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  1. My biggest issue with the band is that Bono has got a bit soft and lazy in his middle age.

    His lyric writing tends to be quite cringeworthy these days, i'm not sure if he actually thinks it's good enough or maybe he's too busy with his save the world activities to spend time writing lyrics.

    And i'm afraid with his obsession with their music being 'relevant' it's not going to improve. The quality of writing for the Spiderman musical also doesn't bode well.

    I miss the poetry of the Bono of old, these days it's often the case that a U2 song even one with a generally high standard of writing is often let down by a hamfisted line or two (Moment of Surrender and Unknown Caller are perfect examples).

    Unfortunately, it really does seem to be Bono that's the problem, the rest of the band seems to be going from strength to strength. NLOTH saw fantastic performances from Adam & Larry, they're actually getting better and of course Edge was absolutely brilliant.
    So I'm sorry to say it, but Bono is letting the team down.
  2. As much as I agree with you about Bono being "a problem" I personally feel that EDGE has gotten as lazy (or even more lazy perhaps) than Bono in terms of his playing. Magnificent, and MOS are examples to me where Edge should soar during the solo's but he ends up with a simple wimper imo. He's all but absent on the last album and i'm worried he's going to just be doing minimalist playing that isn't all that good/interesting in the end
  3. Originally posted by vanquish:My biggest issue with the band is that Bono has got a bit soft and lazy in his middle age.

    His lyric writing tends to be quite cringeworthy these days, i'm not sure if he actually thinks it's good enough or maybe he's too busy with his save the world activities to spend time writing lyrics.

    And i'm afraid with his obsession with their music being 'relevant' it's not going to improve. The quality of writing for the Spiderman musical also doesn't bode well.

    I miss the poetry of the Bono of old, these days it's often the case that a U2 song even one with a generally high standard of writing is often let down by a hamfisted line or two (Moment of Surrender and Unknown Caller are perfect examples).

    Unfortunately, it really does seem to be Bono that's the problem, the rest of the band seems to be going from strength to strength. NLOTH saw fantastic performances from Adam & Larry, they're actually getting better and of course Edge was absolutely brilliant.
    So I'm sorry to say it, but Bono is letting the team down.

    I honestly don't think Bono's the problem, nor do I think that there is an inherent problem within the band.

    Their lyrics are honestly not nearly as bad as some make them out to be. I actually think MoS, NLOTH, and Magnificent have great lyrics. Again, it's an issue with old vs. new and that's never going to be settled.


    But any issues regarding the actual songs are due to the selection of the theme they decided to base the album on. They wanted NLOTH to be a simpler album with a more spiritual feel to it, and you definitely see that in Magnificent, MoS, NLOTH, and Unknown Caller.

    Right now the only thing we have to work on are two clips that may or may not be old news, so we have to be patient. If you guys watched "From The Sky Down," you should know their process and you should know that it's going to take a while.
  4. Originally posted by Genaro92U2:As much as I agree with you about Bono being "a problem" I personally feel that EDGE has gotten as lazy (or even more lazy perhaps) than Bono in terms of his playing. Magnificent, and MOS are examples to me where Edge should soar during the solo's but he ends up with a simple wimper imo. He's all but absent on the last album and i'm worried he's going to just be doing minimalist playing that isn't all that good/interesting in the end

    Yup, I agree. The Edge is also the problem. Not because of MoS which is a masterpiece in every sense, but because he's repeating himself, and even refuses to play solos of some older stuff (Mysterious Ways on 360)...
  5. Bono still has it in him, just listen to Disappearing Act (I don't need to tell you guys that those lyrics were written in like 2009). I think somewhat you're right, it reminds me of an interview I saw with John Mayer where someone asked him about having kids, and he said (at least at the time) that he felt like having kids would change his songwriting for the worse at this point in his career. His songs would start having titles like "Daddy's Pride" and things like that. I think some of that has happened to Bono. I think he's gotten a bit too personal with his lyrics, the lyrics have always been personal, but recently he's gotten very humane with them as opposed to letting them float on a higher level like they used to. In other words, the poetry and the grace has somewhat declined since their back to basics approach. When I heard Disappearing Act I was extremely upset that lyrics like that didn't end up on NLOTH (I don't want this to turn into a NLOTH argument, this is how I feel!). I felt like those lyrics were like Bono's old poetic lyrics that make you feel a certain way. Kinda like the lyrics on October, UF, or Joshua Tree do, even Pop. So bring back some of that poetic-ness Bono, and I've said this before, but I think Bono needs to change his public image if the band is to take a serious step in another direction. Many disagreed with me for saying it, but I think he needs to change his act up. I'm not sure how he'd do it, because anyone could argue that what he does outiside the band is just as important if not MORE than his musician side, but I dunno. If they really want to take a creative step in a new direction I think this has to change. He sort of half-hazardly did it in the early NLOTH photo-shoots but it never went anywhere sadly. I don't think eye-liner was the way to go, but at least he was doing SOMETHING.

    As for Edge, I agree with the above. Edge has become conservative, somewhat of a charicature of his own design. Whether or not that clip a few pages back is new or real or whatever, it sounded fresh mainly because there was no recognizable Edge-guitar in there. The last three albums have all had super similar Edge guitar tones and moods, light chimey notes and distortion riffs. Where's the innovator and experimenter? Someone should make Edge listen to Zooropa or something! I'm glad Adam said it best in that interview "I think we've played out the echoey guitar", and that he's on the same page as the fans. Edge, we love ya to death, but it's time to do something radical!
  6. From a lyrical standpoint, I think ATYCLB is the gold standard for the band. The poetry was there before, but the topics were sometimes a bit far too grandiose, ie, essentially all of Pop. ATYCLB was a very vulnerable album for the band and I think that's why it was so well accepted by all fans (even to the point where some songs were overplayed). I really want to see Bono go back to drawing upon those human emotions as the source of his lyrics. A good example of that in NLOTH is MoS.
  7. I completely agree about Disappearing Act - it's definitely one of the best things they've done in recent years and the lyrics are fantastic ( though I wonder if the lyrics were brand new or unfinished from the TUF sessions.)

    So maybe Bono can still write poetry if he wants to, but just doesnt put in the effort? Perhaps his standards have dropped since he only has to compete with all the inane, superficial songwriting these days.

    I disagree about Edge, while ATYCLB and HTDAAB were full of his trademark chiming guitar on NLOTH we heard a diverse range of guitar textures and effects. GOYB, NLOTH, Fez- Being Born, Stand Up Comedy, Cedars of Lebanon and White as Snow all have distinctive guitar sounds.
    And the Unknown Caller solo is unquestionably one of his best (if not his best).

    Edge has never been a gunslinger guitarist, he's always been a minimalist so he's not going to burst out in a 2 minute solo every song. But I agree that his solo on Magnificent could be less repetitive (though he did change it up at the end of the 360 tour), as for MoS, his solo goes nowhere but that's because they foolishly only did one take of the song and put that on the album, and Edge is clearly not great at improvising solos.

    And with his 'echoey' guitar the real issue with it is that it's so widely imitated - Coldplay, the Killers, Arcade Fire, Temper Trap, KoL etc. and pretty much every other indie/alternative rock band borrow liberally from Edge.

    No one complains about all the classic rock / garage bands all having the same reliance on distortion and overdrive for their songs and they've been doing that since the 70s.
  8. Originally posted by vanquish:I completely agree about Disappearing Act - it's definitely one of the best things they've done in recent years and the lyrics are fantastic ( though I wonder if the lyrics were brand new or unfinished from the TUF sessions.)

    So maybe Bono can still write poetry if he wants to, but just doesnt put in the effort? Perhaps his standards have dropped since he only has to compete with all the inane, superficial songwriting these days.

    I disagree about Edge, while ATYCLB and HTDAAB were full of his trademark chiming guitar on NLOTH we heard a diverse range of guitar textures and effects. GOYB, NLOTH, Fez- Being Born, Stand Up Comedy, Cedars of Lebanon and White as Snow all have distinctive guitar sounds.
    And the Unknown Caller solo is unquestionably one of his best (if not his best).

    Edge has never been a gunslinger guitarist, he's always been a minimalist so he's not going to burst out in a 2 minute solo every song. But I agree that his solo on Magnificent could be less repetitive (though he did change it up at the end of the 360 tour), as for MoS, his solo goes nowhere but that's because they foolishly only did one take of the song and put that on the album, and Edge is clearly not great at improvising solos.

    And with his 'echoey' guitar the real issue with it is that it's so widely imitated - Coldplay, the Killers, Arcade Fire, Temper Trap, KoL etc. and pretty much every other indie/alternative rock band borrow liberally from Edge.

    No one complains about all the classic rock / garage bands all having the same reliance on distortion and overdrive for their songs and they've been doing that since the 70s.

    NLOTH was all fuzz, much like Elevation, bits of New York, Love and Peace, and so on. Stand Up Comedy is just a riff with some distortion on it, it's cool riff but the song falls HUGELY flat with the lyrics and lack of doing anything musically intriguing. Probably the most interesting part is the part that (supposedly) Dallas played guitar on. White as Snow is straight up acoustic like a ton of songs they've written in the past ten years. I'll give you the others at a minimal value, but I still don't think he's changed up his style that much. And you are right in that a ton of guitarists don't change their style, just listen to an ACDC song from any album in the past 40 years and try to tell someone it doesn't sound similar to any other of their songs (apart from the Bon Scott and Brian Johnson thing). The same goes for many. However, we've always known Edge to be a guitarist that gets "restless", and never likes to get comfortable. U2 as a band has always been like that. I think at this point it's not only (apparently) Adam that's restless with his current tone, it's the fans too (at least I am). To me it's not even that it's imitated, because we all hear Edge when we hear those bands and it's not like they're covering any ground in his terroritory.

    It almost seems like to me that the band hasn't meshed in terms of songwriting or something like that. To me the last few albums (apart from a few songs) sound like pre-written ideas that kind of get pieced together and produced, instead of music written from the ground-up in the loud room, improvised pieces that come from a real location or feeling. It's a lot of neat riffs and echoey guitar, crossed with similar vocal patterns and lyrics that sound like they're trying too hard to be clever at times. That being said, if anyone has a listen to North Star and Every Breaking Wave and tells me that those aren't the best pieces U2 has written in YEARS, we'll have to have fisticuffs over that one, because I think those are some of U2's most beautiful compositions that fans got the luxury of hearing during the tour. I almost wish they hadn't played them because come time to write and record the new album they might already be thinking "the fans have already heard this and we want to do something new, away from 360 and NLOTH". I loved those songs and wished they had evolved rather than fade out.
  9. You are a U2 fan or not, everybody has it is own favorites.

    To me I think U2 has 100 ideas of parts of songs, rifs, intros, outro, middle parts. But no complete songs.

    Listened lately to many Bruce Springsteen cd's and yesterday visited a concert of the Boss.

    Maybe should U2 ask him to "create" songs and produce the album together.

    (don't shoot the messenger just an idea)
  10. Didn't Edge actually try to get rid of the echoey guitar riff once before? I remember an interview the band did regarding the production of ATYCLB and Edge was playing around with new riffs and by chance he found the riff used in Beautiful Day. He played it to Bono and he said something along the lines of "Hey we can't use that! We're supposed to be moving from the past!" But Edge said if it's good, why abandon it, so they kept the echoey guitar riff.
  11. Originally posted by RattleandHum1988:[..]

    NLOTH was all fuzz, much like Elevation, bits of New York, Love and Peace, and so on. Stand Up Comedy is just a riff with some distortion on it, it's cool riff but the song falls HUGELY flat with the lyrics and lack of doing anything musically intriguing. Probably the most interesting part is the part that (supposedly) Dallas played guitar on. White as Snow is straight up acoustic like a ton of songs they've written in the past ten years. I'll give you the others at a minimal value, but I still don't think he's changed up his style that much. And you are right in that a ton of guitarists don't change their style, just listen to an ACDC song from any album in the past 40 years and try to tell someone it doesn't sound similar to any other of their songs (apart from the Bon Scott and Brian Johnson thing). The same goes for many. However, we've always known Edge to be a guitarist that gets "restless", and never likes to get comfortable. U2 as a band has always been like that. I think at this point it's not only (apparently) Adam that's restless with his current tone, it's the fans too (at least I am). To me it's not even that it's imitated, because we all hear Edge when we hear those bands and it's not like they're covering any ground in his terroritory.

    It almost seems like to me that the band hasn't meshed in terms of songwriting or something like that. To me the last few albums (apart from a few songs) sound like pre-written ideas that kind of get pieced together and produced, instead of music written from the ground-up in the loud room, improvised pieces that come from a real location or feeling. It's a lot of neat riffs and echoey guitar, crossed with similar vocal patterns and lyrics that sound like they're trying too hard to be clever at times. That being said, if anyone has a listen to North Star and Every Breaking Wave and tells me that those aren't the best pieces U2 has written in YEARS, we'll have to have fisticuffs over that one, because I think those are some of U2's most beautiful compositions that fans got the luxury of hearing during the tour. I almost wish they hadn't played them because come time to write and record the new album they might already be thinking "the fans have already heard this and we want to do something new, away from 360 and NLOTH". I loved those songs and wished they had evolved rather than fade out.

    That being said, if anyone has a listen to North Star and Every Breaking Wave and tells me that those aren't the best pieces U2 has written in YEARS, we'll have to have fisticuffs over that one



    Well, I'm far too protective of my old age to come to fisticuffs, I'd counter that North Star is at least from 2004, and Wave may be that old as well. Their current versions are from 2010, which is not exactly all that new. It seems the band is starting to rely on a lot of old material. If they really have 3 albums worth of stuff, they should just get on with it, release the best 70-80 minutes of it as the album, and release the rest of is as a deluxe version with the leftovers right now...

    I know most fans are accustomed to an album having a recurring theme and the songs seemlessly blending in to each other, but I just want some good music. I'd rather have an album of good to great songs that don't quite fit together than have a ok album that blends better.

    No matter what they do, I don't like the message from the band so far...Bono saying that there are 150 million U2 albums out there, do we really need a new one? And talking about wanting a hit. Just release some music without all the ridiculous hype.

    NLOTH was a very decent album that did not live up to all the stupid pre-hybe. Eno or Lanois calling it "the greatest moment of my life in the studio" when talking about MOS...ha! MOS is a nice song, but not even in my top 50 U2 songs ever.
  12. "I'd rather have an album of good to great songs that don't
    quite fit together than have a ok album that blends better."

    That's an interesting line, and although it may seem obvious, I'm sure there will be more peopoe than we think that disagree.
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Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.