Surrender features guest vocalists Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star), Bernard Sumner (New Order) and Jonathan Donahue (Mercury Rev).

The duo were quick to work again with Bobby Gillespie, who appears on the third track and third single "Out of Control", providing backing vocals: they remixed Gillespie's Primal Scream song "Swstk Ys" (as it was titled on the 1999 single release), which later appeared on the band's 2000 album Xtrmntr.

The album and singles artwork were provided by London-based silkscreen artist and illustrator Kate Gibb, using screen prints of photographs found in the Hulton Picture Library.

The cover image was a treatment of a photograph called Jesus Amongst the Fans taken by Richard Young at The Great British Music Festival at the Kensington Olympia in 1976.

The "Jesus" in question was a music fan called William Jellett, who had adopted the divine moniker and was often seen dancing ecstatically at concerts across the UK from the 1960s to the 1990s.

[3][4] Ed Simons said of the album cover in Q magazine, "We liked the idea of everyone else sitting down and being chilled out and just one person really getting it, like one of our gigs in the Midwest, actually".

The magazine stated, however, in February 1999 the duo were confronted with a novel problem: they had, in Simons' words "about two weeks" to sort out an album cover, plan a live show, and do endless promotional duties in Japan.

On 10 June 2019, the Chemical Brothers announced a 20th Anniversary special edition re-release of Surrender, featuring five unreleased "secret psychedelic mixes", a collection of b-sides and remixes, a DVD of restored promo videos, live footage of their performance at Glastonbury 2000, art prints, and a book.