U2 viewed ‘Songs of Surrender’ as a “fun experiment”.
The veteran rockers have reworked 40 of their classic hits for the record – which is a companion piece to frontman Bono’s memoir ‘Surrender’ – and guitarist The Edge admitted he enjoyed working on the project because there were no “expectations”.
He told the Sun newspaper: “The thing I love about this project personally is that there was no expectation, no pressure. We went into it as a fun experiment to see where it would lead us.”
In working on the new arrangements, the 49-year-old guitarist was keen to put Bono’s vocals first.
He explained: “I am now, and was during lockdown, working on new material.
“But the idea of our classic songs in stripped-down form had been knocking around for a while. We’d already tried it in our live shows, so I thought, ‘Wow, this could be expanded’.
“Often the best way to showcase tunes is through the vocal so I started thinking about serving the voice.
“It’s fair to say that our early recordings were very much about creating live arrangements that would work in certain venues.
“It didn’t occur to us that we might benefit from changing the key so Bono wasn’t singing at the top of his range so often. Intimacy was never fully explored as a quality.”
And the ‘One’ hitmaker wanted to give listeners an intimate experience while bringing the tracks up to date.
He said: “We wanted to give people the sense that Bono is literally singing in their ear…
“I was aiming for three things — to have more feeling, to be more personal and for it to sound of the moment.”