Out This Week 9/9 Addition: New Album from U2!

Oh, hey, lookie here, U2 sprung a new album on us! The Irish superstars surprised the world with the release today at an Apple press conference for the new iPhone 6, which concluded with a performance of the opening track "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)." The thirteenth album (and their first in five years) is titled Songs of Innocence and is available for FREE, as a gift from Apple, to anyone with iTunes. I mean, why not? It's not like either of them need your $12.99, right? It's being credited as the largest album release of all time.

The album was recorded over the past two years in Dublin, Los Angeles, and New York, with a crew of talented producers including Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney and Flood. Lykke Li adds some guest vocals to the track "The Troubles." In an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, Bono said, "We wanted to make a very personal album. Let's try to figure out why we wanted to be in a band, the relationships around the band, our friendships, our lovers, our family. The whole album is first journeys — first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually. And that's hard. But we went there."A physical version of the album comes out on October 13th including a 24-page booklet. The deluxe edition also includes acoustic versions of the album's songs along with four bonus tracks: "Lucifer's Hands", "The Crystal Ballroom", "The Troubles" (alternative version) and "Sleep Like a Baby Tonight" (Alternative Perspective Mix by Tchad Blake). The vinyl release will include an exclusive remix of "The Crystal Ballroom" by Tchad Blake.

Watch the band perform at today's press conference below.