I was avoiding this thread, both when it started and this latest revival, but I am bored, so now I'm jumping in with all four hooves....
RE: Bono's "extracurricular activities" are either interfering with or too heavily influencing his songwriting...
Well, maybe you folks just never noticed that Bono has written about social issues since day one. The early eighties albums are slap FULL of social issues and were written LONG before Bono had ANY extracurricular activities. My God, have you never listened to "A Day Without Me", "Electric Co.", "New Year's Day" or "Sunday Fucking Bloody Sunday"????? And those are just a few of the more well-known tracks! Spin forward to JT, and "Red Hill Ming Town" and "Bullet the Blue Sky" immediately come to mind - not to mention "Mothers of the Disappeared." Sure, they'd done Live Aid by then, but was Bono out politicking and glad-handing and all that rot back then? Hmmmm..... was anyone really LISTENING? Even back then there were complaints from critics and fans alike that Bono's 'high-mindedness' was detracting from U2's popularity. Just how in tarnation did you become a fan in the first place?
RE: U2 has passed their glory days, etc...
You know, I really hate it when a fan brags they've loved the band for 18 billion years and that anyone who hasn't been a fan that long doesn't know what they're talking about, so don't take this in that way. I have been a fan for nearly 30 years, and I remember just being happy that their songs made it through all the slush on the radio just to get a little airplay. I remember when JT came out and suddenly folks would stop me in the halls between classes saying something to the effect like "Oh, NOW I know who you're talking about!" I remember how the JT catapult turned into the AB rocketship and I was completely astounded at how those folks, who previously were thriving on crappy bubblegum music, suddenly embraced AB like it it was a debut album from some wunderkind boy-band.
And ever since, U2 has been criticized for not repeating that rise to glory. Huh?? The only way they they could do that is to fade away completely and re-emerge in a generation that has barely heard of them. That's just not going to happen - they are too well-known. And the reason they are so well known is that they continue to put out quality music that keeps them in the public's ear. People act like U2 use some kind of strong-arm tactics to get their songs on the radio anymore, but you and I both know that's bullshit. Radio stations play what they think the public wants to hear to keep their listeners tuning into to their channel.
I suppose my point is that I'm just happy that U2 still make it through all the slush on the radio to get a little airplay. If so-called artists like Whitesnake, Kiss, and nowadays Nickelback and Kid Rock are so hugely popular with their one-trick ponies, at least all is not lost when a little U2 can still be injected into the airwaves now and then.
RE: Bono's lyrics lately are too dark or too obscure...
I gotta refer back to my question above: just how did you become a fan in the first place? I mean, really? In the hundreds of songs U2 has put out, only a small handful don't contain some element of negativity, melancholy, regret, anger, etc. The vast majority of the lyrics he writes come from the darker side of the human soul. Even songs which are hopeful, happy or just plain bubbly have references which imply such happiness and hopefulness are precious and hard to come by and must be fought for else they disappear.
And as far as being obscure, well, all I can say from my perspective as a poet is that trying to describe a concept or a feeling in plain ordinary English is difficult at best. Using allegories to get a concept across is tricky. If the reader (or in this case, listener) doesn't follow your train of thought, you can lose them with just one or two lines. Every person's perspective on the world is shaped by their past experiences. And everyone's past experience is different from everyone else's. I suppose what I'm saying is that his lyrics make sense to him because he's writing them from where he's coming from. You don't always know the starting point of his train of thought, so it's sometimes hard to see where the train is going. It's going to happen sometimes... or would you rather he write the same pap that the majority of so-called songwriters put out these days? Easily digestible garbage?
RE: General thoughts on Bono's lyric writing...
In my lifetime, I've written maybe a couple of hundred poems, out of which maybe 20 I believe are truly artistic enough to be called 'real' poems. Sometimes a really great line or two is buried in a pile of shit, but you keep the pile of shit because you haven't found any other way to frame those really great lines. Sometimes you start writing with a clear idea in your head of where you want to go, but the words which fall into place go in a different direction entirely. Making a real work of art is part genius, but also part luck. You rarely know which is which.
Bono has had to write lyrics to what, over 400 songs? I just can't imagine that kind of pressure. And to have all those words permanently recorded for people to chew over again and again and again, with no way of taking them back? Folks buy the album (we hope) and listen to the songs and that's the first impression they get of the lyrics. And that impression stays because Bono can't go back and erase a word or a line if he thinks of something better later on. What's done is done.
There are a great many well-known poets of the past and present. Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, egads, lemme think, I'm brain-dead right now. At any rate, if you go through and read some of these celebrated poets' entire life's work, you come to realize that not one of them has written more than a handful of masterpieces and the rest may be pleasant yes, but entirely forgettable. It's like that with every writer. It's also like that with every music artist.
I'm not saying that Bono has written ANY great masterpieces, but just think of how many U2 songs you know by heart, how many of them you sing just for the fun of feeling the words roll out of your mouth. I'm not placing Bono on any kind of pedestal, not a chance, just trying to say that he has done better than most people could have done in his situation. If he has a few duds, he has a few duds. Let it slide and qwitcher-bitchin'.
goat
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just only means that you disagree about lyrics.
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