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And Finally Artist News
U2 have 50 ideas for new songs
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 30 March 2016
U2 guitarist The Edge says that the band have 50 ideas for songs, as they gear up to write their fourteenth album, the follow-up to 2014’s ‘Songs Of Innocence’.
This is such a classic CMU ‘and finally’ story, isn’t it? All I need to do now is stretch out ‘U2 have 50 ideas? U2 are shit. Ha ha ha’ to 150 words and we can all get on with our day.
Problem is, a while back, I listened to this episode of Song Exploder, in which Bono and The Edge deconstruct ‘Cedarwood Road’ from their last album. I don’t know how to tell you this, but it sort of rekindled my respect for their creative process. It also reminded me that I once wrote an essay at school on the recording process for ‘Discotheque’, which is actually quite interesting.
The other thing that doesn’t help is the sense of humour both The Edge and Bono have shown of late in relation to latter’s very serious bicycle accident two years ago. Maybe they’re actually nice normal guys, just trying to make it through life like the rest of us. Sure, they’re grown men who refer to themselves as Bono and The Edge, but is that so different to me calling myself Andy? Confession: my real name is Andrew.
So let’s cut U2 some slack. Let’s hear The ‘David’ Edge out.
“Including a lot of my really rough demos – I’m not suggesting they’re finished, by any means – there’s actually 50 pieces of music that I’ve put time into”, he tells Rolling Stone of how the new album is progressing. “Some of them have not been arranged or performed by the band, but there’s 50 ideas, and probably about 20 that we’re actually really excited about. So we’ve got some ways to narrow it down, but we’re in good shape”.
He adds: “We are trying to really be brutal with the material and only focus on the things that we’re really convinced are the best ideas. I would say we’re now at the point of starting to really edit down to the core collection of songs that will make the record. Things are still in their rough state, but sounding really great”.
So, there you go. They have a lot of ideas on the go, but they’re going to be pretty ruthless when it comes to weeding out the very best of them. There’s that great process in action. Who knows, maybe this will be considered a classic album in years to come.
I mean, it won’t be. It’s getting on for at least 20 years since they did anything actually worth listening to. But at least they will have tried their hardest. And then maybe they can sell it in bulk to a tech company so that it doesn’t matter if anyone actually wants it or not.
U2 are shit. Ha ha ha.
