Bono and The Edge play U2 songs for NPR’s Tiny Desk

Bono and U2’s The Edge are the latest stars to perform for NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series – watch their concert below.

The pair performed stripped-down versions of four of their hits: “Lá Alainn,” “In A Little While,” “Sewn in a Moment You Can’t Get Away With,” and “Walk On.” They were joined by a choir from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Before playing “In A Little While”, The Edge said: “All these years trying to avoid a desk job. I’m getting into it.”

“The song is about friendship. Edge and I were talking earlier about how we became a little more intolerant of our friends as we got older. I made the mistake of categorizing my friends, ” said Bono.

“You shouldn’t do this. The tough ones, you kind of have to be careful what you say around them.”

For their part, the Irish duo dedicated “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” to the late INXS singer Michael Hutchence, an old friend of the group.

U2 released “Songs Of Surrender” yesterday (March 17), a collection of reimagined versions of 40 of the group’s hits.

In a three-star review of “Songs Of Surrender,” NME wrote: “Thankfully, ‘Songs Of Surrender’ is not the disaster it first threatened to be. Sure some of the Irish quartet’s biggest hits (‘Pride’, ‘Where’? The Streets Have No Name’, ‘The Fly’) have been robbed of their epic luster, but some of U2’s early tracks and deep cuts have been reworked carefully here with older and wiser eyes.

“It’s disappointing that some of U2’s best songs don’t translate well to ‘Stories For Surrender’, but this review wasn’t a futile effort: you just have to dig a little deeper to find the finding reimagined content worthy of your own. time.”

U2 also appeared this week on BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room, where they performed orchestral versions of “Vertigo”, “One” and a cover of ABBA’s “SOS”.