U2 – “Lights Of Home” (Free Yourself / Beck Remix)

Beck opened for U2 when they were touring in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their classic 1987 album The Joshua Tree last fall. A couple of months later, the band finally released their years-in-the-making new album Songs Of Experience. And now Beck has offered up a new remix of album cut "Lights Of Home,"

By Peter Helman

Beck opened for U2 when they were touring in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their classic 1987 album The Joshua Tree last fall. A couple of months later, the band finally released their years-in-the-making new album Songs Of Experience. And now Beck has offered up a new remix of album cut “Lights Of Home,” which borrows its main riff from Haim’s 2014 single “My Song 5” and features the Haim sisters themselves on backup vocals.

Beck’s version, which the band are also calling the “Free Yourself” remix, reorients the entire song around its anthemic “Free yourself to be yourself/ If only you could see yourself” outro. It still sounds like a U2 song, and that bluesy Haim-derived riff still pops up occasionally, but it’s mostly subsumed by grand, symphonic floatiness.

The Beck remix was originally released last weekend for Record Store Day. The single, which comes on a 12-inch picture disc featuring a photo of Bono’s son Eli and Edge’s daughter Sian and is limited to 5000 copies worldwide, also includes the album version of “Lights Of Home” and an orchestral “St Peter’s String Version.” Listen to Beck’s “Free Yourself” remix below.

Fun fact: Rolling Stone named “Lights Of Home” the fifth best song of 2017.

This post U2 – “Lights Of Home” (Free Yourself / Beck Remix) first appeared on Stereogum.