Island Records confirm release date for new U2 album, Songs of Experience

Press Release:

Island Records today announced the release of Songs of Experience, the 14th studio album from U2, which contains 13 new songs and will be released on the 1st December 2017 on digital and CD as Standard and Deluxe, and as a double vinyl album.

A new single, the second to be taken from the record, titled ‘Get Out Of Your Own Way’ is out now. First single ‘You’re The Best Thing About Me’ was released on 6th September and album track The Blackout was previously released as a performance video in August.

Also today Live Nation announces U2’s North American dates for the eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour running from 2nd May. More dates for 2018 will be announced.

Recorded in Dublin, New York and Los Angeles, Songs of Experience was completed earlier this year with its subject matter influenced by Brendan Kennelly’s advice to Bono, to “…write as if you’re dead”.

The result is a collection of songs in the form of intimate letters to places and people close to the singer’s heart: family, friends, fans and indeed himself.

Songs Of Experience is the companion release to 2014’s ‘Songs Of Innocence’, the two titles drawing inspiration from a collection of poems, Songs of Innocence and Experience, by the 18th-century English mystic and poet William Blake.

Produced by Jacknife Lee and Ryan Tedder, with Steve Lillywhite, Andy Barlow and Jolyon Thomas, the album features a cover image by Anton Corbijn of band-members’ teenage children Eli Hewson and Sian Evans.