[5] Largely the effort of the Edge and lead vocalist Bono, the album comprises re-recorded and reinterpreted versions of 40 songs from the group's back catalogue, many in stripped-down and acoustic arrangements.

During the sessions, the band members collaborated with numerous producers and musicians, including Bob Ezrin, Duncan Stewart, Declan Gaffney, and Stjepan Hauser.

[10] The Edge acknowledged many of the group's earliest songs were written with the intention of winning over audiences during live performances,[11] and that as a result, there was an intensity to their music, particularly in Bono singing at the top of his range.

"[10] The Edge began with a rough outline for each song by choosing the key and tempo, before he composed musical ideas on acoustic guitar and piano,[15] and improvised vocals that he would later play for Bono.

After the Edge and Bono recorded demos of the new song arrangements and vocals, they sent them to Clayton and Mullen asking if they felt inspired to add any musical ideas to the rhythm section.

[12] In addition to working sporadically with each other for a few days at a time in informal settings, the Edge and Bono held formal recording sessions in London and Los Angeles.

[13] In Los Angeles, the Edge and Bono worked with producer Bob Ezrin, and musicians Daniel Lanois and Abe Laboriel Jr. recorded backing vocals.

Bono said he "felt so let down" by her and decided to re-write the song's lyrics for a different person, instead paying tribute to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his leadership against the Russian invasion of his country.

[15] Bono and the Edge performed the new version of the song on 9 April 2022 for Global Citizen's Stand Up for Ukraine livestream, which was organised to urge world leaders to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees.

[19] As vocals were being recorded for Songs of Surrender and preparations were being made to mix the album, Bono and the Edge were invited by Zelenskyy's chief of staff to visit Ukraine for a performance.

[22] Clayton first mentioned a re-recording project during a June 2021 interview with Rocky O'Riordan on the band's U2-X Radio station on Sirius XM: "we are playing around with rearranging some of the songs that we have and setting them in a more acoustic environment.

)"[28] In late November 2022, in a Washington Post article profiling the band prior to their receiving Kennedy Center Honors, writer Geoff Edgers said that the group had recorded "40 stripped-down versions of the songs featured in the memoir" and that the collection was targeted for release in early 2023.

[23] Around the same time, 40 of the group's songs were updated on Spotify with an embedded video snippet that depicted the same Morse code, leading fans to piece together what they believed to be the track listing.

All studio albums from the group's career are represented with the exception of: October (1981); No Line on the Horizon (2009); and Original Soundtracks 1 (1995), U2's collaboration with Eno that was released under the pseudonym "Passengers".

[6] The announcement of the track listings was accompanied by the release of a new version of "Pride (In the Name of Love)", which was premiered by radio host Dave Fanning on RTÉ 2fm.

[40] On 21 February 2023, the group announced that they had commissioned 40 artists to create 60-second videos to accompany each of the album's tracks, and that they would be progressively released through a YouTube playlist.

The programme, directed by Morgan Neville, features documentary footage of Bono and the Edge touring their native Dublin with comedian David Letterman, as well as a concert performance at Ambassador Theatre.

If their creative missteps in the past two decades have generally been caused by their twin determinations to keep up with modern pop and relentlessly pursue music that works in stadia, then here they've cut themselves free from all of that.

[2] John Walshe of Hot Press said the re-recordings mostly "work beautifully and occasionally surprisingly" and that: "Stripping these songs back to their core gives both band and listener a chance to re-connect with them, to hear them with fresh ears.

"[53] Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph said that "altered perspectives" such as the one from "Dirty Day" helped "make this measured, inventive, introspective collection so compelling, as U2 turn their own songs inside out in search of new nuances and meanings".

[59] Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that the reimagined tracks removed too many of the group's strengths, with the "surging, cathartic peaks of songs like 'With or Without You,' 'Vertigo,' and 'Pride (in the Name of Love)'... far too muted."

[60] Caryn Rose of Pitchfork opined that Bono's lyrical subversions did not improve the songs but rather were distracting, and she judged that musically "The arrangements are formulaic, regressing back to the stripped-down candlelit era of the original MTV's Unplugged.

"[57] Damian Jones of NME said, "There is disappointment that a number of U2's big-hitters don't translate well", but he thought it was not a "totally fruitless endeavour: you just have to dig a little bit deeper to find the reimagined material that's truly worth savouring.

"[56] John Garratt of PopMatters questioned the necessity of a quadruple album with minimal alterations to the songs and lamented the band's shift from previously surprising listeners to being predictable.

"[58] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian believed the album was unwieldy, saying that when listening to it all at once, "it struggles to hold your attention", but that "Taken in smaller doses, there are great moments marked by a sense of genuine reinvention".

Petridis enjoyed the reimagined deep cuts the most and thought the group's biggest songs "don't work rendered in soft-focus miniature".