“Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” which hits stores Nov. 1, is exactly what you would expect from Bono’s memoir. The U2 showman veers from intimate to over the top, from insightful to overwrought. Always reaching, sometimes he soars but sometimes he crashes – a recent New York Times interviewer took the singer to task for going easy on his high-profile pals like George W. Bush, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates.
Bono uses songs as chapter titles, recounting the writing or recording but also for thematic purposes – “Sunday Bloody Sunday” discusses the creation of the track but also The Troubles in Northern Ireland and its impact on Bono as a person, a songwriter and an activist.
The 40 songs cover most of the band’s biggest and best, from “I Will Follow” and “One” up to “City of Blinding Lights” and “Moment of Surrender” (albeit with disproportionate representation from the band’s two most recent albums, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” which consist of nearly one-fourth of the chapters).
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The songs he chose make a great playlist, but U2’s strength is not just in its greatest hits — it’s in the lasting power of its deeper cuts, songs that may be overshadowed on the albums but still reverberate and resonate down through the decades. Here are a dozen more for a different playlist, one that may be far from definitive but that memorably charts the band’s journey by winding through its side streets and back alleys.
“Electric Co.”
U2’s debut album, “Boy” explores life on the cusp of manhood, and this song — propelled by The Edge’s cutting Townshend-esque guitar and the thump of Larry Mullen’s drums – captures the rage and frustration of adolescence. The title refers to the electric shock therapy widely used in Ireland in the 1970s, but even without the specifics, the song screams out as a cry from the powerless who feel trapped.
“I Threw a Brick Through a Window”
U2’s second album “October” was largely a step back, but its best songs were still fueled by a punk fury. Larry Mullen’s drumming and Adam Clayton’s bass drive this track as Bono, a motherless child clashing with his father, howls about being stuck in a situation he can’t get out of.
“Like A Song”
“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “New Year’s Day” and “Two Hearts Beat as One” dominate the band’s breakout album, “War,” which is also its most overtly political. “Like a Song” is a furious but nuanced take on The Troubles and war in general. Over stinging guitar and thrashing drums, Bono acknowledges he is playing a role as punk protester and argues against stubbornness and for compromise.
“A Sort of Homecoming”
“The Unforgettable Fire” introduced a new U2 — moodier and more impressionistic on anthems more wistful (“Bad”) or hopeful (“Pride”) than angry. This song sets the tone, a poetic and oblique musing on spiritual doubt, layered over a more textured landscape than the band’s earlier work.
“Running to Stand Still”
Heroin addiction plagued 1980s Dublin, seducing one of Bono’s oldest friends. Bono first sang about it on “Bad” and “Wire,” and then returned to the topic on this mature and mournful “Joshua Tree” track. Backed by the band’s folk-tinged melancholia, Bono’s lyrics are compassionate and understanding toward the addicted.
“Acrobat”
After “Rattle and Hum,” a commercial success but a critical nadir in its effort to be all things Americana that Bono glides past in the book, U2 reinvented themselves with a denser, more electronic sound on the brilliant “Achtung Baby.” “Acrobat” is rawer and more stripped down than songs like “Zoo Station,” which is fitting as Bono fumes at hypocrisy and the contradictions of the self. “I must be an acrobat/to talk like this/and act like that.”
“Kite”
U2 started the new millennium with the anthem-filled “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” Here, after trying and failing spectacularly, to fly a kite with his kids, Bono wrote “Kite,” a song about letting go as a parent…except that The Edge realized that Bono was also subconsciously writing about his ailing father too and encouraged the idea of looking further across generations. On the track, Bono’s voice rediscovered the potency of a decade earlier. “I don’t think we had heard that voice for a long time,” Adam Clayton said later.
“Love and Peace Or Else”
“How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” could have easily become “War: The Sequel,” but while this album rocked harder than any U2 album since “War” it’s subtler in its messages. “Love and Peace or Else” is built on a foundation of distorted bass and wailing guitar that drops the listener in the trenches but the lyrics shift between the personal and the political as Bono pleads for leaders to “lay down your guns,” asking desperately, “Where is the love?”
“The Saints Are Coming”
U2 has long been in love with the idea of America, even as they frequently find the reality to be dismaying. After Hurricane Katrina, The Edge founded Music Rising to support New Orleans musicians and the band teamed up with Green Day to help welcome back the city’s football team with a live TV performance. The highlight was a rollicking adaption of an obscure Scottish tune where Bono takes flight with an impassioned rant calling out George W. Bush’s government when it came to caring for those who had suffered.
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“No Line on the Horizon”
This title track manages to blend a rocking core, a layered sonic landscape and a catchy topline melody to create an upbeat anthem. With lines like “One day she’s still, the next she swells, you can hear the universe in her sea shells,” may be too clever but the imagery of a dynamic love that stretches on forever perfectly fits the music’s mood.
“Raised By Wolves”
“Songs of Innocence,” U2’s most explicitly personal album, could not ignore The Troubles. “Raised By Wolves” recounts the tragic day in 1974 when terrorists set off two car bombs, killing 33 people, including 26 in Dublin. As Bono recounts in his memoir, a childhood friend witnessed the horror firsthand and was deeply scarred by the event. Told from the friend’s perspective, it’s a potent reminder of the lasting trauma of violence even on those who are not physically harmed.
“Red Flag Day”
“Songs of Experience” features a vintage mix of the personal and political — in fact, the album was held back so the band could comment on Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and a health crisis for Bono. Both “Summer of Love” and “Red Flag Day” remind listeners of the urgency of a Syrian refugee crisis, and the latter does it with a quintessential blend of The Edge’s rhythm guitar, driving bass and drums in the middle from Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen and, of course, vocals and lyrics from Bono that, four decades on, continue to aspire to, and frequently ascend to, greatness.