Good news for U2 fans..

[u2roolz]

This is wicked late, but I loved The Joshua Tree 30th Anniversary Tour at Gillette Stadium. Exit was amazing! Loved the last 6 songs off of The Joshu Tree that I have never heard before. I was surprised that I'd love the setlist with all of the "big" hits right off the bat & ending the main set with lesser known songs. I did see a big group leave after they did a great version of Bullet a The Blue Sky. The new song sounded really good in person. That's how I ended the Solid Sound weekend on Sunday. I'll need to remember to listen to the Jeff & friends show that I bought.

 

In Amsterdam yesterday, U2 filmed a music video for their new song The Blackout which is set for a September release. They invited fans via their official website to the shoot inside a venue. The word amongst people in the know is that Songs Of Experience should be out on Friday December 1 World AIDS Day. We'll see about that. Shooting a video makes it seem like it should happen.

[u2roolz]

U2 is set to stream The Blackout video on Facebook tomorrow. Go here to find local times & for a quick 15 second clip of the song.

https://www.atu2.com

 

The actual first single, You're The Best Thing About Me, will be released on Wed Sept 6 along with an album announcement for Song Of Experience.

[Sir Stewart]

I've given up on getting too excited about anything new from U2, so maybe that's what helps me enjoy The Blackout.

[Analogman]

The music is a bit jarring.  

[u2roolz]

The bass line sounds a lot like This Is Radio Clash. I enjoyed the song for what it is & it's a lot more "interesting" in sound than the Miracle Of Joey Ramone. I'm curious how this sounds without the added crowd noise. Edit: The opening guitar riff sounds like it was taken from the unreleased Glastonbury which was played around 2010/2011. They also used another guitar riff from that song for Volcano.

[Analogman]

And Get on Your Boots. 

 

I was wondering what that made me think of - The Clash. 

[Passenger Sid]

The music is a bit jarring.  

 

I agree.

 

The first minute or so is pretty exciting and cool. Then it falls apart musically and lyrically, imho.

[Shug]

I'm with you exactly Sid. I want to like new U2 but it just isn't up to par for me. I haven't cared about new U2 music since Atomic Bomb. Bono once said when asked when it will be time to quit and he said "3 shite albums in a row and were done ." I think we might be there with this new album

[u2roolz]

U2 will be on Jimmy Fallon Thursday night. They'll most likely be playing the single, You're The Best Thing, or The Blackout.

[Sir Stewart]

This Best Thing song sucks assssss.

[Winston Legthigh]

This Best Thing song sucks assssss.

 

It sounds like a U2 computer was programmed to write a U2-sounding song. I'm incredulous that anyone in the band went through the effort of putting that song out and was excited about the creative process the whole time, like "Nailed it!!"

[Sir Stewart]

This easily replaces Get On Your Boots as their bottom-of-the-barrel first single.

[u2roolz]

It's amusing to think that they delayed this record to "keep writing" due to what's going on in the world. I didn't really believe that.

 

DJ KYGO remixed this song & played this remix at a summer fest in 2016 which is why there are a dozen covers of this song on YouTube. That remix has been off of YouTube for a long time now. It was much better.

 

The best thing about this song is the last minute where Bono & The Edge do a call & response. edit: upon further review that's just The Edge singing.

 

A meme that I saw recently seems fitting: a Bono look alike going into a Porta Potty with the text "Bono about to enter the recording studio." Lol

[Analogman]

On first listen - I liked it better than The Blackout.

[Sir Stewart]

I was listening to the new LCD Soundsystem the other night and at a few points I thought about U2, particularly the title track, American Dream.

Made me think this is the kind of thing U2 could be doing, if they put the effort in.

If this was the new U2 song, I'd be fucking stoked:

https://youtu.be/oUeUcfMsCBY

Instead they are married to these vanilla pieces of shit songs, album after album now, that have no relation to the soaring, intimate Passengers U2, Zooropa U2, that they started tapping into post-Achtung up to 9/11, when they redefined themselves as the world's middle-of-the-road pop rock healers, deciding every song had to reach everybody and nobody. I'm done.

[Passenger Sid]

For me, "You're The Best Thing About Me" is opposite of The Blackout...it gets better as the song goes along. Kinda like it.

[u2roolz]

I was listening to the new LCD Soundsystem the other night and at a few points I thought about U2, particularly the title track, American Dream.

Made me think this is the kind of thing U2 could be doing, if they put the effort in.

If this was the new U2 song, I'd be fucking stoked:

https://youtu.be/oUeUcfMsCBY

Instead they are married to these vanilla pieces of shit songs, album after album now, that have no relation to the soaring, intimate Passengers U2, Zooropa U2, that they started tapping into post-Achtung up to 9/11, when they redefined themselves as the world's middle-of-the-road pop rock healers, deciding every song had to reach everybody and nobody. I'm done.

What did you think of The Little Things That Give You Away on Jimmy Kimmel? I think that's the best song that they've done in a long time.

 

A few Pittsburgh DJs were played several songs off of the album & their favorite songs are ones that no one has even heard of yet, so I'm still optimistic.

[Sir Stewart]

What did you think of The Little Things That Give You Away on Jimmy Kimmel? I think that's the best song that they've done in a long time.

 

I did like that. I was being a little over the top I suppose. So annoying though, the crap songs.

[auctioneer69]

It sounds like a U2 computer was programmed to write a U2-sounding song. I'm incredulous that anyone in the band went through the effort of putting that song out and was excited about the creative process the whole time, like "Nailed it!!"

[auctioneer69]

Exactly! It highlights the worst of what the band has become at times now: trite, cliched lyrics married to a clumsy and dull melody.

 

I also read the interview with them in the New York Times this morning. Yet more grandiose and pretentious claims about their music which only seems to get worse the harder they try and battle their irrelevance.

 

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/arts/music/u2-songs-of-experience-interview.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

 

I liked the 'Blackout' but really wish they had packed it in a long time ago. You could just about compile a decent album from their last three albums but it would be a struggle. Or why not just focus on touring their classic albums? The ´Joshua Tree' tour has been a hit with critics and fans alike.

[u2roolz]

One of the biggest gripes that I had was Bono talking about weeding out the album to make it an even 12 tracks instead of 15 which is supposedly what they had. If you're proud of your own material, why not just go with 15 tracks? Trying to cut it down to 12 tells me that they're not confident at all with some of these tracks. And 2 of these 12 songs will be The Blackout & You're The Best Thing, so take that for what it is...

[redpillbox]

I've spent way too much time considering the question of why I find U2 so infuriating at times (or lately)...and I say this as a big, big fan...I've tried to distill it down to one thing or another, but it really feels like the combination of many factors...

 

1) I have clarified in my own mind is that I feel like the album "Pop" really broke them. Up to that point they had really developed a "here we are, we do what we want, and get on board or don't it's all the same to us, but we answer to our own inner-muse" attitude. This resulted in some really exciting music, even in their "failures" (after "Pop" there was no more sex anywhere to be found in their music) -- You can draw a straight line from the fall-out from that album, critical and fan-reaction, to everything that came after. More specifically, they now maintain a debilitating...

 

2) ...self-consciousness and second-guessing of themselves. This has led them to pull back on album releases, change producers, always chase a younger audience and basically make decisions that on the face of it, appear like they care way too much about what everyone thinks of them. This could also be that they've been mega-rich for decades, so they've simply been isolated and lost touch, but the end result are many songs that sound "over-cooked," methodically stripped of anything resembling spontaneity, all "polished stones" to use a Bono lyric and no rough edges. What I find most frustrating here is that I firmly believe they still have it, they just can't get out of their own way (or heads). When they released the "Complete U2" on iTunes, you saw this borne out in some of the unreleased and early versions of album songs that they included..."Native Son" was much more visceral and exciting to me than "Vertigo" which ended up neutering that...(I think they sometimes pull back songs like "Native Son" because they have vocal moments that would be impossible for Bono to duplicate live)..."Xanax and Wine" was much more interesting to me musically and lyrically than "Fast Cars"....Daniel Lanois was quoted around the time of "All That You Can't Leave Behind" as saying something like "you should have heard the earlier version of 'Walk On'..."...in interviews about new albums you always hear some comment about a song like, "it started out like X..." and I always think "that that sounds much more interesting then what you ended up with." In the case of "You're The Best Thing..." I read it started out like a Motown-inspired song...and the "Soul-mix" they released sounds much better to me that this album version which apparently they didn't finish mixing until late-August....I could go on and on here...

 

3) The lyrics...long song-titles and lyrics that are written like T-shirt aphorisms. All the "big ideas" and "kneels" and other pet phrases Bono uses and sneaks into lyrics at any opportunity grate on me. I could pull these out, but I'm losing steam and I still have one more point...

 

4) Bono's voice...it's gotten much thinner and "yelp-y"...he favors the long-e vowel sounds...that stray towards sharp and piercing (like a Bob Dylan harmonica solo when you're listening with headphones). Basically, he's still trying to sing and project like he did in his 20s and I would love it if the band evolved into a band that embraced their age as a real advantage they have (both in substance and style) instead of constantly chasing "relevance" or "radio", made albums for their own sake instead of always considering what will translate live, evolved Bono's singing style, and basically made music again for themselves and said, "f#$% it, we don't have anything to prove anymore." I mean really...what's the point of any of it, if they aren't exciting themselves...to Winston's point above which is right on the money for me...

 

Anyway, that's my take. It's very difficult to be a discerning fan of theirs.

[The Inside of Outside]

^^^You pretty much summed up why I do not listen to U2 anymore.

[Sir Stewart]

Yes, that summary is pretty much how I feel about U2's post-Pop career. Nice job.

[Boss_Tweedy]

I'll see them tomorrow night in NOLA, and I'll admit it's a total nostalgia thing. I haven't gotten into anything they've released since "All That You Can't Leave Behind."