U2 have released their version of the Pogues song "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah," recorded for a tribute record built around Shane MacGowan's songwriting. The album, 20th Century Paddy: The Songs of Shane MacGowan, arrives November 13 through Rubyworks, nearly three years after the Pogues frontman died.
The Edge supplied a statement about MacGowan rather than about the recording. "Shane MacGowan was full of contradictions, and that's where the truth of him lived," he said, describing a man who could be precise about what mattered and careless about everything else, and placing his voice somewhere between the pub storyteller and the punk stage.
The tribute has been arriving in pieces since March, when Bruce Springsteen shared his reading of "A Rainy Night In Soho." Dropkick Murphys followed with "The Body Of An American." Tom Waits, the Libertines, Primal Scream, Steve Earle, David Gray, Hozier, the Jesus And Mary Chain, the Murder Capital, Kate Moss, Jessie Buckley and the late Glen Hansard are also on the record, which a press release describes as songs MacGowan wanted to make himself.
Victoria Mary Clarke, MacGowan's wife and the person who drove the project, thanked the musicians and the Rubyworks team in a statement of her own. Half of all artist royalties from the album go to Dublin Simon Community, which provides housing and healthcare for people experiencing homelessness. MacGowan died in November 2023 at 65, of pneumonia, and was buried in Nenagh, County Tipperary.
U2 and MacGowan were close, and the band have gone back to the Pogues repeatedly. They played "A Rainy Night In Soho" with Johnny Depp at MacGowan's 60th birthday concert in 2018, then added the song to their Las Vegas Sphere setlist in 2023, days after his death. Their post at the time read that his songs were perfect so neither he nor his fans had to be.
The cover lands in a crowded year for the band. U2 released the EPs Days of Ash and Easter Lily, then "Street of Dreams," the first single from a studio album due later in 2026 and their first set of new songs since 2017's Songs of Experience. It marks the return of drummer Larry Mullen Jr, who sat out the Sphere residency while recovering from back surgery, and September 25 is the 50th anniversary of the band forming.
The song is filed under rock, and the tribute album's November date sits on the release calendar. Hansard's inclusion is posthumous: the Irish singer and Once star died at 56 in July. Springsteen, who opened the project in March, has spent the same stretch preparing to headline the Stand Up For Heroes benefit in New York.
The facts
- The tribute album 20th Century Paddy arrives November 13 via Rubyworks.
- U2 cover the Pogues song Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah.
- Bruce Springsteen and Dropkick Murphys released earlier tracks from it.
- Half of the artist royalties go to Dublin Simon Community.
- Shane MacGowan died in November 2023 at the age of 65.
- U2 played A Rainy Night In Soho at the Las Vegas Sphere in 2023.
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