‘Surrender’: The U2 song The Edge called “going through the motions”
No artist wants to find themselves without any ideas. Most people can find ways around their lack of inspiration, but the minute you come back from a long day of writing and walk away with nothing, it will do a number on your soul. No rock star is immune to it, and even when working on U2’s major albums, The Edge remembered that he hardly had time to revisit tracks like ‘Surrender’.
When looking at where they started, though, U2 did have a bit of an awkward start. There were still some great tracks to be found on their first handful of albums, but there was a good chance that they were ruffling a few feathers when they decided to write lyrics about their own struggles with faith on albums like October.
Even though going down the road of politics next should have made for a disaster, War is still one of the most compelling records that the group have ever made. The Edge was already starting to develop his own sounds with effects pedals, and regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s hard not to look at songs like ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ as still powerful to this day.
Listening back to the album, ‘Surrender’ was far from something that Edge wanted to revisit. Even when discussing the production of The Unforgettable Fire, he felt that the tune was far from their most inspired moment, saying, “There are times when we’re working or performing, and we know that there’s something good happening. Of course, there are times when it doesn’t happen, when it seems as if we’re just going through the motions. That’s why, say, ‘Drowning Man’ is one of my favourite pieces, and why ‘Surrender’ isn’t.”
For something that takes up so much real estate on the album, ‘Surrender’ might be more significant for its lyrics rather than its instrumentation. Whereas everything had a good balance on albums like The Joshua Tree, a track like ‘40’ feels more interesting by comparison, and even that track feels like it was tacked on to have some kind of mantra play everything out.
On the other hand, ‘Drowning Man’ is one of the more interesting experiments that they’ve ever had that worked. There are hardly any major chord changes there apart from The Edge playing harmonics, but hearing Bono work off that and come up with a melody that any jazz player could play is still one of the high points of U2’s 1980s recording career.
That mentality only seemed to grow as the group got bigger. Looking back on albums like Achtung Baby, the whole reason why a tunes like ‘One’ or ‘Mysterious Ways’ works is because of how well they sound working off each other. Anyone who writes the meat of the song is always in danger of looking like a solo artist with hired guns, but no matter what form U2 turns into, their best work is when you can still hear the four guys inside the track.
