Devil's Advocacy: U2

My most vivid high school memory of U2 (who were fairly new at the time) is going to one of the art rooms to avoid the cafeteria during lunch break, and hearing them playing on the red radio tuned to a short-lived "Modern Rock" station. At the time, U2 was kind of an "edgy" band to be playing, and so to some extent I could use listening to them to bond with the generally more-pleasant-than-the- average- student burn-out/artist types who hung out in the art room. On the other hand, I was aware that there was a long list of modern rock bands that weren't getting played on this station, and U2 was never one of my favorites.

and there's a propulsive feel to the best of the early stuff, which simon reynolds aptly summed up as "a chesty surge".

some of "achtung" is palatable...

Who else in the pop/rock mainstream was mocking media-hyperreality? Maybe I slept through the first half of the 90's, but all I remember of the rock mainstream/grunge was whining about personal problems packaged as rebellion, with all the boring attempts at authenticity. Nirvana (accidentally) begat Pearl Jam, and, by extension, Creed and Nickelback, whereas I see mid-nineties U2 as being closer (not aesthetically but spiritually) to all the wonderfully artificial popmusic that so many on this board (including myself) seem to love. I could go on and on...

Yeah, right....nevermind the fact that he ripped it right off of Keith LeVene (PiL) and Andy Gill (Gang of Four).

Said grievance aside, I'll always count early U2 (at least up through WAR) as pretty great, despite their inherent pompousity.

I mean: wondering how well-thought-out any of Bono's subsequent stunts are (the Superbowl cape? The Jesse Owens glad- handing?) is a form of actual thinking. It's thought-provoking in something like the way that yer Sunday Bloody Bleeding Sunday wants to be but ridiculously cannot. So as he bumbles (or is that "knowingly weaves"?) his way through post-modernism and global politics, he is at least engaging me SOMEHOW. More so than the music itself ever did, but I begrudgingly submit this is still a point in the band's favor.

Not them, to be sure. Sorry, but I always found Achtung Baby and all the baggage that went along with it to be humorless stodge that's relentlessly uncompelling. After Rattle and Hum came out and proceeded to destroy my love of the band pretty thoroughly, I haven't been able to look at anything they've done with appreciation -- more barking annoyance.

Alex, you've caught me repeating something (re: the Edge's sound) that a basically anti-U2 friend said a long time ago. (Somehow I feel more comfortable mindlessly repeating something a close friend said, where I would normally be pretty unlikely to do the same thing with something a professional critic said.) I don't know enough to back up my assertion. (Incidentally, though I don't listen to them much, I would much rather listen to PiL or Gang of Four than U2, and felt the same way back when "War" was a new album.)

Let's put it this way: he found (perhaps in someone else's back yard) a decent spiraling sort of guitar sound and rode with it.

I was a little unclear... my above comment had more to do with the tours and even Zooropa not Achtung as much,, not that this will have any affect...

Also, in general, why is U2 considered more pretentious than other groups? I find grunge and new metal MORE pretentious because it seems to have less content behind it, and also because of the vain (both meanings) attempts at rebellion. Really, is dying your hair really rebellious on a larger level? To me there is a crucial difference between rebellion against society and rebellion against parents. This difference helps to expalin why so much current rock is so feeble. I am not saying that U2 is grand social rebellion, just that there seems to be more validity to their pretenses compared to most rock music.

R&H's roots-rock-revulsion in my mind led to the grand overcompensation of Achtung and after. "We're modern! We're hip! We're on the cutting edge!" Feh, about as appealing to me in the end as them hanging around Sun Studios and pretending they were Carl Perkins.

Does this lose the bold?

I like some of their big 80s hits - nice rippling guitar. Achtung Baby and afterwards are unspeakable.

i saw u2 supporting talking heads (remain in light tour?) (anyway when they added all the funk people) and bono was wearing leather trousers, so that was that

Regarding the 80s, The Unforgetable Fire is one of my fav albums of the 80s - it would make my decade top 100, I also enjoyed War and the debut album Boy. Parts of Joshua Tree I enjoyed (e.g bullet the blue sky)- but they are a few bore songs. October has it's moments. Rattle & Hum was f-ing abysmal - first term at Uni - Autumn 1988 - nearly everyone in Uni Halls of Residence except me had this album.

Achtung Baby was a 7/10 album, it's listenable - and they tried to experiment with sounds - the fly was an interesting track they it built up. Then afterwards:

This was a blog entry of mine on Friday

U2 Best of 1990 - 2000: Surely some mistake?

Someone call the govt trade descriptions dept, U2 are planning a Best Of covering 1990 - 2000, see NME.COM

Come on after Achtung Baby it was all downhill, as U2 spent the rest of the decade making lacklustre music and putting on pompous theatre lightshows and as for the music even INXS would have rejected most of the limp dance-rock and stadium lite guitar muzak. There simply is not enough material to cover a best of within this timeframe. But in places like the Grammys, Q, NME, MTV, VH1 and Spin - U2 were/are seen as being relevant and important - but they are wrong !

This site will pollute your mind!

My advice; the time to listen to music from the early to mid 90's rather than just spew forth the same anti-grunge lines you have picked up in the local indie record store.

"grunge was whining about personal problems packaged as rebellion, with all the boring attempts at authenticity".

Much of grunge was personal angst, not in itself such a bad thing, but as they matured their music became more political, bo-ring? Well its all in context of the time my dear fellow. I thought GNR and U2 were bo-ring and grunge anything but.

"Nirvana (accidentally) begat Pearl Jam, and, by extension, Creed and Nickelback, whereas I see mid-nineties U2 as being closer (not aesthetically but spiritually) to all the wonderfully artificial popmusic that so many on this board (including myself) seem to love."

Seeing Pearl Jam released 'Ten' before Nirvana's 'Nevermind' your logic here is already on shaky ground. And yes grunge was a reaction to artifical music both pop and the big hair bands and in that context grunge was amazing. I doubt you saw Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or the Smashing Pumpkins live during the early nineties. Pity, perhaps then you could write with some level of understanding.

The two rock giants- REM and U2 were confused and stunned by this grunge onslaught. They were instantly rendered redundant. Their reactions were amusing as much as they were futile. REM attemted to jump on the bandwagon with Monster while U2 realised the hopelessness of their position and retreated to Zooropa or Pop or whatever it was. Both albulms were a joke.

"I could go on and on... "

Please dont.

Yours in flannel

And right at this time, the last two decent albums either of these bands worked on were off-beat ones recorded without their singers. REM on Warren Zevon's _Sentimental Hygiene_ (OK, Hindu Love Gods is kinda fun in a self-indulgent way) and the U2/Eno _Passengers_ thing.

As for U2 well... yes they did have the Johhny Cash tune eh.

uh, didn't they rip that off negativeland after having taken that band out financially, and credit the whole "zoo" thing to eno anyway, proving that U2 don't take kindly to being "mocked" themselves

how can they be ironic yet be so precious when negativeland simply finds some irony in what U2 does ? oh sorry, they're too grown up for that aren't they ? no "zoo" couldn't be an incoherent multi-media mess, point that camera smewhere else and check with their lawyers first

for all their good intentions U2 are so dumbed down so as to not alienate their core listenership so that they sell -- read "bono" (no, no, he's called hewson isn't he ?) talking to beefheart/ van vliet in Mojo -- embarrassingly DUMB -- and "the edge", who does he think he is ? oh he has the edge man, in case you've forgotten

most "serious U2 fans" will not understand any purported irony, the target/intent of the negativeland spy tape in the first place

I must say that I liked Nirvana, and that it was their success that pushed pearl jam to the fore, even if "ten" was released earlier (this was my perception litening to the radio at that time). Since achtung baby was realeased less than two months after nevermind, and since U2 usually takes a long time in the studio, I can't imagine that achtung baby was really a reaction to the popularity of grunge (my perceptions of which are unfortunately distorted by the fawning media attention. etc.). Incidentally, I did see the smashing pumpkins live two days before the whole heroin debacle.

"grunge is an easy target for the cool cat crowd"

It has never been insinuated even slightly that I am a cool cat and I take offence!

I don't like Bongo's preaching and the way he has given up on irony, butI do at least like that he is trying to use his influence for good rather than evil.

Rattle & Hum is the worst of their albums that I have heard.

they've been off the boil for the last few albums, oh yes.

one funny thing about being a university educated Irish person - U2 are massively popular in ireland, but in the kind of hipster circles I move in it is very trend to not like U2.

What I think is amazing about U2 is how they make it work, they make it look real. When Bono pulls off a stunt like the Super Bowl show or appearing on Saturday Night Live and has one of those stage moments like the American Flag inseam of his leather jacket or posing like the Statue of Liberty during a Late Show performance of "New York" it looks like a statement. He's not voted by most rock critics as "The Most Charismatic Man in Rock" for nothing you know... he can pull it off and still look like all his integrity is in tact. Now, watch Creed frontman Scott Sapp try to pull it off and it looks like an advertisement. Even Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder can't touch Bono when it comes to keeping face when you're trying to look like the beatificated rock hero. No one can... Bono was just born with built in integrity... even at the bands weakest moments he still manages to hold the interest of most media.

So why is it there are so many people who want to argue U2's relevance in rock history. My theory is that U2 are very much unlike anything else in rock yet they are mainstream and immensely popular. "With or Without You" shot straight to number one, but how many other songs out there sounded like that in 1987? What else had the same message of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"? The think is, U2 is so uniquely fresh and new that hordes of people buy into it just to hear something original for a change.

The band took the 90s to reinvent themselves after practically owning the previous decade. Now people slack them off for being too old, too mainstream or they accuse them of being sellouts, a common word thrown around once a band has the gall to be successful. The truth is, U2 are undoubtedly the best thing to hit rock music in years and they have the chemistry, the electricity and the capability to be revered and remembered as one of the greats along with The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and other megabands who have reached world-wide and universal appeal.

But since some doubters still insist that U2 is a horribly untalented band given way too much credit for their integrity and social views, I will leave with this remark. It's only in a world where musical genres are almost as plentiful as individual people where a band so widely accepted as U2 are could be accused of getting undue credit. This "crap floats to the top" theory is unproven and unwarrented. Most bands remembered well past their 20 year mark for being great are in fact great... what's different now is that there are too many choices in music and people are catagorizing the shit out of it. U2 is stuffed into the genre of "Rock" or "Pop" or "Adult Contemporary" when in reality, they're a bit of everything. The biggest problem with U2 is their not fickle enough for this time. They just want to make great music and how fortunate for them they do it to the tune of hundreds of millions of albums. I think people need to start respecting them a lot more because it's apparent the band's not disappearing any time too soon and even when they do, it's apparent they will be remembered as one of the best bands ever, not some 80s band who stretched out a career way too long.

I feel urpy.

Plenty, but most noticeably "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"

Why? Because they write great melodies. Everybody who writes great
melodies are great. Everybody who don't (rap, techno etc.) sucks.