Hear U2 Get (Kinda) Funky on Long-Lost Song ‘Happiness’

It has somehow been 20 years since U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb — the one with “Vertigo” — and the band is rolling out a “shadow album” of ten outtakes from it, dubbed How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, on Nov. 22. The band already dropped one of the songs, the chiming mid-tempo anthem “Country Mile” and now they’ve released a second track, “Happiness,” which is a bigger sonic surprise.

In the wake of mixed reactions to their underrated 1997 album Pop, which incorporated some electronic dance beats into their sound, U2 shied away from their funkier instincts for a while. But “Happiness,” despite its organic bass-guitar-drums feel, grooves hard. It’s lighter on its feet than anything on the released Atomic Bomb album, with harmonies not unlike the Pop single “Discothèque”— all of which may be why it didn’t make the original track listing.

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“For this anniversary edition I went into my personal archive to see if there were any unreleased gems and I hit the jackpot,” the Edge recently wrote. “We chose ten that really spoke to us. Although at the time we left these songs to one side, with the benefit of hindsight, we recognize that our initial instincts about them being contenders for the album were right. We were onto something. What you’re getting on this shadow album is that raw energy of discovery, the visceral impact of the music, a sonic narrative, a moment in time, the exploration and interaction of four musicians playing together in a room… this is the pure U2 drop.”