U2 Release Teaser of New Song, ‘The Blackout,’ With Album News on the Way
This afternoon, U2 released a snippet of a new song called "The Blackout." It will be premiered in full tomorrow, with some details about Songs of Experience arriving tomorrow.
They tweeted out a 15-second teaser of the track, adding that there will be more news coming tomorrow at noon Eastern. The band added a link to their Facebook page, where they added that another single, "You're the Best Thing About Me," will arrive on Sept. 6. Only one song has been heard in full to date. They premiered "The Little Things That Give You Away" on tour this spring.
Ever since the release of 2014's Songs of Innocence, it's been known that the follow-up will be called Songs of Experience, and should be taken, more or less, as a companion piece to its predecessor. Two weeks ago, a release date of Dec. 1 leaked, but has not yet been confirmed by the band.
U2 had hoped to put out Songs of Experience earlier this year, but as the Edge said, as they were nearing completion, "the election [of Donald Trump happened] and suddenly the world changed. 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.’"
They noticed parallels between the world today and in the mid-'80s, as they were working on the material that would become The Joshua Tree. So they put the new project aside and organized a tour built around playing that landmark record in full. “It was a period when there was a lot of unrest," the Edge continued. "[U.K. Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher was in the throes of trying to put down the miners’ strike; there was all kinds of shenanigans going on in Central America. It feels like we’re right back there in a way. I don’t think any of our work has ever come full circle to that extent. It just felt like, ‘Wow, these songs have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn’t have three years ago, four years ago.’
Back in May, Bono felt that the delay might have even helped Songs of Experience. "I think the pause has made it better," he said. "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.”
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