I HAVE NO BEEF WITH CATCHY/ACCESSIBLE/MEMORABLE POP. And I agree, done right, it's fantastic. I think U2 have hit the mark a couple of times, eg Beautiful Day, but I think more often than not, they've left the depth outside somewhere. I know it's all personal opinion, but the vast majority of these songs just don't hit me anywhere below the surface. A song like Vertigo satisfies on a few levels - it's good fun in the car when you're flying up the coast for a weekend away with friends, it's the sort of short catchy burst that radio loves, and it does go over brilliantly live. But that's all surface - once the song finishes, nothing has stuck to me. It doesn't do that dual thing that top % of great pop has, and that great U2 songs have.
'Swimming in the shallows' - I was also just referring to the songs being simplistic. Clever pop is the most difficult music to write, every single songwriter will tell you that, but song after song of it from U2 and you really start longing for something more from them. U2 in the 00's has no room for songs that have a subtlety to them, or do what they need to do to tell the story. Put the spirit and soul of the song as the highest priority above the hook and catchy riff. Have a look at what along with Beautiful Day is U2's greatest pop hit/success - With or Without You. Listen to the way the song builds, where and when it takes a change in structure or size, and then once you get there to where the climax should be, it just humbly backs out of the room. How do you think With or Without You would have been - in structure and sound - if it were written for the Bomb in 2004? How beautiful do you think songs like Sometimes and Original of the Species could have been if they were given the same space and room as With or Without You?
It's fine to like or love 00's pop-song era U2. It is - of course - fine to completely disagree with me on whether or not those songs have the same level of depth to them as their 80's and 90's output. But do you really want every song on every album to be a catchy hook laden 3 minute pop wonder? You don't long for the return of that other type of U2 song? I'd wager that if you listed your top 20 U2 tracks of all time, at least half of them would never stand a chance of making a Bomb-like albums tracklist. Never. Not because of the sound or theme, or because they may be 'experimental' or whatever, but because of the structure and depth to them. Whether the song was Lemon or Bad, Velvet Dress or Running to Stand Still - the sound, theme and level of 'experimentation' would stay the same, but the structure would dramatically change. They would never get on there as they currently are.
SO - that's my point. That's all it is. If U2 want U2 albums to continue to be this type of thing now, then that's fine, it would just be a real shame if there's no second avenue there for the sort of music U2 do so fucking well. Where Edge is given room to tell some of the story, not just play guitar god prop pumpin' out the riffs. Where Bono's lyrics are something that open up to you over time, perhaps years later when you find yourself in a very specific place, not split seconds as some kind of general anthem for some kind of fairly common day to day mood. Simplistic everyman general Bono lyrics backed by simplistic big Edge riffs are fine, please don't zero in on that - I'm not saying it's bad (nor was I ever suggesting that Bono was writing for teenagers) - it's just that albums like the Bomb have no room for anything else, and that's what this news has got me all excited over. The other U2. Not the 80s one or the 90s one as opposed to the 00s one, just the other one.
