Breaking Waves: War at 40 And More

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2023-02-25)

Forty years ago this month, U2 released their third album War. The album arrived on February 28 in Europe, and the following day in North America. It gave U2 their first number one album.

This week to celebrate, U2 X-Radio on SiriusXM is hosting a conversation with Adam Clayton about the album. The conversation will air at 1pm on Monday, February 27 on the station. U2 X-Radio is available through subscription to SiriusXM, available in Canada and the USA.

Additionally through the week, the station will be playing tracks from War with commentary mixed into the regular programming.

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Adam has also been doing a bit of press about the new album, Songs of Surrender. Adam was interviewed by Tom Doyle of Mojo Magazine, and shared a few tidbits about U2’s next plans, that rock album Bono’s been talking about. Adam shared, “We are turning the amps on. I certainly think the rock that we all grew up with as 16- and 17-year-olds, that rawness of those Patti Smith, Iggy Pop records…that kind of power is something we would love to connect back into.” Asked about the long rumoured Songs of Ascent which is being held back for this rock album to be birthed, Adam shared, “Well, ‘Songs of Ascent’ is a much more meditative, spiritual record. This will be ‘Songs For Fighting’, I’d say (laughs).”

He also spoke about Songs of Surrender and we’ve included some of those quotes in our discography entry for the album.

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“Beautiful Day” is up next as a single, and should be out on Friday March 4. A preview of the track is now available on Apple Music in some region and iTunes in others, depending on how you access those services.

The preview of the new version of the song has some new lyrics, “Saw the world as your blue room, saw the seven seas swallowing the moon.”

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DJ Dave Fanning has been a supporter of U2 since their earliest days. He had Bono on his program in 1979 to play the three tracks that would appear on “Three” and allowed his listeners to help decide what song would be the A-side of the single.

Fanning has played numerous U2 singles first in the days since on his radio shows.

Fanning announced this week he’ll be stepping down from his weekend show on 2FM to focus on other projects, including The Fanning Podcast, which will air on RTÉ Radio Player, and other podcast locations.

He’s also doing a U2 special on 2FM to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and to celebrate the launch of Songs of Surrender.

Join us in wishing Dave well with his new projects!

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That won’t be the only thing to watch on March 17. The Letterman special, Bono and The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming will see Letterman visit Dublin for the first time, and will include footage from two nights of performances held back in December.

A new trailer debuted this week for the show:

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We’re also told the Tiny Desk concert will air on March 17 on NPR. And there’s a new album out that day. We’re also told there will be other promotional appearances that week.

Just 20 days to go…

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Yesterday a new version of Songs of Surrender was announced, being sold via the bookstore at the University of Notre Dame, home of the Fighting Irish. The 2LP set is a 16-track version of the album on 180g heavyweight vinyl. One record is blue and one is gold. The Notre Dame logo will be on all four vinyl labels, there are custom inner sleeves for this release, and the logo will be on a sticker. The set will also contain an exclusive sticker.

The record is also being sold via Interscope Records, but you have to be in the USA to order a copy. As we write this, just 100 copies remain for sale on the website. An unknown number of copies have been held back for sale in shop on campus. 2500 copies in total have been made available in this format.

For those waiting for the purple, we have been told they’ve decided to launch that next week instead. All our news on formats of the album can be found in the album discography entry.

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Bono sent in some remarks to the celebration of PEPFAR at 20 being held at The Bush Center. The event marked 25 million lives saved by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Bono’s comments were played at the event on February 24, 2023. Those can be seen on Youtube below:

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We’ve added a few new bits around the site this week…

  • Calendar of Events: Want to know what’s coming up for TV appearances, releases, performances and more? We’ve got a little calendar built to track things as we add them.
  • Video Snippets for Songs of Surrender: Those little one-minute video snippets are being shared with new videos daily. We’re tracking them all in one spot at the link here.

We’re constantly adding to the archives here, so feel free to keep checking back for what is new.

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