U2 are by far the biggest music act ever to come out of Ireland. The Pogues didn't actually come from Ireland — they were a London band — but they might've had more to say about Irish identity than any other band in history. U2 and the Pogues go way back. The two bands toured together in the '80s and '90s. In 2023, when U2 were playing their residency at the Sphere in Vegas, they paid tribute to Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, who had just passed away a few days earlier, with a live cover of "A Rainy Night In Soho." Now, there's a Shane MacGowan tribute on the way, and U2 have shared their cover of a different Pogues classic.
The new compilation 20th Century Paddy – The Songs Of Shane MacGowan comes out this fall, and it features artists like Tom Waits, the Jesus And Mary Chain, Primal Scream, the Dropkick Murphys, the late Glen Hansard, and the duo of Hozier and Jessie Buckley. We already posted Bruce Springsteen's take on "A Rainy Night In Soho," and now U2 have shared their version of "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," the fired-up single that the Pogues released in 1988.
U2 recently released the surprise EPs Days Of Ash and Easter Lily and the Martin Garrix collab "Fireflies." Their take on "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" doesn't sound anything like that stuff. Instead, it's the most joyous and stripped-down thing I've heard from U2 in a long time. They sound like they're actually having fun here. Here's a press-release quote from the Edge:
Shane MacGowan was full of contradictions — and that’s where the truth of him lived. He could be precise about what mattered and gloriously careless about everything else. If that sounds like a kind of performance, maybe it was. But as Oscar Wilde put it, “a mask tells us more than a face."
The crooked grin, the wildness, the old-Ireland inflections — they weren’t disguises so much as signals. A way of placing himself in a lineage that ran from the pub storyteller to the punk stage. Somewhere between John B. Keane and the Clash, he found a voice that felt both ancient and completely of its time.
What he did with that voice was remarkable. He pulled together threads that shouldn’t quite fit — folk tradition, political memory, gallows humour, romance — and made them sound inevitable.
His songs sound like they have always existed. He dissolved himself into them and, in the process, created the Shane MacGowan myth. The details of his life barely surface, but you learn exactly what he cared about. And that’s the point.
Below, check out U2's take on "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," as well as the Pogues' original video.
20th Century Paddy – The Songs Of Shane MacGowan is out 11/13 via Rubyworks.
