Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

Not content with writing one of the best memoirs of 2022, Bono has turned the creativity amp to 11 by making the memoir’s audiobook version into a rapturous blend of music, sound effects, vintage sound clips, and of course, his own mesmerizing narration. For instance, when Bono talks about dreaming that he’s in a movie, listeners hear an old film projector begin to spin and old-timey movie music plays under his narration. Bono begins his memoir in 2016, as he’s about to undergo an eight-hour surgery to correct his heart’s aortic valve. Each of the 40 subsequent chapters is named after a U2 song, and each chapter begins with or stripped-down acoustic or live versions of those songs, in music clips that run between 20 and 90 seconds. Bono provides the vocals, although musician the Edge pops up periodically, including singing the falsetto lead on “Desire.” Although these musical snippets are short, they sound newly recorded, rather than clipped from existing album tracks. When Bono remembers watching the 1969 moon landing, Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for man” speech plays quietly under Bono’s narration. An innovative and wildly entertaining audiobook.