In Unusual Step, U2 Reinterprets 40 of Its Best-Known Songs

In reimagining 40 of their best-known songs, U2 recognized that many fans would experience them through earphones connected to a device in their pockets — rather than being belted out onstage.

That was one thought behind "Songs of Surrender," coming out this week. The four men of U2, now either 61 or 62 years old, revisit material written in some cases when they were little more than kids out of Dublin.

Particularly in those days, U2 songs were written primarily with concerts in mind. The Edge told The Associated Press in an interview that U2 wanted to catch the attention of people seeing the band for the first time, perhaps in a festival or as an opening act.

"There's a sort of gladiatorial aspect to live performances when you're in that situation," he said. "The material has got to be pretty bold and even strident at times. With this reimagining, we thought it would be fun to see intimacy as a new approach, that intimacy would be the new punk rock, as it were."

The Edge was the driving force behind "Songs of Surrender," using pandemic down time to record much of the music at home.

Given that his electric guitar and Bono's voice are the musical signature of U2, there's a certain irony in the absence of that guitar being the most immediately noticeable feature of the new versions. He sticks primarily to keyboards, acoustic guitar and dulcimer.

The process began without a roadmap or commitment to see it through if it wasn't working.

"As we got into it and got into a groove, we really started to enjoy what was happening," he said. "There was a lot of freedom in the process, it was joyful and fun to take these songs and sort of reimagine them and I think that comes across. It doesn't sound like there was a lot of hard work involved because it wasn't."

Much of the intimacy comes through Bono's voice. There's no need to shout, so he sometimes uses lower registers or slips into falsetto.

Lyrics are often rewritten, sometimes extensively in even a recent song like "The Miracle of Joey Ramone." Cellos replace the driving guitar of "Vertigo." Keyboards give "Where the Streets Have No Name" an ambient sound. "Two Hearts Beat as One," the original a high-octane rock dance song, now has a slinkier, sexy vibe and is one of four songs where The Edge takes lead vocal.

The band is fairly democratic in taking songs from throughout its catalog, although 1981's "October" album and 2009's "No Line on the Horizon" are not represented. "New Year's Day," "Angel of Harlem" and "Even Better Than the Real Thing" are among the songs left alone.

"We’re one of the only acts that has this body of work where a project like this would be possible, with the distance of time and experience where it would be interesting to revisit early songs," The Edge said.

Throughout music history, bands have occasionally re-recorded material for contractual reasons. Taylor Swift is the most famous example, putting out new versions of her older songs in order to control their use. Squeeze's "Spot the Difference" makes sport of how they tried to make new recordings indistinguishable from the originals.

Live recordings and archive-cleaning projects like Bob Dylan's "bootleg" series gives fans the chance to hear familiar songs differently.

Many older artists don't see the point of making new music, since there's little opportunity to be heard and fans are partial to the familiar stuff, anyway, said Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone contributing editor.

"Revisiting your body of work in a creative way is a means of sustaining interest in your career," DeCurtis said. "Older fans might not be interested in another collection of your hits, but reworking them in a meaningful way could prove enticing. Younger fans don't have the same investment in your classics, so these new versions offer a route into your catalog."

The Edge encourages fans to give the new versions a try, suggesting they may even grow to prefer some of them.

"I don't think there's a competition between these and the original versions," he said. "It's more of an additive thing than a substitution. If you like the new arrangements, great. If you prefer the originals, keep listening.

"It's no problem either way," he said. "They're both valid."

The Edge said he's working on new music for U2, "and we've got some great stuff in the pipeline."

The quartet that met in drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s kitchen when they answered an ad placed on a high school bulletin board is a remarkable story in longevity. A passage toward the end of Bono's book "Surrender," where he talked about looking around onstage at the end of their most recent tour in 2019 and wondering if it was the end, raised natural questions about how long U2 would continue.

"There are many reasons why U2 has stayed together for so long, but one of the main reasons is that it works so well for us as individuals," The Edge said. "I think we all shine the brightest as part of this collective. I certainly would not like to hang up the guitar."

This year will provide a test for a band that can count on one hand the number of times it has performed without all four members. U2 has committed to a run of shows in Las Vegas without Mullen, who is recuperating from surgery.

Would U2 continue if one of the original quartet decides it's time to hang it up?

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility that we could go forward with different members," The Edge said. "But also, equally, I could imagine us deciding not to. It would be a big challenge. But I think at the time we would know what felt right."

No one was expecting it. Late last year, André 3000 released his debut solo album, "New Blue Sun," 18 years after his legendary rap group Outkast's last studio album, "Idlewild."

But "New Blue Sun" has "no bars," he jokes. It's a divergence from rap because "there was nothing I was liking enough to rap about, or I didn't feel it sounded fresh. I'm not about to serve you un-fresh (expletive.)"

Instead, he offered up a six-track instrumental album of ambient alt-jazz — with special attention paid to the flute.

"The sound, that's how I got into it," he says of the instrument. "The portability, too. You can't tote around a piano and play in Starbucks."

He's also invested in the flute's history — like learning about Mayan flutes made from clay, a design he had re-created in cedarwood. "There’s all kinds of fables and, you know, indigenous stories that go along with playing the flute — playing like the birds or playing your heart like the wind — it kind of met (me) where I was in life," he says.

"Flutes — wind instruments in general — are the closest thing you get to actually hearing a human," he continues. "You're actually hearing the breath of a person."

"New Blue Sun" is a stunning collection, one that has earned André 3000 three new Grammy Award nominations: album of the year, alternative jazz, and instrumental composition. Those arrive exactly 25 years after the 1999 Grammys, where Outkast received their first nomination — for "Rosa Parks," from their third album, "Aquemini" — and 20 years after the group won album of the year for "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below."

"It matters because we all want to be acknowledged or recognized," André 3000 says of his new Grammy nominations. "It's a type of proof of connection, in some type of way ... especially with the Grammys, because it's voted on by a committee of musicians and people in the industry."

He's a bit surprised by the attention, too, given the type of album he created. "We have no singles on the radio, not even singles that are hot in the street," he says. "When you're sitting next to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, these are highly, hugely popular music artists, I'm satisfied just because of that ... we won just to be a part of the whole conversation."

He theorizes that it may be because popular music listening habits are broadening. "A lot of artists are just trying different things. Even, you know, the album that Beyoncé is nominated for, it’s not her normal thing," he says of her country-and-then-some record, "Cowboy Carter.We’re in this place where things are kind of shifting and moving."

For André 3000, "New Blue Sun" has allowed him to "feel like a whole new artist," but it is also an extension of who he's always been. "Being on the road with Outkast and picking up a bass clarinet at a pawn shop in New York and just sitting on the back of the bus playing with it — these things have been around," he says.

He's also always embraced "newness," as he puts it, experimenting creatively "even if it sounds non-masterful."

"Even producing for Outkast, I was just learning these instruments. If I ... put my hands down and play ‘Ms. Jackson,’ I'm not knowing what I'm playing. But I like it," he says.

As for a new Outkast album, "I never say never," he says. "But I can say that the older I get, I feel like that time has happened."

In Unusual Step, U2 Reinterprets 40 of Its Best-Known Songs