Songs of Experience Updates: October 18

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2017-10-18)

There has been a lot of activity on the Songs of Experience front in the past few weeks. We will try to tie together what we know here. This is mostly a summary of earlier news, and we will link to the original information when we have an earlier post.

Track Listing

Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton have been doing a lot of promotional interviews since “You’re The Best Thing About Me” has come out. They’ve now identified 11 songs on the main album in recent interviews, and 1 song on the deluxe version of the album. The Edge, in an interview in Mexico confirmed that the main album will have 12 tracks. We think we know the 12th track on the main album as well from this summer’s listening sessions. See our story for the full listing, along with some details about each of the songs. The album is expected to start with “Love Is All We Have Left” (Bono, Rolling Stone) and will end with “The Little Things That Give You Away” (Bono, in concert). “The Showman” will come at the end of the album, just before “The Little Things That Give You Away” (Bono, Sirius XM) and “Get Out of Your Own Way” will be followed by “American Soul” which will be followed by “Summer of Love” in the middle part of the album. The bonus track, identified as being on the deluxe version of the album is “The Book of Your Heart” (Bono, Sirius XM)

Formats

Little is known of formats at this time, although Bono’s interview with Sirius XM mentions a deluxe version of the album with additional songs for the first time. In the summer, the band also recorded and filmed several songs being performed live in studio at the Groucho Club in London UK. The band also recorded an interview with Zane Lowe of Beats 1 at that same stop. These in-studio recordings may be used for deluxe versions of the album as well we are told.

Amp Visual, the designers of U2’s albums, were in Prague recently to oversee actual physical copies of the Songs of Experience album being produced. Why Prague? Most U2 pressings on vinyl original in Prague these days, and the recent The Joshua Tree CDs and box sets were all produced in Prague for the European market as well.

Release Dates

Bono and Adam Clayton have both agreed with journalists when asked about the December 1, 2017 date that it is correct. The Edge has also confirmed the album will be out before the end of 2017 but has not yet confirmed the date as the other two have. When asked about December 1 on WMMR he replied, “The exact release date is still a little bit up in the air, but you aren’t far off there.” and later on BBC2 he confirmed, “We’ve finished the album, its going to be out this year, we’re very very excited about that.”

Singles

“You’re The Best Thing About Me” is the first single, and is still actively being promoted at radio. There have now been five versions of the video released (with one containing errors that has been retracted). A sixth version of the video filmed in Amsterdam this summer remains unreleased. There are four different versions of the song that have been released, the “Acoustic Version” and “U2 Vs. Kygo” versions have both been released for sale along with the version called the “Album Version”. A fourth version of the song, the “Sci-Fi Soul Mix“, mixed by Jacknife Lee was released for radio promotion, but has not been commercially released at this time. A second song, “The Blackout” was released as a video, but is not being considered a single from the album.

Record Store Day will hold a Black Friday event again this November, and it was highly rumoured that the band would contribute a limited release of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” to this event. However, the official list was announced earlier this week, and there is no U2 release listed. It is rare that additional items get added after the list is announced but not completely unheard of, so we continue to wait to see if this rumour pans out. Perhaps the band are waiting until the album is officially announced before announcing the release.

The next single was identified in the Mexican press as “Get Out of Your Own Way”. While in Mexico City earlier this month, the band filmed a video for the song on the rooftop of a building in the city. The video has a strong Mexican theme. In an interview with Reforma, The Edge said, “We are going to show a vibrant Mexico, one that is unique and fascinating.” From what we have seen the video would tie in nicely with Mexican celebrations of “The Day of the Dead” at the start of November.

Album Announcement

In September we were able to tell you that “ We are told that the full details should come out on Friday, October 20th or thereabouts.” We’ve confirmed with other sources that the announcement is imminent, and our original source has said that the album announcement should happen in the next week. The band will be in Sao Paulo, Brazil on the 20th, and it will be a day between concerts on The Joshua Tree 2017 tour. It remains to be seen if the band will make some sort of announcement that day, or if they will perhaps wait until next week when the tour is complete. As always we will let you know if we have firm information about when this will happen.

Album Promo Tour

No promotional tour stops have been announced, but those should start in Mid-November and run through to early December. As we have firm dates we should have more information. U2 are up for a number of awards, awards you can help them win by voting for the band. Our friends at U2360GRADI.IT have summarized some of these awards in an article in Italian. We list these below as well.

NRJ Awards, France, U2 is nominated for International Band of the Year (You can vote once per day – Awards are held November 4, in Cannes, France)
MTV EMA Awards, U2 is nominated for Best Live Act, and Best Rock Act (You can vote here for U2 – Awards are held November 12, at Wembley Arena in London,UK)
American Music Awards, U2 is nominated for Tour of the Year (You can vote here for U2 – Awards are held November 19, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, CA)
Los40 Music Awards, U2 will receive the Golden Award for Music (You can’t vote for this one, U2 is winning it, they are also nominated for “Tour of the Year”. The Awards are held November 10, at the Wizink Center in Madrid, Spain)

Just because U2 is nominated, does not mean they will show up at the awards ceremony. At this time we have no confirmation that they will attend any of these events.

All of our news about the new album and singles are being collected in one location, available at the linked image below.

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