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U2: Songs of Innocence

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Island Records
Released: 2014.09.15
Time:
 48:11
Category: Rock
Producer(s): See Artists ...
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.u2.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] The Miracle [of Joey Ramone] (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 4:16
[2] Every Breaking Wave (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 4:13
[3] California [There Is No End to Love] (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 4:00
[4] Song for Someone (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 3:47
[5] Iris [Hold Me Close] (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 5:20
[6] Volcano (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 3:15
[7] Raised by Wolves (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 4:06
[8] Cedarwood Road (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 4:26
[9] Sleep Like a Baby Tonight (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 5:02
[10] This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 5:06
[11] The Troubles (Bono/The Edge/U2) - 4:46

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bono - Lead Vocals, Keyboards on [1,3–5,7,9–11], Guitar on [1,6,9], Dulcimer on [2]
The Edge - Guitar, Backing Vocals, Keyboards on [1–8,10–11], Programming on [5]
Adam Clayton - Bass Guitar, Keyboards on [5]
Larry Mullen, Jr. - Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals on [3,10]

Brian Burton - Keyboards on [1–2,7–11], Programming on [7], Additional Percussion on [10], Choral Arrangement on [6]
Ryan Tedder - Keyboards on [1–2,4–5], Programming on [1], Acoustic Guitar on [1]
Paul Epworth - Keyboards on [1,3,8], Programming on [1], Additional Percussion on [1], Claps on [6], Slide Guitar on [8]
Flood - Keyboards on [4]
Declan Gaffney - Acoustic Guitar on [1,6], Keyboards on [2–8,10–11], Programming on [3,7,9], Backing Vocals on [3,10], Claps on [6], Additional Percussion on [7], Vocal Effects on [7]
Lykke Li - Vocals on [11]
"Classy" Joe Visciano - Claps on [6], Backing Vocals on [10]
Leo Pearson - Keyboards on [9]
Caroline Dale - Cello on [11], String Arrangement on [11]
Natalia Bonner - Violin on [11]
Greg Clark - Choir on [1,6]
Carlos Ricketts - Choir on [1,6]
Tabitha Fair - Choir on [1,6]
Kim Hill - Choir on [1,6]
Quiona Mccollum - Choir on [1,6]
Nicki Richards - Choir on [1,6]
Everett Bradley - Choir on [1,6]
Bobby Harden - Choir on [1,6]
Ada Dyer - Choir on [1,6]

Danger Mouse - Producer on [1–3,7–11], Additional Producer on [5]
Paul Epworth - Producer on [1,3,5,8], Additional Producer on [6]
Flood - Producer on [4]
Declan Gaffney - Producer on [3,6–7], Additional Producer on [2,11]
Ryan Tedder - Producer on [1–2,4–5]

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Many U2 albums experience a difficult birth, but their 13th studio record underwent a particularly extended labor. Gestating for years, possibly started immediately after 2009's No Line on the Horizon and ushered into existence by many midwives, Songs of Innocence appeared suddenly in September 2014, nearly nine months after "Invisible," the presumptive lead single for the record, flopped. "Invisible" is nowhere to be found on Songs of Innocence, yet its vaguely electronic thrum did indeed turn out to be a taste of where U2 were headed after those endless sessions wound up shepherded by Danger Mouse. Songs of Innocence -- its title taken from William Blake, although many music nerds may first think of David Axelrod -- does indeed incorporate electronic elements in a way no U2 album since Pop has, weaving samples, loops, and other flourishes within music that otherwise adheres to the self-conscious classicism that has been the band's stock in trade since Y2K. Which is another way of saying that where the U2 of the '90s looked forward, the 2014 U2 are looking back, aware of a legacy that includes decades of arena-filling anthems, the deliberate reinvention of Achtung Baby, and their initial inspiration from the great spark of punk rock. The latter also provides the thematic fuel on Songs of Innocence, a quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age story from Bono that begins with the big bang of "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)." This opening fanfare doesn't sound a thing like the Ramones, nor does "This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now" sound like its reported inspiration, the Clash: they, like everything else here, sound like U2, albeit a U2 who are beginning to carry the weight of their years somewhat uneasily. Majesty doesn't come easily to them anymore, so they've replaced surging melodrama with a brittle, insistent clamor that's intended to dazzle. It's busy enough to be bracing yet it's also wearying, exuding a faint air of desperation that dampens the emotional pull of such lovely moments as "Song for Someone" and "The Troubles" (the latter featuring vocals from Lykke Li) while merely providing clatter elsewhere. Often, there's a nagging sense U2 could've pushed themselves a little harder sonically -- "Raised by Wolves" benefits from the coiled paranoia created by its frenetically circling vocals and guitars -- but that would've required risk, which they've been avoiding since Pop's garbled rollout. Instead, Songs of Innocence showcases how U2 desire to have things both ways. They camouflage their nostalgia in the sound of modernity; they play gigantic music about intimacy; they want to expand their horizons without leaving home. They want to be everything to everyone and, in attempting to do so, they've wound up with a record that appeals to a narrow audience: fellow travelers who either thrill at the spectacle or dig for the subtleties buried underneath the digital din. [Upon the surprise digital release of Songs of Innocence in September 2014, U2 announced the physical edition would appear a month later with an extra disc of bonus tracks. The band kept their promise, adding a second disc (along with finished artwork) to their thirteenth studio album for its physical release. Depending how you keep score, this second disc contains either 5, 10, or 11 tracks; the count is thrown off by five cuts being sequenced as one 22-minute track called "Acoustic Sessions" and a slightly alternate version of "Invisible" being buried as a hidden track at the end. Along with these "Acoustic Sessions" -- most being more fully arranged than the title suggests, particularly "Raised by Wolves" -- there is an alternate version of "The Troubles" and an "alternate perspective mix by Tchad Blake" for "Sleep Like a Baby Tonight," welcome variations all but which basically leave two songs as enticements for anybody other than the hardcore: "Lucifer's Hands" and "The Crystal Ballroom." Neither song seems to belong thematically to the loose semi-autobiographical narrative of the proper album and they're also more nimble than much of the record, with "Lucifer's Hands" benefitting from a dense percolating arrangement anchored by a trashy little guitar riff and "The Crystal Ballroom" evoking an arch, art-punk disco quite well. They might not have fit snugly onto the record but as individual songs, they're stronger than some of the tunes that made the cut.]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



U2 have announced the release of their 13th studio album, Songs Of Innocence, available now and free to all iTunes customers. And, after several years' gestation, five producers, ever-shifting release dates and Bono publicly fretting that the biggest band in the world was on the verge of irrelevance, fans will be relieved to hear that it sounds a lot like U2.

It is an album of big, colourful, attacking rock with fluid melodies, bright anthemic choruses and bold lyrical ideas. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that, despite apparently being created in a spirit of self-doubt, it sounds fresh and cohesive, bouncing out of the speakers with a youthful spring in its step.

On first impressions, Songs of Innocence is not an attempt to create a grand masterpiece that redefines the band, but rather, as the title suggests, to reconnect them with an elusive pop elixir of youthful energy and passion. Lyrically, it reflects on the past, on their origins as a band and as individuals, which is unusual territory for the usually forward-looking Bono and the Edge (who share lyrical duties). Lead single and opening track, The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) sets the confident tone, with its “oh-way-oh” choral chant, glam rock stomping rhythm and surges of grungy guitar.

Lyrically, it is a celebration of the transformative power of music, and in particular the effect on the young U2 of hearing The Ramones, and in that spirit it keeps things simple and direct. There are songs about growing up on the north side of Dublin (the fierce and strange Raised By Wolves and the dense, somewhat ungainly Cedarwood Road), memories of Bono’s late mother (the chiming disco driving Iris (Hold Me Close)) and appreciations of musical inspirations (the loose, groovy This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now is dedicated to Joe Strummer, and celebrates the Clash spirit of passion and purposefulness).

Each track seems very defined in itself, opening with a trio of songs aimed directly at American radio (The Miracle, Every Breaking Wave and California (There Is No End To Love)), packed with chiming guitars, synth hooks and epic choruses. It sounds like U2 taking on such young stadium rock pretenders as Snow Patrol and The Killers, intent on beating them at the game U2 themselves invented.

An immediate standout track is Volcano, a thrilling, thumping yet delightfully quirky celebration of the power of rock and roll that sounds a bit like Franz Ferdinand on steroids. The Ryan Tedder-produced ballad Song For Someone is probably the track that will have fans holding their phones aloft in stadiums, a mid-tempo ballad that builds from plucked acoustic intimacy to heart-bursting emotion. It is one of the songs that hints at ideas and feelings in the deeper currents of an album made up of dazzling surfaces.

It clearly hasn’t been an easy album to make. It is six years since No Line On The Horizon (itself widely deemed a flawed album) and three years since they completed their record breaking 360 Degree tour. There were long sessions with cool American producer Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, who started working with the band in 2010. The album was first mooted for release at the beginning of 2014 (hence the release of a one off single, Invisible, in February), but since then there have been sessions with Paul Epworth (British producer for Adele, Coldplay and Florence And The Machine) and Ryan Tedder (top songwriting collaborator with the likes of Adele, Taylor Swift and Beyonce), both highly commercial producers who bring some contemporary sheen. Long-time collaborator Mark Ellis, aka Flood, is also involved, although, in the end, it appears to have been U2’s engineer Declan Gaffney who has put in the long hours to tie it all together (leading to promotion to a full production credit).

With the album’s October release only confirmed at the very last moment (with the pressure of the Apple iPhone launch looming), I have the sense that it was plucked from the band’s grasp in the mastering suite, probably with the Edge protesting that he’s not finished yet and there’s one more echoing guitar note to be added.

For me, on first contact, it is the Danger Mouse tracks that hold the most interest, and perhaps hint at directions U2 might have rewardingly explored if they had stayed their original course and weren’t quite so intent on maintaining massive stadium-level success. Touching synth ballad Sleep Like A Baby Tonight and dreamy, sinister album closer The Troubles (with a perfectly pitched vocal chant from Swedish singer Lykke Li) are the kind of strange pop songs that can really get under your skin.

Lyrically, here and elsewhere, hints emerge that these reminiscences of the past are not quite as innocent as they first appear, and that this is an album laced with guilt, working towards self-forgiveness and redemption. “I’m a long way from where I was and where I need to be,” Bono croons on Song For Someone, suggesting that there is perhaps more experience at work in this album than there is innocence.

It is, at heart, a highly personal set of songs. There are no flag waving anthems, no big social causes. If there is a moral, it appears in the coda of Cedarwood Road: “a heart that is broken is a heart that is open.”

As a long time U2 fan and supporter (in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I am thanked in the album credits, albeit with my name misspelled), I wouldn’t put it on a par with their greatest work - Boy, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby or even the seamless songs of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. At times it does sound like it is trying a bit too hard to please. But it's more pop than Pop ever was, and it certainly does the job it apparently sets out to do, delivering addictive pop rock with hooks, energy, substance and ideas that linger in the mind after you’ve heard them.

Neil McCormick - 9 Sep 2014
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2015



There are “oh-oh-ohs” that will sound huge ringing out across stadiums the world over when the band inevitably tour next year, some crunching guitar and then Bono starts singing: “I was chasing down the days of fears, chasing down a dream before it disappeared.” It sounds as if U2 feel comfortable in their skin as their 13th studio album kicks into life with a track called The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone), even if the record’s gestation has been fraught.

The Irish band’s last album, No Line on the Horizon, was released over five years ago, and while it received a five star review from Rolling Stone magazine, there was no string of hit singles. To some, the tentativeness to their approach was suggestive of the spiritual yearning that has characterised the best of their work, even while polarising others; to some, it simply sounded as if the band were beginning to lose their mojo.

Since then there have been rumours of protracted sessions with the producer Danger Mouse (best known for his work as one half of Gnarls Barkley), long-time manager Paul McGuinness jumped ship and now this: the by-now-familiar PR stunt of releasing the album with scant warning – call it “doing-a-Beyoncé” – which in this instance came on the back of an appearance at the new Apple Watch launch event in California on Tuesday.

In fact, Songs of Innocence has been “gifted” to a claimed half-a-billion-plus iTunes customers – a gesture that smacks of charity, although it should be noted that it’s Apple who seem to be bearing the cost, rather than the noted campaigner who fronts the band under review. Of Bono, it might be said that he has always seemed to know which side his bread is buttered, if not what time it really is.

Given this gambit – a tacit acknowledgement that records in this century are often little more than powerful promotional tools for live shows – it’s perhaps a shame that the band don’t risk more: Every Breaking Wave or Song For Someone – this is Classic U2, the Edge’s chiming guitar setting the scene for the endearing hopey-changey thing that has become the singer’s speciality. Elsewhere, the bass that fuels Volcano more readily brings to mind the band’s formative post-punk years (despite the refrain “you and I are rock’n’roll”), while Cedarwood Road carries more of a Led Zep chug but owes its title to the north Dublin address of Bono’s formative years.

Somewhere, you sense, there’s a clearer story that wants to be heard, something more directly personal or political, but all is opaque, at least on a first listen. Closer the Troubles doesn’t explicitly walk the same ground as Sunday Bloody Sunday; instead, here’s Bono singing: “I have a will for survival, So you can hurt me and then hurt me some more/ I can live with denial, But you’re not my troubles anymore.”

Only that song gets the breathy backing vocals and cinematic treatment that really bear Danger Mouse’s stamp. Given time, there’s every chance that other melodies would slip under the skin and lyrical themes reveal themselves further. But the initial impression is that this album sees the band not so much still looking for something that they haven’t yet found, but rather treading old ground without much of a sense of how to move forward.

Caspar Llewellyn Smith - 9 September 2014
© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited



4 / 10 U2's last album, 2009's 'No Line On The Horizon' might have been a flawed midlife crisis of a record but, like an actual midlife crisis, it contained some brilliantly fun flashes. Its follow-up, unfortunately, has only a handful of standouts. 'Iris (Hold Me Close)', about Bono's mother, is by far the best track, a wistful and pining ode that recasts the band's best moments in timeless sonics. “Something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here” howls the singer, and it's one of the few moments on 'Songs Of Innocence' where he doesn't sound like he's trying too hard. The tender 'Song For Someone' manages to stay within the lines, as does 'Every Breaking Wave'. It's characterised by restraint rather than bombast and is another obvious highlight, concerned with relaxing into calmness rather than killing yourself trying to take every opportunity out there. It's subtle and sensitive, and it shows that U2 are still capable of true wonder – but it's all too rare. Closing track 'The Troubles', featuring Lykke Li's breathy call-and-response vocals, creeps along with paranoid dread, but fatally misses the opportunity to blossom into something beautifully dark and instead just chugs along.



And like a rail replacement bus service, the weaker tracks seem to last fucking forever and go absolutely nowhere. 'Volcano' and 'Raised By Wolves' aim for the spectacular widescreen rock U2 are known for but fall flat; the latter dribbles on about blood, crucifixions and death incoherently, despite ostensibly being about a Dublin car bombing. The turgid 'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)' and 'Sleep Like A Baby Tonight' might have the best intentions but contain nothing notable whatsoever, and the best thing that can be said about 'California (There Is No End To Love)' is that, with its major melodies and simplistic imagery, it isn't as bad as 'This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now', which just stinks.

Compare this album with the iPhone and Apple Watch revealed yesterday. Apple kept their side of the bargain by presenting desirable, functional and beautiful products that people will pay for; U2 essentially fulfilled the role of Weird Guy Flyering Outside The Gig after giving 'Songs Of Innocence' away via iTunes.

But it doesn't matter what they're giving away, the fact it's free makes it seem cheap. And on this evidence they've devalued their own brand because, quite frankly, this is a serious mis-step that might win a week's worth of good publicity, but could foreshadow a year's worth of bad.

Ben Patashnik - www.nme.com



Time was, the recipe for a superstar artist to create a Big Event Album was well known—a few teaser ads in the music mags, a lead single for radio, some late-night talk show appearances, then sit back and watch the fans line up at the record store on release day. But now that basically every entity in that sentence has been culturally marginalized, and the propeller churn of social media refuses to tolerate slow-burn marketing, the best—and, perhaps, only—way to get everyone talking about your record at once is to release it with no warning. U2 being U2, they’ve taken that strategy one step over the line into indisputably queasy territory, aligning with their old friends Apple to insert their new album, Songs of Innocence, into all of our libraries without consent. By updating the old Columbia House Record Club scam to the digital age, U2 and their Cupertino buddies have created a new avenue of opt-out cultural transmission, removing even the miniscule effort it takes to go to a website and click “Download.”

That U2 would willingly play corporate house band at a watch announcement to achieve this rollout in 2014 surprises exactly nobody; the album release was even framed by Bono himself as the 10th-anniversary celebration of a commercial. But the insistent mode of distribution says a lot about the band’s addiction to attention in their 38th year. “Part of the DNA of this band has always been the desire to get our music to as many people as possible,” Bono wrote, and after the commercial squib of 2009’s gloomy No Line on the Horizon, everything about Songs of Innocence seems desperate to be the global, cultural “experience” fix U2 needs to survive, even if it means giving away the album for “free.”

Accordingly, the music itself aims for a one-size-fits-all, vaguely inspirational tone, with a lean approach to details despite the press kit assertion that it’s all “very, very personal.” So a song about Bono meeting his wife is given the non-committal title of “Song for Someone”, and a song called “The Troubles” isn’t a callback to the prolonged Northern Ireland conflict that inspired their first great song, but a bunch of self-pitying platitudes (which uses guest Lykke Li to mimic adult-contempo Duran Duran hit “Come Undone”). Even Bono’s opening love letter to Joey Ramone is only given specificity by the title’s parenthetical, a generic “last night a [fill-in-the-blank] changed my life” tale that could be adapted to the idol of your choosing. It’s all emotional content left intentionally formless, vaingloriously hoping to fit around the experiences of millions.

Songs of Innocence also continues a decade-long trend of U2 showing little interest in re-examining themselves as a band or as pop stars, the approach that sustained them artistically throughout the '90s. Despite jettisoning their Eno/Lanois/Lillywhite comfort zone in favor of Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, and a host of other moderately intriguing producers, Songs of Innocence is perhaps the album where U2 most self-consciously plays itself—or more distressingly, risk causing a temporal paradox by swiping moves from mantle-carriers Arcade Fire and Coldplay, akin to time traveling to the future and sleeping with your own grandchild.

A few promisingly weird moments, such as the eerily synthetic Beach Boys chant at the start of “California (There Is No End to Love)” or the breathy rhythms of “Raised By Wolves”, are quickly diluted by stock verse/chorus structures. The watery disco-punk beats of “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” and “Volcano” are thin gruel for a band that once seemed aware of current pop trends, however ill-advised the attempts were to engage with them. Only “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” manages to feel fresh from start to finish, with burbling synths and pillowy strings occasionally disrupted by the Edge at his fuzziest-sounding. Elsewhere, there seems to be barely any resistance to the gravity of doing what a U2 song is supposed to do and little else.

That gravity has a name, and it’s four letters long, and at this point even those letters are wearing sunglasses. The two brief moments where Bono drops his global-rock-ambassador persona—the deranged, filtered first note of the “Raised by Wolves” chorus, the brief return of the “Lemon” falsetto on “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight”—are jarring enough to expose just how overblown his crooning is on Songs of Innocence. While the album’s liner notes contain a moving, train-of-thought reflection on a childhood made up of witnessing car bombings and sneaking into Ramones shows, almost none of that insight makes it into the actual songs, which are a celebration of self-absorption: “You are rock and roll” quickly amended to “You and I are rock and roll.”

Perhaps the upcoming companion album, inevitably named Songs of Experience, will contain all the darker, cynical stuff from these sessions. Regardless, U2 have already squandered any remaining integrity to invent this needy, invasive breed of the Big Event Album, an Album that lacks any kind of artistic statement to deter from the overwhelming Brandiness. Where Beyoncé used her iTunes sneak attack late last year to make a bold pop proclamation of sexuality and feminism, U2 have used an even more audacious release platform to wave their arms and simply say, “Hey! Everybody! We’re still here!” Bono may have self-deprecatingly described Songs of Innocence as “the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys...in your junk mail,” but it’s not even that interesting—it’s just a blank message.

Rob Mitchum - September 12, 2014
© 2015 Pitchfork Media Inc.



No other rock band does rebirth like U2. No other band – certainly of U2's duration, commercial success and creative achievement – believes it needs rebirth more and so often. But even by the standards of transformation on 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung! Baby, Songs of Innocence – U2's first studio album in five years – is a triumph of dynamic, focused renaissance: 11 tracks of straightforward rapture about the life-saving joys of music, drawing on U2's long palette of influences and investigations of post-punk rock, industrial electronics and contemporary dance music. "You and I are rock & roll," Bono shouts in "Volcano," a song about imminent eruption, through a propulsive delirium of throaty, striding bass, alien-choral effects and the Edge's rusted-treble jolts of Gang of Four-vintage guitar. Bono also sings this, earlier in a darker, more challenging tone: "Do you live here or is this a vacation?" For U2, rock & roll was always a life's work – and the work is never done.

Songs of Innocence is aptly named, after William Blake's 1789 collection of poems about man's perpetually great age of discovery – childhood. For the first time, after decades of looking abroad for inspiration – to American frontier spirituality, Euro-dance-party irony and historic figures of protest such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela – Bono, the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. have taken the long way 'round to metamorphosis: turning back and inward, for the first time on a whole record, to their lives and learning as boys on the way to uncertain manhood (and their band) in Dublin.

Bono's lyrics are striking in their specific, personal history. In "Cedarwood Road," named after a street where he lived, the singer remembers the fear and unrequited anger that drove him to music and to be heard – and which won't go away. "I'm still standing on that street/Still need an enemy," he admits against Clayton and Mullen's strident, brooding rhythm and the enraged stutter of the Edge's guitar. "Raised by Wolves" is a tension of metronome-like groove and real-life carnage ("There's a man in a pool of misery . . . a red sea covers the ground") based on a series of car bombs that bloodied Dublin one night in the Seventies.

In "Iris (Hold Me Close)," Bono sings to his mother, who died when he was 14, through a tangle of fondness and still-desperate yearning, in outbreaks of dreamy neo-operatic ascension over a creamy sea of keyboards and Clayton's dignified-disco bass figure. "You took me by the hand/I thought I was leading you," Bono recalls in a kind of embarrassed bliss. "But it was you who made me your man/Machine," he adds – a playful shotgun reference to his youthful poetic conceit in Boy's "Twilight" ("In the shadows boy meets man") and his wife Ali. The teenage Bono once gave her Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine as a gift while they were dating.

For U2 – and Bono in particular – the first step on the road out of Dublin was the sound of a voice, and they name it in the opening track, "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)." U2 have always been open in their gratitude to New York punk and the Ramones in particular, and this homage to unlikely heroism – that kid you least expect to take on the world and win – is suitable honor: a great, chunky guitar riff and a beat like a T. Rex stomp, glazed with galactic-Ronettes vocal sugar. "I woke up," Bono sings, "at the moment when the miracle occurred/Heard a song that made some sense out of the world." U2 also pay due diligence to the Clash in "This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now," dedicated to Joe Strummer, and there is a strong hint of the Beach Boys' allure – their standing invitation to a utopia far from the Dublin grit and rain – in the Smile-style flair of the chanting harmonies in "California (There Is No End to Love)." "Blood orange sunset brings you to your knees," Bono croons in an awed register. "I've seen for myself."

These are the oldest stories in rock & roll – adolescent restlessness; traumatic loss; the revelation of rescue hiding in a great chorus or power chord. But Songs of Innocence is the first time U2 have told their own tales so directly, with the strengths and expression they have accumulated as songwriters and record-makers. This album was famous, long before release, for its broken deadlines and the indecision suggested by its multiple producers: Brian Burton a/k/a Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth of Adele fame and Ryan Tedder of the pop band One Republic. Those credits are misleading. Burton, Epworth and Tedder all co-produced "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" and contributed keyboards; that's Epworth on the additional slide guitar in "Cedarwood Road"; and Burton arranged the chorale in "Volcano." But the extra hands and textures are thoroughly embedded in the memoir. There is no time when the telling sounds like it was more than the work of the four who lived it.

And it is a salvation, U2 believe, that keeps on giving. "Every breaking wave on the shore/Tells the next one that there will be one more," Bono promises in the tidal sun-kissed electronica of "Every Breaking Wave." And "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" comes with a pledge to every stranded dreamer who now hears Rocket to Russia, Give 'Em Enough Rope or some U2 for the first time and is somehow, permanently, changed. "We can hear you," Bono swears. "Your voices will be heard."

Just find one of your own. Then shout as hard as you can.

David Fricke - September 11, 2014
RollingStone.com



Songs of Innocence is the thirteenth studio album by Irish rock band U2. Released on 9 September 2014, it was produced by Danger Mouse, with additional production from Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney and Flood. The album was announced at an Apple Inc. product launch event and released the same day to all iTunes Store customers at no cost. It was exclusive to iTunes, iTunes Radio, and Beats Music until 13 October 2014, when it received a physical release by Island and Interscope Records. The digital release made the record available to over 500 million iTunes customers, for what Apple CEO Tim Cook marketed as "the largest album release of all time".

Songs of Innocence was U2's first album since No Line on the Horizon (2009), marking the longest gap between studio albums of their career. After the latter's relatively lukewarm commercial performance, lead singer Bono expressed uncertainty over how the band could remain musically relevant. During the five-and-a-half-year gestation period for Songs of Innocence, they reportedly worked on three separate projects with multiple producers, including an aborted companion to their previous record called Songs of Ascent. However, they struggled to complete an album to their satisfaction and continually delayed a release. After working with Danger Mouse for two years, the group collaborated with Flood, Epworth, and Tedder to complete the record. Thematically, it revisits the group members' youth in Ireland, paying tribute to musical inspirations Ramones and the Clash, while touching on childhood experiences, loves and regrets. Bono described it as "the most personal album we've written".

The album's lead single, "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)", is featured in an Apple television commercial as part of a promotional campaign for the band on which the company is reportedly spending $100 million. According to Apple, approximately 81 million iTunes users listened to the album in its first month of release, 26 million of whom downloaded the entire record. Songs of Innocence received mixed reviews, and some critics and consumers were critical of the digital release strategy; the album was automatically added to users' iTunes accounts without their consent, which for many, triggered an unprompted download to their mobile devices. The record received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Album.

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