The Blackout Anniversary

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2025-08-30)

On August 30, 2017 U2 fans got a first taste of the studio songs that would be on Songs of Experience with the release of a video for “The Blackout”. The video was released ahead of the first single for the album, which would follow a week later through the Facebook Live platform. That video release was eight years ago today. We’ll take a look back at “The Blackout” to celebrate that anniversary.

Advance Teases

With a total eclipse moving across the US, letters started arriving in the mail to U2 fans which was the start of the promotional campaign for Songs of Experience. Bono described the songs on the album as letters to people in his life, so it was fitting that the album was launched with a series of letters.

The letters were received by fans living in the path of totality of the eclipse. The letter was a essay about William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Over top of the essay was a graphic of the silhouettes of Bono’s son Eli and The Edge’s daughter Sian, that would be used as the cover photo from the album. Cut outs in the silhouettes highlight certain words in the passage behind them, “Blackout it’s clear who you are will appear” and ends with U2.com. The letters started appearing on August 21, 2017, the day of the eclipse, and had been mailed a few days earlier from Interscope in California. The essay on Blake appears to have been taken from Skoletorget.

The next tease was an email sent out to fans who attended a closely guarded video shoot for the song in Amsterdam saying “Remember Gashouder?” The reference was to a venue involved in the video itself, and the email included a photograph taken of the venue from the stage. The email was sent out on August 28, and the following day the video was announced.

The Song

The song had started out as a discussion of Bono’s mortality, but when the album was delayed in 2016, was reworked into a more political song looking at the state of democracy. In the liner notes for the album, Bono shares, “It’s a letter to the moment we’re in, where personal and political apocalypse combine. Not just the rock behemoths slaughtered by time but the dinosaur of democracy facing extinction…I don’t think it’s far fetched. Democracy, after all, is a mere blip in history. It’s an aspiration seized by bloody revolutions. It’s a bloody messy business.” The song was produced by Jacknife Lee with additional production by Brent Kutzle of OneRepublic. Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic was listed as providing original production on the song before it was reworked in early 2017. Programming, additional keyboard and guitars are all provided by Jacknife Lee on the final track.

There are three studio versions of the song that have been released commercially. The album version of the song is the main studio version of the song. An instrumental version of the song was also released as part of the promotional campaign for the album. A remix of the song by Jacknife Lee was also released, as the B-side for the eventual single, as well as used as a bonus track on Japanese versions of Songs of Experience.

“The Blackout” was not released to streaming services at the same time the video debuted at the end of August 2017. It was instead held until November 1, when it was released to streaming alongside “Get Out of Your Own Way” as the band announced their album release plans, and the 2018 tour dates for North America. Pre-ordering the album meant you had access to these two new songs, as well as the first single, “You’re the Best Thing About Me”.

The song was released commercially as a single, for the 2017 Black Friday event as part of Record Store Day. For the event the single was released on 12-inch black vinyl in large quantities at record stores worldwide. A special limited pressing in black-and-white vinyl had a design that resembled an eclipse and was limited to just 750 copies. These were pressed by Third Man Records. These limited copies were sold at Third Man Records in Detroit and Nashville, Freebird Records in Dublin (100 copies) and Rough Trade in London (150 copies). The two versions were packaged identically except for a small bar code that listed which version was contained within. Third Man Records would also give away ten test pressings of the single in black vinyl at special Third Man events. The physical vinyl was released a week ahead of the album.

“The Blackout” was named one of the best songs of 2017 by The New York Times included on a list of 54 songs. The release on vinyl for Black Friday reached #2 on the Vinyl Singles chart and the Physical Singles chart in the UK. The video itself set records during the Facebook live premiere, and subsequent period where it was only available on the Facebook platform. In the first seven days that the video was available on Facebook, it accrued 11.1 million views, which placed it in the number 1 position on Billboard’s Top Facebook Live Videos chart for August 2017. Rankings for that chart are determined by a blend of views, reactions (172,000), comments and shares (50,000) of the video. The video did not appear on other platforms until November 13, 2017, when it was made available on YouTube and also made available for purchase on iTunes.

The Video Shoot

The video was shot live in front of a small crowd of invited fans at a small club in Amsterdam. The video shoot saw 137 fans be invited, and each was allowed to bring a guest. Longtime U2 collaborators such as Gavin Friday, Sebastian Clayton, Willie Williams, Martin Wroe, Ross Stewart and the band’s manager Guy Oseary were all present for the video shoot. The video was filmed by Richie Smyth, who had worked previously with the band on a number of videos including “The Fly”, “Last Night on Earth” and “Until the End of the World”.

On July 24, 2017, a post on U2.Com titled “Up Close and Personal…” invited fans to apply for a chance to attend something special: “Word is that the band might be doing a little filming later this week. Somewhere around central Amsterdam. Late afternoon to early evening Thursday. Might even be some room for some fans to catch the action… up close and personal. Sound like the kind of thing you might be up for?”

On July 27 fans started receiving emails confirming they were invited to the event, and could bring a guest. They were asked to wear black and grey only, avoid logos, and told they would be unable to disclose any information about the project until it was released. Fans were called the next day to ask them to meet at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam at 5:15pm. Signs directed fans to a building known as the Gashouder, a large round building, part of a former gasworks. Fans surrendered phones and were provided light snacks, before eventually being lead to a nearby club called Westerunie where filming took place.

Filming of the video included footage of the fans moving from one building to the next, as well as entering into the Westerunie, and filling into their places inside the club. The Westerunie has a low stage, and balconies that wrap around three sides of the building reached by stairs at the back of the venue.

During the shoot the band performed the song five times in front of the audience. Both Bono and Adam Clayton went into the audience during the filming of the video, with Bono crowd surfing overhead multiple times, and Adam jumping off the low stage to play his bass in the crowd. At one point Adam laid back, supported in the arm of fans, as he played the song.

The band ran through the song twice, then moved to a back area where they reviewed the video footage. They returned to the stage to capture additional footage, and again played the song twice. After a final review of the footage, the band came back to perform one additional time, with Bono telling dad jokes in between some of the takes. “Four Irishmen walk out of a bar…wait, that’s just not possible…” The fans present learned the lyrics quickly and on the final run through were singing along to the chorus causing Bono to ask if the song had already leaked on the internet.

After the fifth run through of the video, the band once again went back to review footage. Fans started to sing the “how long” refrain of “40” while they waited, and it caught Bono’s attention. He returned to the stage, and spoke with someone at the bask of the room asking if it was ok to share a new song from the album for the fans that had been there that night. Upon receiving approval, Bono requested “Lights of Home” and the song was played over the PA in the club (A slightly different mix than the eventual album version as well!) The band made their exit as the new song played.

The full video shoot with fans present took approximately three and a half hours.

Since 2017

U2 were in Amsterdam for concerts on their Joshua Tree 2017 tour, where they would also film an as-yet-unseen video for “You’re the Best Thing About Me” as well during the actual concert the following nights.

“The Blackout” made its live debut during a normal tour stop at the start of the Experience + Innocence tour in 2018. The song was played at each concert on the tour, early in the night. It has not been played since that tour. A live version of the song was released on the fan club compilation Live Songs of Innocence + Experience, recorded live in Belfast in 2018. A live version from the final night of that tour was included in the film Experience + Innocence: Live in Berlin, also a fan club gift.

Richie Smyth who filmed the video also worked with U2 throughout 2018 during the North American dates of the Experience and Innocence tour. He created the documentary film The American Suite documenting that tour which remains unreleased as of this time.

Songs of Experience released in December 2017 is the bands last album of new songs, and the follow up is now underway, with signs pointing towards a release late next year. The band are due to return to studio in the weeks ahead to finish off the recording of their next work.

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