "Everything I ever lost now has been returned, the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard," Bono sings.
"California (There is No End to Love)," a song about the band's first trip to Los Angeles, is a modern take on The Beach Boys with a hallucinatory opening consisting of the band chanting "Barbara Barbara Barbara Santa Barbara" in the round before launching into one of those trademark power ballads that feel like a jet plane racing to the horizon.
Along the way, we visit with Bono's late mother on the soaring "Iris (Hold Me Close)," steal a first kiss on "Song For Someone," experience terrifying violence in the streets of Dublin on the visceral "Raised By Wolves," visit the old neighborhood on the wonderfully bombastic "Cedarwood Ro-ad," and take their life's mission from The Clash on the funky and bright "This is Where You Can Reach Me Now."
The album was produced by Danger Mouse with assistance from others, including Adele collaborators Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder and longtime U2 associate Flood.
Their fingerprints are everywhere - there's baroque synthesizer throughout, jangling ghost guitars and a general retro feel to the rhythm section.
But even with all those outside collaborators in the room, it remains a distinctly U2 record - soaring, upbeat and often transcendent.
"Songs of Innocence" is just the fourth album for the band this century." While it continues the group's general musical trend of the last 15 years, there's no question there's more energy here, more inspiration and more to be excited about than anything since "Beautiful Day."
- and it's hard to believe it's been 14 years since the band released that latter-career high-water mark.
In a letter to fans, Bono says the group finished the album a week ago, delivering it with unimaginable speed, and teased another imminent album "Songs of Experience."
"We really went there . it's a very, very personal album," Bono wrote. "Apologies if that gets excruciating . actually, I take that back. No apologies if it gets excruciating. What's the point in being in U2 if you can't go there?"
There's a lesson in that statement for everyone else in the game. Pay attention.
'Songs of Innocence'
U2
Interscope

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/

Bono Talks to Dave Fanning on RTÉ 2fm

The U2 frontman says that the blogosphere is enough to put you off democracy, in an exclusive interview to the renowned RTE presenter. -

"We were always the band to divide people, not to unite people,” the U2 frontman said, discussing the release of U2’s new album, Songs of Innocence. "That’s it. To sing, 'In the name of love/What more in the name of love' – it was as uncool in 1984 as it is now, and that’s why people came through the doors. To sing about your faith: how uncool is that in rock ‘n’ roll? To sing about your mother; come on, shut up! Except John Lennon did it, Kurt Cobain did it, Eminem has done it. What is the point in being in U2 if you can’t go to those other places?"

The interview will be broadcast this Sunday 21 September, at 10am on RTÉ 2fm and will take 2fm listeners on a journey through the new album – the band’s first since 2009’s No Line on the Horizon.

Speaking about U2's relationship with Apple, he said: "There’s been some real deliberate misunderstanding of this relationship with Apple. This is a company which has more than any other technological company, sought to get musicians paid. There’s lots of other technology companies who’ve become very rich on musicians not getting paid. So it’s a perfect relationship to work with them."

On the controversy surrounding the method in which U2 released 'Songs of Innocence’ he is trenchant in his views.

"The same people who used to write on walls are in the blogosphere,” Bono says. "The blogosphere is enough to put you off democracy (laughs)! No…let people have their say. They’re the haters; we’re the lovers. We’re never going to agree. People who would not normally be exposed to our music have got a chance to listen to it. Whether they hold that to their heart or not, we don’t know. Whether those songs will be important to them, in a week’s time we don’t know. But they’ve got a chance and that’s gotta be exciting for a band who’ve been around as long as we have.

"The hardest thing in the world, as Bruce Springsteen said to me – and this was ten years ago – is to surprise your audience or to surprise yourself."

The Dave Fanning interview with Bono will air from 10am – 12noon on RTÉ 2fm, on Sunday, September 21.


 http://www.hotpress.com/

Bono's interview at KROQ

In an interview this morning with Kevin & Bean, the U2 frontman opened up about the band’s release method.

“The punk rock thing to do is annoy people and get in their faces,” he said. “If people have a problem with the way we released the album, I’m sure they’ve read about it online.”
Bono’s talk of punk rock didn’t end there. He also explained the band’s Songs of Innocence tribute to Joey Ramone, “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone).” Apparently, when Bono was just starting out, he had the realization that his singing voice wasn’t very masculine — an asset that ended up helping him front U2 — and Joey Ramone’s music made him feel like it was okay.

Listen to the interview : 



source: https://soundcloud.com/u2radio

Exclusive: U2 and Apple Have Another Surprise for You

The four members of the legendary Irish band tell TIME about another new album in the works—and its secret Apple project that might just save the music industry

Many, many people really, really like U2. It hasn’t always been easy to remember that fact amid the caustic—and often hilarious—responses to the band’s Sept. 9 release of Songs of Innocence. U2’s decision to team up with Apple to deliver the new album to every iTunes subscriber, unasked, raised valid questions about consumer choice and personal space in a world that routinely infringes on both. Moreover, while Apple paid U2 for the album, critics of the deal suggest this point may have been lost on iTunes customers who got it for free. If so, that messaging is certainly at odds with U2’s intentions.

As an article in the new issue of TIME reveals, Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr believe so strongly that artists should be compensated for their work that they have embarked on a secret project with Apple to try to make that happen, no easy task when free-to-access music is everywhere (no) thanks to piracy and legitimate websites such as YouTube. Bono tells TIME he hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music—whole albums as well as individual tracks. The point isn’t just to help U2 but less well known artists and others in the industry who can’t make money, as U2 does, from live performance. “Songwriters aren’t touring people,” says Bono. “Cole Porter wouldn’t have sold T-shirts. Cole Porter wasn’t coming to a stadium near you.”

TIME has been spending time with U2 in the studio, in London and Malibu and accompanied the band to the Apple launch in Cupertino. During the days that followed the launch, the band members maintained a semblance of cheer and they had reasons to feel good. Controversial as it was, the rollout of Songs of Innocence catapulted the band’s back catalogue into the charts again. By Sept. 18 Apple said that 38 million people had accessed Songs, downloading the album or streaming it. For every scathing tweet, U2 got positive feedback from a happy fan or a new listener. The band is—rightly—proud of its latest work, yet the backlash didn’t go unnoticed. “It’s like everyone’s vomiting whatever their first impression is,” said Clayton at one point, bemused rather than self-pitying.

U2 could always have expected something of a rough ride for this, the band’s 13th studio album. For one thing, Songs was bound to be measured against earlier output, including Achtung Baby, U2’s extraordinary 1991 album which won over critics who had previously dismissed the foursome as stadium balladeers. For another, it can be hard to hear U2 through the static that its singer’s campaigning sometimes creates. In working to alleviate extreme poverty through ONE, the advocacy organization he co-founded, and to fight AIDS through his (RED) initiative, Bono has helped many to the potential detriment of a few—himself and his bandmates. His impulses may be public spirited—and they are, though Bono’s detractors prefer to burlesque his philanthropy as self aggrandizement—but hey, banging on about development economics isn’t exactly rock ’n’ roll.

In March TIME watched Bono share a podium in Dublin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to deliver a sharp speech to delegates from the European People’s Party, the bloc of center-right parties in the European parliament. He has always tried to mobilize support for his causes from people who can deliver change, even if that creates some uncomfortable juxtapositions or, in Dublin, found him playing to a room full of conservatives in suits, who then mobbed him as he left the stage. (It bears repetition: many, many people really, really like U2.)

Edge, Clayton and Mullen aren’t always ecstatic about Bono’s extracurricular activities, but as TIME also discovered, they are fully supportive, of him and each other. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the quartet—and in lengthy and frank conversations they served up many surprises, about everything from their attitudes to money to their religious beliefs—is how much they still enjoy each other’s company.

As Bono and Edge bantered affectionately at a celebratory lunch straight after the Apple launch, the band’s old friend and former producer Jimmy Iovine, whose company Beats was acquired by Apple for $3 billion in May, observes “You wouldn’t see Mick and Keith doing that.” Jagger and Richards, in harmony on stage, discordant off stage, are more typical of rock partnerships than Bono and Edge. After years on the road and cooped up in studios, long-established bands often reach saturation point with each other. By contrast, the four schoolfriends that formed U2 in 1976 are closer than ever.

And their ambition burns just as bright. There’s more music on the way, not just an acoustic version of Songs of Innocence and bonus tracks but also a whole new album and a world tour. Plus there’s their not inconsequential plan to save the music industry, news that will doubtless draw more 140-character darts in their direction.

http://time.com/

The Church of U2

Joshua Rothman for  The New Yorker

A few years ago, I was caught up in a big research project about contemporary hymns (or “hymnody,” as they say in the trade). I listened to hundreds of hymns on Spotify; I interviewed a bunch of hymn experts. What, I asked them, was the most successful contemporary hymn—the modern successor to “Morning Has Broken” or “Amazing Grace”? Some cited recently written traditional church hymns; others mentioned songs by popular Christian musicians. But one scholar pointed in a different direction: “If you’re willing to construe the term ‘hymn’ liberally, then the most heard, most successful hymn of the last few decades could be ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ by U2.”

Most people think of U2 as a wildly popular rock band. Actually, they’re a wildly popular, semi-secretly Christian rock band. In some ways, this seems obvious: a song on one recent album was called “Yahweh,” and where else would the streets have no name? But even critics and fans who say that they know about U2’s Christianity often underestimate how important it is to the band’s music, and to the U2 phenomenon. The result has been a divide that’s unusual in pop culture. While secular listeners tend to think of U2’s religiosity as preachy window dressing, religious listeners see faith as central to the band’s identity. To some people, Bono’s lyrics are treacly platitudes, verging on nonsense; to others they’re thoughtful, searching, and profound meditations on faith.

Christianity Today regularly covers U2, not just as another Christian rock band but as one of special significance. In 2004, the magazine ran an article about Bono’s “thin ecclesiology”—his unwillingness to affiliate himself with a church—that sparked a debate about the health of organized religion. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, addressed the issue of Bono’s belief in a fascinating 2008 lecture about the place of organized faith in secular society. “Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog” is one of several books exploring the theological ideas in Bono’s lyrics. Churches around the world have held “U2charists”—full services at which traditional church music is replaced with songs by U2. A few years ago, an Episcopal priest I know helped organize one at a church in New Jersey; the service, which featured a huge sound system, stage lighting, cocktails, and a bonfire, raised around forty thousand dollars for an orphanage in Cameroon.

Much of the confusion around U2’s faith stems from the fact that they’ve never been an “officially” Christian rock band. The ambiguity goes back to the band’s origins, in the Dublin of the late seventies, during the Troubles. In a country divided along sectarian lines, little about organized religion was attractive. U2 were teen-agers when they got together (Larry Mullen, Jr., the drummer, was just fourteen), but they were beginning to see outside of the faith traditions of their families. Bono’s father was a Catholic, his mother an Anglican. Adam Clayton (the bassist, English) and David Evans (the Edge, Welsh) came from Protestant backgrounds; Mullen had Irish-Catholic parents. In “North Side Story: U2 in Dublin, 1978-1983,” Niall Stokes, the editor of the Irish music magazine Hot Press, writes that the members of U2 were “primed” to ask what it meant to be Irish. They were “as close as you could get at the time, in an Ireland that was monocultural to an extraordinary degree, to a licorice all-sorts of nationalities and faiths.”

Their break with organized religion was probably inevitable. But it was still traumatic, which is perhaps why almost every U2 album contains a song about their decision to belong to a band rather than a church. (“One,” for example, is about the challenges of joining together with your friends to try and find God on your own.) Greg Garrett, an English professor at Baylor, a Baptist university in Waco, Texas, explains U2’s lack of religious identification in his book “We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2.” In high school, Bono, the Edge, and Mullen grew close to a faith community called Shalom, whose members Bono has described as living on the Dublin streets “like first-century Christians.” The group was a big presence in their lives during the recording of U2’s first two albums, “Boy” and “October” (“Gloria,” the best song on “October,” has a liturgical chorus, sung in Latin). The turning point came just as the “October” tour was set to begin: the Edge announced that he wanted to leave U2, because the twin demands of piety and rock stardom could not be reconciled. (“If God had something to say about this tour, he should have raised his hand a little earlier,” the band’s manager, Paul McGuinness, said.) Ultimately, of course, U2 stayed together: Bono, Mullen, and the Edge left Shalom. “I realized it was bullshit, that what these people were getting close to … was denial, rather than willful surrender,” Bono told an interviewer.

The tension in spiritual life—between discipline and vulnerability, order and openness, being willful and giving in—became U2’s central preoccupation, and gave it its aesthetic. During the Troubles, the band witnessed the consequences of an approach to faith that had become too organized and martial. Against that, they argued for “surrender,” in both its political and its religious senses. When Bono ran around onstage with a white flag during performances of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” he was expressing not only an approach to politics but also an approach to faith (often, the song suggested, they were the same thing). U2 were learning to infuse their music with a sensibility that had been unreachable in their religious lives—a kind of militant surrendering.