U2 - Live Songs of iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE (2019)

Live songs of iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE is a two-CD compilation sent to U2.Com subscribers as the annual subscriber gift for 2019. The CDs are housed in a photographic book documenting the tours, and they contain live music from the band. The booklet is similar in size to a 7-inch record. The set features one disc of live versions of songs from the Songs of Innocence album. The second disc features live versions of songs from the Songs of Experience album. Both releases are roughly sequenced to match the song flow from the 2015 and 2018 tours. All of the songs performed live from those two albums are represented on this release, with the exception of two bonus tracks, “Lucifer’s Hands” and “Ordinary Love.” The version of “The Little Things that Give You Away” is taken from the 2017 tour. All of the songs on the first disc are taken from 2015 with the exception of “Iris (Hold Me Close)” which is taken from the 2018 tour. There are 23 songs in total in this collection. The first disc is labeled “Live Songs of iNNOCENCE” and the second disc in the set is labeled “Live Songs of eXPERIENCE.” Both are manufactured in the Czech Republic.

The gift for 2019 was first announced on November 20, 2018. At that time it was presented as a two-CD gift focused on the 2015 and 2018 tours. From the initial announcement it looked as if the title of this release would be Innocence + Experience Live, 2015 & 2018. But later announcements changed the name of the release, and instead of focusing on the 2015 and 2018 tours, instead focused on the two albums that had generated those tours. Initially the album announcement, and the first downloads made use of a purple coloured image for the cover, and it was used throughout all communications about the offer. It is the same image that had been used on posters and T-shirts during the 2018 tour. As of the April 26 downloads, a different image started to be used, the yellow-orange one that is the cover of this release. The full initial announcement on U2.Com read as follows:

“Two albums. Two tours. Two years. A limited edition double CD & digital release capturing the i+e Tour and the e+i Tour is the 2019 special gift for U2.com Subscribers. It’s the ultimate live set on double CD, beautifully presented in a photographic book documenting the iNNOCENCE and eXPERIENCE tours of 2015 and 2018. This one-off special release, produced by the band especially for U2.com subscribers, will not be on sale online or in store. From ‘The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)’, ‘Every Breaking Wave’ and ‘Song for Someone’ to ‘The Blackout’, ‘Get Out Of Your Own Way’ and ’13 (There Is A Light)’, this is the ultimate live companion to Songs Of Innocence and Songs Of Experience, celebrating two extraordinary tours. The complete tracklisting will be published in early 2019 with shipping beginning in Spring 2019. From January until dispatch of the double CD set, we’ll be offering regular downloads of these new live tracks.”

Between the songs in many cases on both discs, the audio fades out and back in again, it is not edited to be continuous crowd noise in the background between tracks as previous releases has done. The exceptions are the transition between “Love is All We Have Left” and “The Blackout”, and the transition between “Get Out of Your Own Way” and “American Soul” where the tracks have been edited together so there is a seamless transition between the tracks. In the transition between “Get Out of Your Own Way” and “American Soul” the Kendrick Lamar lines from the album are also edited in between the songs. The songs on the CD are the same as the downloads given away in advance of the album with three exceptions. “Song for Someone” and “Raised by Wolves” have had some crowd noise and silence trimmed and are shorter on the CD. “The Little Things that Give You Away” is longer on the CD, and was shorter on the download, cutting out some crowd noise as well as Bono’s last words. Although most of these recordings did not contain snippets of other artists songs, “The Crystal Ballroom” did, including a lengthy snippet of the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” which has been edited out of the song for this release.

On January 16, 2019, U2.Com launched a poll to pick between six tracks to be the first two downloads from this collection. Although the poll started out strong for “The Troubles” and “The Little Things That Give You Away” in the end it was “Song for Someone” and “The Little Things That Give You Away” that got the bulk of the votes, with “The Little Things” being a clear favourite in the poll. “The Little Things That Give You Away” was a surprise to many, considering the song was not performed on either of the 2015 or 2018 tours. It was however performed on “The Joshua Tree” tour in 2017. The first two downloads were made available on February 26, 2019. Both tracks are encoded at 320kbps. On April 26, 2019, a second set of downloads were made available. This included the previous two downloads, now with the new embedded artwork for the album cover, as well as two new songs. On May 27, two additional tracks were released, as a single zip file with all six tracks released to date included. Additional downloads were released on July 26, August 28, September 12 and October 4, each time adding two additional songs to a single zip file that could be downloaded. The full track listing of the release was announced on July 21, 2019, confirming that only songs from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience would be included.

The fan club present started to ship on October 25, 2019, with subscribers starting to receive shipping notifications that day. Typically it takes 3 – 4 months for the subscription gift to reach all subscribers. But they are now on the way and have started to arrive.