Brian Eno: Moment of Surrender
By Jonathan Dodson | December 8th, 2009 | Category: Gospel and Culture | Comments OffU2 producer Brian Eno is interviewed about the making of “The Moment of Surrender”, which also happens to be one of my favorites from the album. Interestingly, the song was only played once, in the studio, where it came together and stuck!
Eno’s description of the song creation is insightful, not just for U2 fans, but also for anyone concerned with creativity. The creative process was transcendent and collaborative, as Bono put it: “Instead of going into the studio to find the music, the music found us.” Eno described this experience like “channeling the song”, which brought to mind Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on the necessity of artist’s finding a muse.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mYx0dt9iKE]
Wow. Very interesting. I have been apart of experiences like that with music, usually in the area of songwriting. It’s wild. You just kind of have you get out of the way and you feel like you have to hang on for the ride. You know it won’t last long so just try and enjoy it while you can.
Sounds great, Zach. I’m not a musician, but I can feel these experiences second hand and am so grateful for artists who “channel” them. In my own way, I sometimes stumble across this experience in writing, when the perfect sentence or image comes together. However, they are all too few.
[...] with Moment of Surrender as Best Song (which is a pretty amazing song: read about its development here). This album certainly marks a new expression of creativity for U2, and they still don’t [...]