U2 Reportedly Set 2017 Release Date for New ‘Songs of Experience’ Album
U2 fans who have endured a long wait for the release of the band's new Songs of Experience album may finally have two dates to circle on their calendars.
According to the Irish Sun, the long-awaited followup to 2014's Songs of Innocence is due Dec. 1 — World AIDS Day — in cooperation with project (Red), frontman Bono's fundraising initiative to fight the disease. He co-founded the organization in 2006 with Bobby Shriver.
The first single, "You're the Best Thing About Me," will reportedly arrive on Sept. 8. Important note: U2 has not confirmed either of these alleged release dates.
“The band will tell you not to listen to me on those kind of matters since I thought it was done last year,” Bono said of the album's timing back in January, adding that the additional time has improved its quality. “But I think the pause has made it better. I will give them that. But if you left it to Edge he’d still be remixing it next year. But we have these songs. The problem is we have 15 songs and to get them down to 12. We don’t like long players.”
The pause in work on the album was partially caused by the band's recent The Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour. But changing circumstances following the last U.S. presidential election also extended the process.
U2 was "pretty much complete with [Songs of Experience] after a couple of weeks of the final touches leading up to the end of the year. And then the election [happened] and suddenly the world changed," Edge told Rolling Stone earlier this year. "We just went, ‘Hold on a second – we’ve got to give ourselves a moment to think about this record and about how it relates to what’s going on in the world.’ That’s because it was written mostly, I mean, 80 percent of it was started before 2016, but most of it was written in the early part of 2016, and now, as I think you’d agree, the world is a different place.”
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