U2 have offered their take on the Pogues’ classic ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’. It was recorded for the upcoming compilation 20th Century Paddy – The Songs of Shane MacGowan, which also features Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Hozier, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, the Dropkick Murphys, and the late Glen Hansard. Take a listen below.
In a press release, the Edge said:
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.
20th Century Paddy – The Songs of Shane MacGowan is due for release on November 13. At least half of the album’s proceeds will be donated to the Dublin Simon Community, supporting people experiencing homelessness across Dublin.
