The Christian pop duo For King & Country have released a cover of a U2 classic in advance of a new TV series based of the life of King David. The group, made up of brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone, cover “40”, which originally appeared on U2’s 1983 album War. It was released in advance of the first three episodes of House of David, which is premiering on Amazon Prime on February 27th. That’s the same day the soundtrack is being released, which will also feature songs by Christian and gospel artists including Anne Wilson, Chris Tomlin and Tasha Cobbs Leonard.
The lyrics of U2’s “40” are an adaptation of Psalm 40, which is usually attributed to King David. In an Instagram post, For King & Country wrote, “We’ve long been inspired by watching these 2-Dimensional biblical epics be brought to 3-Dimensional life on the big screen. A high honor to be included in this project, and grateful to U2 for entrusting us with this song.”
Yeah, and despite U2’s generosity of allowing this, with no up front money, they didn’t credit U2 in the credits of the episode. There was an entire page of credits for this song, which included King and Country, the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, the recording engineers, the studio assistants, and the *librarians”, but not a single mention of the songwriter, U2. The words are the 40th Psalm, but the melody and arrangement is U2’s and they should have been credited. It’s an ugly omission, and if I was a songwriter I wouldn’t allow them to use any other songs in the future. It’s just very wrong, especially for a series based on a Biblical story.