U2 Share Previously Unreleased “Happiness”
You lie awake at night — tossing, turning, sweating, sometimes breaking down into tears. The world is moving too fast. Nothing makes sense anymore. With every new breaking dawn, this place feels less and less like home, and you feel more and more like an unwelcome visitor. You wonder: Why can’t things be the way they once were? Why can’t we return to those glorious days when U2 were rolling out their 2004 album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb? Well, now they can. Your prayers have been answered.
Next month, U2 will release How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb, a “shadow album” that’ll take them right back to the sessions that produced 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, which must be someone’s favorite U2 record. The record is coming out alongside a deluxe 20th-anniversary edition of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, and it features five previously unreleased from that moment. They’ve already shared one of those songs, “Country Mile,” and now they’ve dropped “Happiness,” another one.
“Happiness” is a sleek autopilot number that sounds like something U2 might’ve submitted for the Mission: Impossible III soundtrack. There’s a bit of sterile dance-rock stank on the track, as if U2 were trying for a Franz Ferdinand type of thing. It’s fine, I guess? Listen below.
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (Re-Assemble Edition) is out 11/22, and How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb is out 11/29.