Watch U2 cover ABBA and perform ‘Vertigo’ with orchestra for BBC Piano Room

16 March, 2023

U2

U2 performed orchestral renditions of ‘Vertigo’ and ABBA‘s ‘S.O.S’ for BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room – check out the videos below.

The Irish rock band are gearing up for the release of new album ‘Songs Of Surrender’, out tomorrow (March 17), which will feature 40 of their past songs “reimagined and re-recorded”.

So far, they have shared new versions of ‘Beautiful Day‘, ‘One’, ‘With Or Without You‘ and ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)‘.

For a special Radio 2 Piano Room performance, which aired today (March 16), frontman Bono and guitarist The Edge also performed ‘One’.

Listen to the full episode here and watch the performances below.

“There is something about ABBA. I can remember ABBA as like the national anthem for young mothers,” Bono told Radio 2’s Gary Davies. “Certainly at closing time at our local pub, often young women would sing ‘Thank You For The Music’, and I would sing it and I was very thankful for the music!

“But I was like, what is this phenomenon? This is before their musicals and all that. What is going on with ABBA? And then Benny [Andersson] came to one of our shows, when we murdered ‘Dancing Queen’. And [they] played with us on stage. But this is not ‘Dancing Queen’.

“This is the great ABBA,” Bono added when asked which song they would be playing. “And this is a marketing gimmick from U2 called ‘SOS’.”

“We’re big fans of this Scandinavian band, appreciators of their work in a way that grew over years. We are fans of the Bee Gees which people wouldn’t have imagined,” The Edge added. “We’re fans of lots of great songwriters who aren’t necessarily seen as very hip, and I guess we’re just appreciators of their work.”

Bono continued: “I was saying to one of the cellists today that I didn’t have the courage to own up to this next band when I was 16 in the middle of punk rock, but I did get to the Bee Gees and I was ready to own up to ‘Massachusetts’ and ‘Tragedy’, I mean these are just crazy good.

“John Lennon owned up to loving the Bee Gees. But there’s a bit of a macho, ‘I don’t want to own up to ABBA.’ But I’ll tell you what, they’re just better songs. You can’t be empirical about everything in art.”

U2 are also set to release a new documentary on Disney+ tomorrow called Bono & The Edge: A Sort Of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman.

“Recently, I won a radio contest,” joked Letterman in statement via a press release. “Winner gets to visit Dublin with Bono and The Edge (radio contest part not true, but I feel like a winner).”

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