1. Finally word about the video for Song For Someone. It looks like the band is into short films. If it's like EBW, I'm all for it.
  2. Let's hope it turns out well...kind of hard to imagine Song for Someone and its melody fitting a semi-dark story like that.
  3. Every Breaking Wave turned out to be quite fitting, so I'm not concerned more than I'm excited.
  4. Plus, it's Woody Harrelson. Can't wait to see him in this short film.
  5. Absolutely BRILLIANT article. I think no true fan can deny all the truth enclosed in this paragraphs - even if it hurts:

    http://observer.com/2015/07/u2-looks-to-silence-critics-with-8-concerts-at-madison-square-garden/

    Most rock stars reach a point where, if their careers aren’t sad shells of past glories, they accept the passage of time and transition away from upstart rebellion and into something resembling responsible adults, providing a link between the past and the future.

    For the better part of the last 15 years, U2 has fought off that transition, in seemingly spectacular denial about its role in modern music.

    Quit straining for cultural relevance and embrace your role as rock’s elder statesmen.

    As a band founded in the waning days of the Ford administration, U2 is, by any reasonable definition, a veteran act, and one enduring through the many sea changes in the culture and the music industry over the last four decades.

    That is a remarkable achievement.

    But rather than acknowledge they are not the hungry young world-beaters they once were—in two years, U2’s Grammy-winning breakthrough album The Joshua Tree turns 30, ready to settle down with a mortgage and kids—Bono and his band mates insist on trying to hang with the kids.

    (...)

    To slip from a messianic perch must be humbling, particularly as other, younger bands—Imagine Dragons; OneRepublic; Coldplay; Mumford & Sons—seize upon your sound and take it into the 21st century.

    But what most long-serving rock bands either ignore or fail to realize is that what makes them more valuable is context. There is a power in drawing upon nostalgia that can energize even the most calcified catalog.



    All as true as it can get.

    Then the article sheds some positive light to end, though:


    Sensing and highlighting the through line from youth to adulthood—moving from innocence to experience—can be a useful tool, and one which more rock bands of a certain vintage should employ.

    And in its own canny way, U2 appears to have realized this.

    There is a sense the hostile response to Innocence left U2 feeling as though it has everything to prove on its current tour. (Judging from the rapturous critical response, U2 is, on that front, as commanding as ever.) If being scalded inspired U2, then perhaps it should stumble before every tour. Or, hopefully, the lessons learned in the last year will carry forward. After all, growing older brings with it wisdom, and an appreciation for that which has come before.

    If not, U2 succumbs to the fate of so many bands before it: Adults trying to act younger than they are, oblivious to their pathetic charade.

    Rock music may eternally belong to the young, but perhaps U2 intuited what the rest of us have not—the genre still needs a band to stick around and remind the kids how it’s done.
  6. a very true and honest article. loved that very last bit indeed, sir, indeed.
  7. Rock music may eternally belong to the young

    Will you still agree when you hit your mid 40's?

    More like rock music keeps us eternally young...
  8. Originally posted by blueeyedboy:Rock music may eternally belong to the young

    Will you still agree when you hit your mid 40's?

    More like rock music keeps us eternally young...
    If you think like that then you missed the whole point of the article

    Well, I will give you this: one thing is the artist (rockers past their 50s? uhm ) and other thing is the target audience (rockers in their 60s or more? Hell yeah! )
  9. I think the first part of the article makes it seem like U2 acting younger than they are is a bad thing. Personally, I think U2 plays the entire field by catering to both younger and older members of their audience. In this way, they operate like any successful organization who's purpose is longevity. They don't cater to a specific demographic knowing that members will eventually "phase out" nor do they seek to "grow up" alongside their audience. U2 has shown an amazing ability to grow up while still remaining young. In the same show, you see them playing around with technology while also pulling out heavy political, moral, and spiritual issues in many of their songs. This is something few, if any, other artists can do and I think U2 can do it because they actively sought to make this a part of their identity. October can be seen as U2's attempt at a Christian worship album and War is very clearly influenced by their political views. If I were a fan at the time listening to these albums, I would wonder how such a young band came to form such strong opinions about those topics. Where did the childish spirit of Boy go?


    Long story short, U2 doesn't act like their age because they've never acted like their age.
  10. You totally missed the point too
  11. I agree with some of what he says... but I don't think U2 is fully in that category (old stars trying ridiculously to cater to the young).

    They are indeed trying to reach a younger audience, and I agree that some songs totally fit in that (Boots and Miracle come to mind), but overall I think they're aging "gracefully" while still rocking.

    I submit AC-DC as exhibit A of what an old rockstar act can look... sorry but I can't see the comparison with U2. I enjoy AC-DC, but they're still wearing the same outfits and playing the exact same tunes the same way they've played all the time. I do think they're looking a bit ridiculous (and yet they keep a profile low enough that it's not cool to say something wrong about them).
    I don't want U2 to become a nostalgia act and keep on catering their old fans with their old songs (even if they're rarities). I want them to keep on writing new music and trying to use it to reach a new audience as much as their old one, even if that means trying to force themselves into everybody's iTunes again.

    And I submit Sting as exhibit B. I absolutely love Sting, but he has grown up and his music with him... and he now plays music for adults. And while I can appreciate the merit of it, I don't really care about him anymore.
    I think U2 has evolved his music a lot, Bomb, No Line and SOI sound a lot more mature and -experienced- than their 80s and 90s music, but it's still rock and roll, it has less energy and power, but it has more "quality", and I like that.

    The thing that I think U2 is doing wrong in this topic, is that they do seem to care too much about the public opinion, specially the younger audience opinion (since they are the ones turning songs into hits or turning them into nothing), and if they continue to put that much weight in it they'll end up frustrated about it.

    Their current music is great as is now, their focus is right, they just need to accept that they won't be as successful as they were anymore and that's fine.

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