U2 have announced that they will release a new compilation album of "reimagined and re-recorded" tracks called Songs Of Surrender, featuring forty songs from their back catalogue.
The band confirmed the news in a post on their social media accounts and said the album will be released this St Patrick's Day.
Songs Of Surrender. 40 Songs. Reimagined and rerecorded. March 17, 2023. #U2SOS40 pic.twitter.com/QmdJ7NIAus
— U2 (@U2) January 10, 2023
The post also included a teaser video of their new version of their 2000 hit single Beautiful Day.
The news comes after forty selected fans of the band received letters the band’s guitarist The Edge hinting at the new project.
In the letter, he wrote, "When a song becomes well known, it’s always associated with a particular voice. I can’t imagine Tangled Up In Blue without the reedy timbre of Bob Dylan or All The Time In The World without the unique voice of Louis Armstrong. So, what happens when a voice develops and experience and maturity give it additional resonance?"
He added that most of U2’s work "was written and recorded when we were a bunch of very young men" and that the songs had changed over the years to "mean something quite different to us now".
"Some have grown with us," he said. "Some we have outgrown, but we have not lost sight of what propelled us to write those songs in the first place. The essence of those songs is still in us. But how to reconnect with that essence when we have moved on and grown so much?"
The Edge said that the band wanted to bring their old songs up to date and give them "a 21st-century reimagining".
"Once we surrendered our reverence for the original version, each song started to open up to a new authentic voice of this time, of the people we are now, and particularly the singer that Bono has become," he said. "I hope you like our new direction."
No tracklisting for the new album, the band's fifteenth, has not been confirmed but it is likely to feature tracks featured in Bono's 2022 book Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
The U2 front man brought his book tour to Dublin’s Olympia Theatre last October and is set to perform a residency at New York’s Beacon Theatre this spring in support of Surrender.
U2’s last album was 2017’s Songs of Experience.
