Back in 2014, Bono apologized after U2 gave away their then album, Songs of Innocence, for free on iTunes. Now, nine years later, he's "apologizing" for the band's perhaps taking themselves too seriously.
He says on Apple Music, "I apologize for having the unreasonableness of youth as I enter my 60s. I apologize for being a singer who will get in your face whatever direction you’re looking. I apologize for not being shy or retiring and for loudly giving thanks for where I go to work. I apologize for stretching our band to its elastic limit.”
In addition, he also apologized for his desire to make “an unreasonable guitar record that rattles my cage and others,” and for “repeating over and over that rock ‘n’ roll is not dead, it’s just older and grumpier, and occasionally makes fireworks out of its mood changes...
“But most of all, I apologize for apologizing.”
One thing he and The Edge are not apologizing for is being ABBA fans.
Appearing on BBC Radio 2's Piano Room, Bono said, "There is something about ABBA. I can remember ABBA as like the national anthem for young mothers. 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?...
"I didn’t have the courage to own up to [liking them] 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.”
And with that, the duo performed "S.O.S."
On Friday Bono and The Edge’s Tiny Desk Concert for NPR in Washington, D.C. was posted online. They played "Beautiful Day," "In a Little While," "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" and "Walk On," with assistance from a teen choir from D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts. All but “In a Little While,” have been reworked on U2’s new album, Songs of Surrender, which came Friday.
In addition to the new album, there's also a new documentary, Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, hosted by David Letterman, which is streaming on Disney+.