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  2. MANhattan is probably the worst pun in the history of puns...
  3. Originally posted by NLOTH_Victor:[..]

    True fact: it´s hard to beat "I´ll Go Crazy If I Don´t Go Crazy Tonight"...

    But on the other hand, No Line On The Horizon, Breathe, Moment of Surrender and White As Snow are nice titles, in my opinion.

    City Of Blinding Lights, Sometimes You Can´t Make It On Your Own, Kite, Window in The Skies, Mercy and When You Look At The World are other song names I like.

    Skyline is a name I like.

    I don´t like it when it seems like a 15 year old teenager would write a song with titles like "Earth 2030" thinking about peace on earth in the future or space invasion. Maybe I´m just too picky or maybe I´m too harsh... Lol... I like when they get out of the obvious!


    Though these song titles may or may not be true, they sure are a breakaway from the very long gated U2 songs from the 2000s -- Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of, Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, God Put A Smile Upon Your Face -- and even album names -- All That You Can't Leave Behind, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, No Line On The Horizon -- I mean just look at those titles. They're LONG. This isn't to say that they're horrible by any means, I happen to think they're beautiful, poetic and gives an epic quality to what the respective songs will be about. But beautiful, poetic and epic LONG song titles can only take you so far 'til they get super annoying to say or pronounce as a hit song. Plus they really turn off a crowd after a while.

    Which is why I'm glad they're at least experimenting and shaking things up as far as titles are concerned. I mean look at these: Every Breaking Wave, Black Pictures, Fresh and Furious, Earth 2030 (which sounds epic as a title), even the pending album name Manhattan spells something striking and new. The only title gripe I have is Skyline, cause I can't help but feel that it sounds too much like "Skyfall" (speaking of which, I saw in a tweet posted here not too long ago that the band even invited Adele to their album listening party, which as an Adele fan myself makes me very excited -- maybe a song collab? ). Not the best song titles by far but for an aging band like U2, it's necessary for a reinvention and change, which at least they're doing and not staying stagnant.

  4. Maybe it's just a placeholder for actually calling it Man. If they announced it was called Man I think it'd be plainly obvious that it was their last album.

    Who knows though. I still think if that's their plan they should drop the hattan.
  5. Why on earth would this be their last.

  6. Adam's starting a family, Larry might be starting to want to act more after his movie, Bono and Edge have all their shit going on, and the band knows NLOTH was crap. Maybe they're realizing it's better to burn out than to fade away?

    I'm basing this off of the speculation that the album will be called "MANhattan" though.
  7. NLOTH wasn't crap. The reviews were overall (very) positive, it didn't sell bad and most of the fans liked it. It only didn't work that well live as other albums did.
  8. Originally posted by dieder:NLOTH wasn't crap. The reviews were overall (very) positive, it didn't sell bad and most of the fans liked it. It only didn't work that well live as other albums did.

    ... and didn't sell as much, didn't have big singles... but I (seriously) agree: a good album overall

  9. True, but it is also by far their least accessible record of the 00's. Somewhere they didn't get the marketing thing right. Beautiful Day had great timing with the 2000 Olympics, Vertigo had the iPod, GOYB/Magnificent didn't really had such
  10. Great music doesn't really need timing on its side to shine, but it definitely helps. I'm surprised you say most U2 fans like NLOTH, that's not what I've experienced and from what I've seen in most circles it's rarely talked about unless people are asking "how do you feel about it now?"
  11. Originally posted by RattleandHum1988:Great music doesn't really need timing on its side to shine, but it definitely helps. I'm surprised you say most U2 fans like NLOTH, that's not what I've experienced and from what I've seen in most circles it's rarely talked about unless people are asking "how do you feel about it now?"

    NLOTH ISN'T a bad album by any means... at least with the passage of time the album has in most parts at least gain an ok favor with most of the U2 fandom by now. But back then it wasn't received well for a number of reasons, cheif among them the bands desire to make an "album" in the musical format of conceptual art rock, via Fez, Morocco and present themselves as experimenting again. From what I saw and read pre-album release, the band, mainly Bono, did a number of comments and praises in the press of how the album is "experimental", "different", and a "grand reinvention" for them. So naturally because of said words in the press, hardcore fans of their 90s work, and even some of their mainstream fans, saw that as the coming of Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop Part 2 and expected "Zoo Station", "Zooropa" and "Discotheque" like songs with some Moroccan flare added to be present on No Line. And if I read correctly, Brian Eno said that at one point during the Moroccan sessions that they invited some locals to play pure Sufi music to add a bit of said flare but afterwards came out as insincere as the band relied more on songs they could play live as well as sell radio singles, which conflicted with the pure Sufi nature of the local guest musicians. So they scaled back the Sufi-ness and ended up with the band themselves playing Sufi melodies and structures but grounded by the 4 piece rock band. And even to the general record buying public, it didn't do as well, especially during the rapid music industry change to catchy, bombastic euro electro of 2009 and the meditative NLOTH, reduced to the 4 band rock format stood IN CONTRADICTION with the changing music scene and due to its mellowness, as far as the more pure U2 fans they did fail to ganar a big hit, not to mention met individual expectations of Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop Part 2. Heck, with all the talk of "different" and "reinvention" being tossed about, even I had gigantic hopes of NLOTH meeting said expectations at first listen but even then initially it didn't strike me as different and I was left disappointed a bit.

    Basically, U2 PROMISED an experimental record -- the DEconstruciton of the rock band format in the vein of Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop, which had they kept the Sufi arrangements maybe, just MAYBE might've had an experimental but still accessible record, But not only did they kept the rock band format which they had since ATYCLB and NOT included the Sufi music, they even picked the clunky GOYB as the first single, with the intentions that because it "sounds" like a more radiofied version of all the albums from the 90s, that it will shock people and arouse a response from the public. It did shock people and arouse a response -- but like dieder said -- GOYB didn't have the great and smart marketing tool to accompany it, like the iPod thing with Vertigo. Or at least it didn't work as well as hoped, they did strike that deal with Blackberry but that didn't work out as well either.

    But with time's passage, the album now stands to me as thier "Linkin Park - Minutes To Midnight" phase, where like that album, you're trying to find different ways to change your sound and use different methods of achieving that sound -- basically the experimental record. Nowadays when I listen to it, in comparison to the first time I heard it and thought it was crap, I actually find myself enjoying it fairly well. I just don't play it as much as I would Joshua Tree or Achtung or even ATYCLB. And in relation with the upcoming "MANhatten", I firmly believe that will be thier "A Thousand Suns", where experimentation and ambition is finally achieved.
  12. Good points all around, but I still can't listen to it, and it's not because I'm still wishing it was experimental, it has it's ups (Being Born) and it's downs (almost everything else) and I just never pick it when I feel like spinning some U2.
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