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Dec 1, 2017If experience has taught U2 anything, it is that a great new song can still feel like the first day of the rest of your life. Songs of Experience is that innocence renewed.
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Dec 1, 2017In an age of hot takes and cold snark, the band’s grand earnestness feels like the artifact of another time, an art lost to nearly everyone save a few fellow statesmen (Mr. Springsteen comes to mind). And it’s all over the group’s 14th studio album, aptly titled Songs of Experience, a record so defiantly full of hard-earned hope and fortitude it seems to blot out the bleaker realities of 2017 through sheer Irish willpower.
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Nov 30, 2017Despite its flaws, Songs of Experience is an audibly better album than either of its predecessors. For one thing, not all its errors are overwhelming--if the Auto-Tune feels a bit jarring, the song it decorates is still pretty great. And for another, when U2 calm down and allow themselves to be themselves, the results are frequently fantastic.
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Nov 29, 2017It’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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Nov 27, 2017It showcases U2 at their most mature and assured, playing songs of passion and purpose, shot through and enlivened with a piercing bolt of desperation.
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MojoNov 22, 2017U2's strongest album this century. [Jan 2018, p.86]
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Q MagazineNov 22, 2017Songs Of Experience will likely go down as a late-career classic. [Jan 2018, p.104]
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Dec 12, 2017It may not even share the same ambition as ‘No Line On The Horizon’ however, it’s an undeniable improvement on their two misfiring predecessors, marking this collection as their most cohesive and heartfelt in almost 15 years.
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Dec 6, 2017They embrace what they do best: creating music that balances this personal and political darkness with joy. In their strongest outing since All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the four-piece writes both sweeping anthems as well as some of the most effortless songs of their career.
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Nov 30, 2017Singalong-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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Nov 29, 2017They 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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Dec 5, 2017Truth be told, underneath the gimmicks lurks an upbeat and catchy pop record. ... But on Songs of Experience U2 ignore their past and instead saunter ahead with hooking melodies and sing-along choruses.
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Jan 5, 2018The emotional climax of The Little Things That Give You Away is one of several moments that promise more than the album as a whole can deliver.
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Dec 19, 2017Songs of Experience, clicks into place more boldly than Songs of Innocence did three years ago. Tempos are alert, riffs punchy, melodies sharp. ... It’s also too bad the album’s second half gets stuck in pensive midtempo mode and never recovers.
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Dec 5, 2017As a continuation of U2’s work at this point in their career, Songs of Experience is a decent addition to their legacy that longtime fans should be generally pleased by. However, it still suffers from the same issues that have made U2 so polarizing in recent years, and is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about the band one way or another.
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UncutNov 22, 2017It contains fleeting proof of a band still capable of making sparks fly. [Jan 2018, p.29]
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Dec 1, 2017This record is diet U2. Its pop-rock disguised as Important Rock and the disguise is transparent. “Blackout” and “You’re The Best Thing About Me” are the chief offenders.
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Dec 5, 2017For about nine songs, Experience is good.
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Dec 4, 2017Despite the blatant bid to sound modish and rejuvenated, U2 cannot help in certain respects but sound the same.
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Dec 4, 2017A handful of tracks shoot for the anthemic uplift of vintage U2, but fall short. The only real left-field beauty here is Love Is All We Have Left, a token reminder of the Dublin quartet’s shimmering ambient avant-rock period.
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Dec 1, 2017Retro-conning the existing Songs of Experience material to suit the political climate wasn't the easiest task and the album often shows its seams, particularly when Bono decides to tackle the crisis head-on.
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Nov 30, 2017Taken as a whole, Songs of Experience isn’t a bad U2 album--just an uneven one. For every dull rehash of past glories, there’s something like the slinky Zombies pastiche “Summer of Love” to restore one’s faith that U2’s well of inspiration hasn’t gone entirely dry.
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Nov 29, 2017Experience 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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Nov 30, 2017Songs of Experience is an album where the band’s best and worst songs of this century can exist next to each other, where vast rewrites make it apparent that multiple rounds of sessions went into the finished product.
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Dec 4, 2017Many fans will enjoy this album’s radio-friendliness, and its warm hugs. But these Songs of Experience lack William Blake’s moral fervour or rage.
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Nov 29, 2017Routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, 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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Nov 29, 2017Overall, U2 have built a stadium rock cruise liner they’ve zero interest in rocking, and Experience is 50 minutes of very plain sailing indeed.
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Nov 29, 2017Songs Of Experience, U2’s 14th studio album, revs up the ambition, to embarrassing results. It finds the group desperately searching for a radio hit while pontificating on American exceptionalism, shoehorning the Syrian refugee crisis into not one but two love songs--and on consecutive tracks, no less.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 135 out of 191
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Mixed: 16 out of 191
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Negative: 40 out of 191
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Dec 1, 2017
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Dec 1, 2017