Songs of Experience
| U2
Songs of Experience
Songs of Experience is the 14th studio album by Irish rock band U2. Released on 1 December 2017, it was produced by Jacknife Lee and Ryan Tedder with Steve Lillywhite, Andy Barlow, Jolyon Thomas, Brent Kutzle, Paul Epworth, Danger Mouse, and Declan Gaffney. The album is intended to be a companion piece to U2's previous record, Songs of Innocence (2014). Whereas its predecessor explored the group members' adolescence in Ireland in the 1970s, Songs of Experience thematically is a collection of letters written by lead vocalist Bono to people and places closest to his heart. The album features guest appearances from several musical acts, including Haim, Kendrick Lamar, and Lady Gaga. --Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
The rock icons come to grips with the future – with flashes of their past
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Spin
This band knows what it means to be bigger than anything in its way. They’re so big specific albums don’t matter. Nothing specific they do matters. They’ve swept themselves up in their own bigness; it subsumes them.
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Pitchfork
Finds the band straining to reassert its relevance in a world where rock music has long since ceded its vanguard status.
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The New Yorker
Lyrically, U2’s “Songs of Experience” is, unfortunately, almost nothing but banalities.
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The Guardian
U2 unveil an album full of self-awareness, gravitas and humour – and enough great moments to forgive its clumsier touches.
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The New York Times
It’s not an album that courts new fans by radically changing U2’s style; instead, it reaffirms the sound that has been filling arenas and stadiums for decades.
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The Guardian
This companion piece to 2014’s Songs of Innocence is stronger on love than politics, but lacks the passion to inspire
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Variety
The album sags a bit in the middle but opens and closes strong.
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Consequence of Sound
It’s a messier albeit more visceral affair than Songs of Innocence, one not afraid to take risks and fall flat on its face, but the triumphs are few and far between.
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Clash Music
Irish giants find fresh solace on a creative return...
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Slant Magazine
The new album generally rebalances the scales of the band’s ambitions, resulting in an aesthetically riskier sound.
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The Irish Times
Nowhere near U2’s best work. Not by a long shot. In the intended rock’n’roll moments on SoE, the bravado is cringeworthy but in the stripped back and honest moments, Bono and co mildly reveal themselves as humans, lyrical blunders and all.
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RTE
The band who tried to make the devil’s music find religion face up to mortality and wrestle with geopolitics on their new album - so business as usual for U2 but there are fresh signs of vitality
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USA Today
Their best album in years
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Ultimate Classic Rock
Some of it works -- there's a genuine uplift to several songs that were made to fill stadiums -- but the overall tone is one of desperation as the band tries to stay relevant in a world that's moved on.
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Jonathan Martin
Bono at his fragile best (and his bravest). It is an album soaked in mortality, music that faces death straight on—but with fearlessness.
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The AV Club
Heavy on empty sentimentality, packaged around lifeless hooks and trite melodies that few U2 fans will remember, let alone sing along to, in 20 years.
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NME
U2’s fourteenth album won’t mysteriously appear on your iPhone, which is probably for the best.
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National Public Radio
What came across as pompous and contrived last time now registers as earnest, genuine — and even a little bit scrappy.
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Entertainment Weekly
U2 are earnest, defiant, and as epic as ever.
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Pretty Much Amazing
I LOVE U2, but this record is diet U2. Its pop-rock disguised as Important Rock and the disguise is transparent.
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Blouin Art Info
This album does its best to sound like nothing else in the canon, with its autotune and new subject matter, though it ends up a bit retro.
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Drowned In Sound
They just seems to be writing the music they enjoy, about the things they care about, and it’s done them a world of good.
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The Current
It's not a singular sonic vision or statement of purpose like The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby or The Unforgettable Fire. It's a mess, but a beautiful, chaotic mess, a human mess.
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Los Angeles Times
Singalong-ready and set to tempos determined not to leave anyone behind, the record marks an explicit return to the spirit of U2's ultra-earnest mid-'80s work, and also to that era's eager commercial ambition.
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The 405
U2 are swinging for the fences again, but are largely hindered by Bono's rhetoric, as well as the band's inevitable aging. They sound somewhat out of place, despite offering some of their better work in years amidst the white male savior nonsense.
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The U2 Conference
It’s not much new for U2; in fact, it’s deliberately nostalgic.
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Cleveland.com
A companion piece of sorts to its predecessor, has something U2's previous albums from this past decade don't - a clear mission.
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Herald Standard
Beautifully reminds us that at the end of the day, all we have left is love because love is bigger than anything in its way.
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Tampa Bay Times
A low point for a band capable of so much more
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Irish Examiner
A back-to-basics stance that pays off with what is arguably U2’s finest album since 2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
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All Music
Here, U2 feel trapped between their history and the pull of the year, and they wind up seeming diminished. For the first time, they seem smaller than life.
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The Ringer
Doubles down on willful optimism: a U2 specialty, of course, but the band’s bag of tricks is no longer overflowing, and the best moments here look backward, not forward.
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The Big Issue
It's not U2's fault that so many bands want to sound like U2. But it's no excuse for reheating old glories, trading on nostalgia and writing crap songs.
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Financial Times
The rockers reverse decline with album that nicely mixes new and old.
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Toronto Sun
U2 has made an exciting, stage-ready album that doesn’t blush or blink in its use of the band’s signature sounds.
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The Young Folks
If U2 haven’t already been declared dad rock, Songs of Experience all but confirms it.
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Rockin' Gods House
The fact that U2 is still around making phenomenal music is something that music fans should not take for granted. We need to relish every new note while we can.
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Flood Magazine
It’s a punchy and polished record, loaded with pop songs, arguably more straightforwardly melodic than most other U2 albums.
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Buzz.ie
It's arguably one of the most well-crafted of their career.
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The Spinoff
They might never have pop chart success again, but Songs Of Experience confirms that if they are going to become a nostalgia act, they’re not going to go quietly.
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The Telegraph
Full of desperation and meaty hooks in equal measure
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Riff Magazine
Bono is fond of self-effacingly pondering whether the world needs more U2 albums. If Songs of Experience is the band’s direction going forward, the answer is “yes.”
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HM Magazine
I don’t want this musical journey from Ireland’s best to end until I’ve had enough.
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Chicago Tribune
U2 confronts the dinosaur within on new album
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XS Noize
It is not a complete slam dunk but a worthy and credible recording that displays the band once again on the upswing.
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Sputnik Music
William Blake rolls over in his grave, uninstalls iTunes
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All About Jazz
This is beautiful music which is all the better for its intimate and gentle soul.
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The Times
U2 are back with a rather play-it-safe songbook
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The Atlantic
What’s clear is that the religious and political concerns that have threaded through U2’s career are now getting knotted together more garishly than ever.
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Newsday
U2’s latest is a joyous experience
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U Music
U2 is back in fine form with Songs of Experience. Impressive.
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The Last Mixed Tape
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abc News
One of the best albums of 2017
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Cryptic Rock
Whatever critics might have to say about the unstoppable endurance of the once-little Irish band, the now larger-than-life U2 is definitely staying up there and floating in the blue skies.
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Classic Rock Revisited
The truth is that this is an okay U2 album. It will have to do.
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Shropshire Star
Brilliant? Not quite. Rubbish? Definitely not. This U2 record is okay then. Not Marmite on this occasion.
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Guestlist
This is undoubtedly the sound of U2.
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The Fountain
The overall feeling is that U2 sound less like U2, and more like the ageing rockstars they used to fear turning into.
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Under The Radar
U2 ignore their past and instead saunter ahead with hooking melodies and sing-along choruses.
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The Edge
Despite not being the most adventurous of albums, Songs of Experience puts U2 back on track.
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Bernard Zuel
This is an album that doesn’t do any harm to the band’s reputation – except for the haters, who, after all are gonna hate anyway - but does nothing really to enhance it.
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Penn State
The mediocrity of the album is what sets it apart. The songs themselves vary from catchy and exciting to boring and repetitive.
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The Rock Pit
If you must add this latest opus to your collection then there are scant pickings.
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The Fire Note
Music doesn’t have to be inspirational to be good, but U2 at their best is just that, and this album has quite a few glimpses of just that.
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The Chronicle
'Songs of Experience' is what we get for letting U2 stick around
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Exepose
U2 deliver a timely reminder of what they can do.
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Young Post
U2 prove once again they’re deserving of their status as one of the biggest rock bands of all time with their latest album
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Mockingbird
Really good, it turns out. Not a masterpiece perhaps, but far from a letdown.
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Time Magazine
It’s still a mixed bag ... We’re deep enough into their discography to know the drill: you cherish those moments, and you grin and bear the rest.
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Watertown Daily Times
Feels joyous and energetic, even as Bono frets an awful lot about death in his lyrics.
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Knox News
Still-vital U2 embraces optimism with new 'Songs of Experience'
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Immortal Reviews
U2 bring their old sound to a modern front in Songs Of Experience, building off of a lifetime of stories, pain, and dreams.
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The Arts Desk
There are a few decent tunes to reward the determined listener.
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Express
Bono has scarcely sounded more youthful than he does on the opening quartet of tracks.
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No Rip Cord
U2 answers what their purpose is in the world today. It’s the same as it’s always been, to create music that’s uplifting, passionate, political and personal.
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Record Collector
The band’s catchy, questing, swaggery (and slightly self-parodic) tunes lighten the vibe, hustled along by similarly typical riffing, and occasionally joined by some surprisingly metallic touches.
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Exclaim!
Neither recaptures past glories nor forges a new way forward, and while it's better than its predecessor, it nevertheless captures the sound of a legacy rock band stuck in neutral.
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Independent
Reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.
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Gig Soup
An indication that the biggest band in the world may have finally rediscovered its sense of direction.
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Evening Standard
A largely enjoyable listen.
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Spectrum Culture
Another cliché from the U2 playbook.
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