Stories For Girls—BY Kelly& PJ
Bono and Edge Surrender (drawing) by Kelly Eddington, 2023. Based on two screencaps from Bono and The Edge: A Sort Of Homecoming With Dave Letterman.
Stories For Girls
PJ DeGenaro and Kelly Eddington
PJ: I don’t know. I don’t know which side I’m on.
Kelly: I don't know how to say what's got to be said!
PJ: It’s not that I don’t have an opinion about Songs of Surrender. I have an opinion about most things, as anyone who follows me on social media already knows.
Kelly: Can confirm.
PJ: But after several years of relative silence from U2, I am overwhelmed with the amount of content they have scattered over us from on high—content that I feel an obligation to respond to and write about.
Kelly: It’s an embarrassment of riches. Let’s get into it.
PJ: I guess I’ll start here: Songs of Surrender is not like other U2 records. First of all, it is very long. There is just lots of it! Second of all, in my experience so far, it is strictly a headphones record. If I’m out walking, or just being still and contemplative, it is marvelous.
Kelly: Headphones, absolutely. SOS hits me hardest when I’m in the dark or looking at the woods or doing some low-stakes painting. It really demands a listener’s undivided attention. Some fans have written off the album as background music, but it’s too fragile for that, and if you’re distracted, it can disappear.
If fans are having trouble connecting with the album, maybe they’re not trying hard enough. I suggest they do what I did on the day SOS was released. Sometimes Most times I wake at 4:00 in the morning, so I took the opportunity to listen to the album in bed. The songs are not arranged in chronological order, and they took me on a wild ride in a time machine to different events in my life and theirs. This drove home the enormity of U2’s catalog and how long they’ve been keeping us company in the dark. I had tears in my eyes on let’s say every third song.
PJ: I swear some of the songs make me feel like wings are fluttering inside me. And the Intimacy Edge spoke of? Maybe this doesn’t appeal to everybody, but I for one will never complain about having Bono’s voice right up against my ear.
Kelly: Right? When I read this review where the writer said, “You can practically feel [Bono’s] stubble brushing against your earlobes,” I texted you with, “She says that like it’s a bad thing!”
PJ: And that is the least of Helen’s problems. But I did find that when I listened to SOS on a Saturday, driving around between errands, I found myself missing the original versions of the songs. I guess some situations just call for familiar riffs and power chords. Maybe if I didn’t already know the songs so well, that wouldn’t be the case. But when I hear “Until The End Of The World,” I’m kind of always waiting for that BOMMMM, ya know? That moment the cataclysm erupts on the screen above your head and wipes the blue car and the bicycle and the cherry blossom tree off the face of the earth? That.
Kelly: I appreciated the lack of BOMMMMs more than I expected. Somehow this album is meeting me where I am right now. I’m a geographically-isolated fan with no one in the house sharing my interest. I’m most likely not going to see them in Las Vegas, but my longing for them remains. SOS makes U2 seem less big and more mine. I immediately felt their absence after their 166-minute residency of my brain ended.
But enough about how to listen to this thing. Let’s talk about the music.
PJ: “Less big and more mine” is a great way to approach this record. Um, if you readers are still with us, you will see that I started off with a list(icle) of songs that stood out for me, while Kelly went in a more lyrical direction. So please take this tangle of conversation and turn it into something that sounds coherent. Ahem:
The day the original “Pride” was released, I was young, and I lived near a commercial radio station that played all the punk and modern rock. They must have played “Pride” several times an hour that first weekend, and who could blame them? Later, it became a staple on less adventurous radio stations, and eventually I felt I could live out my days without ever hearing it again. But shut up, me! Because I love the SOS version. Maybe because it has a BOMMMM right in the middle? Or because Edge makes some great guitar noises toward the end? Or because Alan Kurdi, who looked like any of our own napping preschoolers when he washed up on the empty beach, should not be forgotten? I don’t quite know, but the song has been made fresh for me.
Kelly: I miss the “see the world in green and blue” imagery of “Beautiful Day,” which has been replaced with the Garden of Eden. I’ve always liked the idea of a pop song that mentions Bedouin fires and tuna fleets. (But guess what, me? That version continues to exist!) Meanwhile some lyrics I’m not a fan of (“heavy as a truck,” “use them on our enemies,” “right from left, right from wrong”) remain. I really like the new chorus to “Joey Ramone,” and I think the outro of “Until The End Of The World” is better than the original. Over the past week and change, my familiar U2 earworms have shifted to these new versions.
PJ: That’s been happening to me as well. Case in point, “One.” I didn’t expect to love it, but I do. Mostly because Edge’s deceptively simple piano melody sounds a lot like unplugged Nine Inch Nails and is entirely appropriate for this most darkly ironic and misunderstood of all U2 songs. It just stays in my head. I find the best U2 is always a little…foreboding? Never hopeless! Just a little foreboding. (Note: They even made “Streets” feel foreboding, and somehow that’s okay.)
Kelly: Does anyone else feel a chill when “the end is here” of “Little Things” is followed by “40”?
PJ: Now that you mention it, yes. Any reminder of vulnerability or mortality—Bono’s or ours—is tough going. But then “40” promises us a new song. Which maybe we’ll get to write about at some point. (Insert laughter here.)
Kelly: See ya in 2028, Peej!
PJ: If I made a list of my top ten U2 songs, which I will not, “Stay” would surely be among them, and the lads did it justice on SOS. Bono’s singing on the first verse and again at the end is almost brutally sexy, and the interplay with Edge’s airier vocal is kinda perfect, given the storyline of the angel who loves a human and chooses to fall. U2 songs usually feel like conversations to me: between Bono’s voice and Edge’s guitar, which I sometimes “see” as a hand on Bono’s shoulder, or between both of their voices. Give me all of that, please.
Kelly: Describing Bono’s voice is like pinning down what’s going on in a perfume. Eau de Bono contains notes of Lou Reed, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and am I crazy or is Billie Holiday in there, too?
For decades, Edge has been the unsung hero of U2’s vocal firepower. He adds the umami, if you will, that rounds out U2’s sound. He claims to be one, but Edge is no ordinary side man. He sings lead on four songs here, but I think he should get credit for co-lead on most of the rest. When he sings backup, his vocals can be more interesting than Bono’s. His voice is a versatile shapeshifter with a huge range. And tell me he’s not the second coming of George Harrison during the first few lines of “Peace On Earth.”
PJ: Edge as umami is a delicious metaphor. Which leads me to “Desire.” I’ve never been enthusiastic about U2’s late-80s side-trip into Americana, but this eerie demi-disco whump-whump version, with Edge trying to be Donna Summer or Minnie Riperton and almost succeeding? YES.
Kelly: I think U2’s best stuff is the weird stuff, and for a lot of people, the abundance of falsetto on SOS is weird. Edge can reach truly stratospheric heights. Meanwhile Bono’s falsetto is more like a house of cards, and when he grasps for some almost-out-of-reach note, there’s a fun feeling of jeopardy. I’ve always felt sorry for Edge, seemingly forced to shriek “Zoo Station!!” until the end of time. But it’s like he wants or maybe even prefers to sing this way, and Bono does not hesitate to get high with him. Confession: I’ve always kind of cringed at Bono’s shrill, final “waaaaaave” on live performances of “Every Breaking Wave,” and I was bracing for it here.
PJ: Truly dread when he does that. Sorry. Go on.
Kelly: And wow, they drew that one out like the crashing piano at the end of “A Day In The Life,” didn’t they? Edge’s vocal on “Desire” is truly a why-the-fuck moment on SOS, and I’d be lying if I said his falsetto didn’t give me Mr. Herbert On “Family Guy” vibes sometimes. But before anyone tells me, “You say that like it’s a bad thing!”, hold on. I love that he felt confident enough to go there. “Desire” (which has always seemed like a bit of a throwaway song to me) is now kind of menacing!
PJ: Speaking of disco…
Kelly: (Before I rudely interrupted you.)
PJ: (Yeah, and before you put Mr. Herbert into my head.)
“Two Hearts Beat As One” finally got the remix it’s been begging for since 1983. It is just splendid. This might be an obscure reference or it might not, but I hear in some places an echo of David Bowie’s “Dead Man Walking.” It would be cool if that was intentional. More importantly, I can’t tell who is singing which lines. FUNKY BEDGE-MERGE!
Kelly: The similarity between their voices is stunning, and “Stories For Boys” confused us when U2 began rolling out pre-release singles. I could’ve sworn Bono was singing it, and I even conferred with you at the time, asking if his occasional pronunciation of “stories” as a Fudd-like “stowies” was a Bono thing or just an Irish thing. Turns out it’s a Bono thing, but now it’s an Edge thing, too. And then, after a few listens, I realized that Edge was singing the last verse of “Electrical Storm” and absolutely nailing what was Bono’s big moment on the original. Did they realize the mindfuck we’d experience when they turned that song into a duet?
PJ: They are certainly trying to kill us, and only us. Anyway, I must wind up with “The Fly,” because I found even more echoes of Nine Inch Nails here. Maybe because I seek them out, or maybe because of the prominence of the piano at the break, or maybe because of that little “beenk!” noise that repeats over and over in the background. (I am not a musician.) This version is slinky and skulking and perfectly evocative of The Fly character lurking around a defunct phone booth after midnight. Plus a falsetto break that is certainly Bono, and is distinct from Edge’s lines.
U2 really can do anything. And they absolutely should.
Kelly: Many fans see this project as self-indulgent. Perhaps it is, but indulging the self is simply what artists do. Speaking as a visual artist, I like retrospectives! I like seeing the preliminary drawings, the failed sketches, and the happy accidents. I like the drawings on bits of paper that are so brittle they need to be kept in humidity/light-controlled environments. I like reading the journal entries and looking at the X-ray images underneath the paint. Seeing the humanity behind the masterpiece is how we learn from the artist, and we can learn so much from SOS.
PJ: I think a lot of feelings about SOS will boil down to: Can two versions of a U2 song coexist, or will one always eclipse the other for you?
Kelly: The album is the opposite of the past few months of fan negativity and nitpicking and multicolored variants and Gen-Z marketing schemes and that ever-looming Sphere. This band owes us nothing. I’d like to refer anyone who has a problem with SOS to the Two Cakes Rule. U2 have given us TWO CAKES, people!
The Video Stuff
The thing is, U2 have actually given us multiple cakes, because on the very same day that SOS dropped, we received a big package of eye-and-brain candy:
In Disney Plus’ A Sort of Homecoming, Bono and Edge melt one of the most acerbic comedian/late-night hosts of the last 40 years down to a simple syrup while showing him around Dublin.
Zane Lowe’s interview for Apple Music goes broader and deeper than most, as Zane is a musician and a thinking person in his own right.
And in NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, we see Bono almost jumping out of his body with joy, while the borrowed high school choir ultimately decides to love him.
Kelly: I’d just like to acknowledge the glory that is Bono and Edge in their sixties. Bono (as always) possesses a formidable intellect and is funny and self-aware. If anything, the Letterman documentary and their media appearances have played up Bono’s wrinkles, but these become irrelevant when he smiles. His coloring has faded into something softer, warmer, and (yes PJ), fox-like.
I never tire of Edge. He looks great, sounds great, and is smart and endearing. He has a knack for lightening the mood with his dry wit. He seems protective around Bono, who is his muse (I get it, Edge), and is content to let him hold court.
PJ: Yes, yes, yes to all of that. And given the recent discourse about the Sphere shows and the questions about Larry’s and even Adam’s roles in the band, I want to add something.
I understand fandom and I understand that for a great many U2 fans, Adam or Larry are favorites. We all find ourselves drawn to particular people, and that is natural and good. But as appealing as the Legend of the Four-Legged Table is, Bono and Edge are, and have been, the driving force and creative heart of the band. They just are. If one of them should decide to leave, U2 would be over, even if they made the inexplicable decision to let other musicians perform under the same name. The Who were able to lose Keith Moon and still be The Who, but if Pete Townshend bailed? Not so much. Maybe that isn’t fair, but life isn’t always fair. (Anyway, I don’t think anyone is leaving.)
Kelly: They are the creative nucleus of U2. Bono is the proton, Edge is the neutron, and Adam and Larry are their orbiting electrons. And let’s hear it for B&E in recent interviews as they’ve subtly made a play for the songwriting duo pantheon. They deserve to be up there with Lennon/McCartney.
I would love to watch a making-of documentary of SOS. It seems like they had some laughs in a rare, low-pressure situation. Having Edge as the producer created a purity of vision that was not influenced or diluted by others, so it’s easier to understand the way his mind works.
I’m sure their collaboration gave Bono and Edge comfort during the pandemic. Sometimes nothing is better than working with your friend, loving his contributions, hearing his familiar voice in your head, and building on each other’s ideas. When Covid hit, I opened Achtoonbaby up to you, PJ, after 18 years of doing my own thing. There’s something so magical about having someone to cheer for. And as @RDiane877 on Twitter pointed out, you can hear Edge saying, “Bono, nice!” in the mix of “Dirty Day.”
Screencap from NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.
PJ: The last three years would have been considerably more grim—not as much fun!—without Achtoonbaby, so thank you for that. But back to Bono and Edge. You could almost warm your hands over the love and respect that flows between them in these videos. Their connection and the life they spark in one another is enviable. The little “secret handshake” they do sometimes is funny, but it is also courtly.
Kelly: Their love is real.
PJ: In the Letterman documentary, Bono says he would trust Edge with his life, then adds, “and I have.” Then he tears up. I almost had to stop watching.
Kelly: And at the end of their performance of “One,” the way Bono sang “brothers” to Edge was so tender. They are precious, and they have made a giant thing for us.
PJ: Bless and protect them for another four decades. That’s all I’ve got.
Edge demonstrates putting Bono back in his body.