U2, Third Man Records Prep ‘The Blackout’ Vinyl Single

U2 will team with Jack White’s Third Man Records for a 12-inch vinyl single featuring their new song, “The Blackout,” out November 24th for Record Store Day’s Black Friday event. 

The limited-edition single will feature the album version of “The Blackout” as well as a remix from Irish producer Jacknife Lee. Copies pressed on black vinyl will be available at independent record stores participating in RSD Black Friday, while colored vinyl versions will be available only at Third Man’s stores in Nashville and Detroit (two retailers in the U.K. and Ireland will also carry the colored vinyl, though those stores have yet to be announced).

U2 released “The Blackout” in August, marking the first song from their forthcoming album, Songs of Experience, out December 1st. The band has since released another album cut, “You’re the Best Thing About Me.”

Songs of Experience follows U2’s 2014 album, Songs of Innocence. While the band started writing both records around the same time, U2 began to revamp Songs of Experience to reflect both the rapidly changing political climate and Bono’s own “brush with mortality.” “The Blackout” encapsulated this change, with Bono telling Rolling Stone that the song “started off its life about a more personal apocalypse, some events in my life that more than reminded me of my mortality but then segued into the political dystopia that we’re heading towards now.”