Bono reviewing U2 albums

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jonnytakeawalk said:


For me, what Bono terms 'unfinished lyrically' I term 'fucking brilliant lyrically.'

I mean all the lyrics off Bomb were supposedly finished and bomb is the worst album lyrically by far imo, whereas the 'unfinished' lyrics of JT and UF, well.......:drool:
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Exactly. Sometimes a lyric can be *too* finished, i.e. its meaning is too clear and thus there is no need to reflect upon it. I prefer the mystery and intrigue of a paint stroke to a clearly defined outline.

We'll scorch the earth
Set fire to the sky
We stoop so low to reach so high
A link is lost
The chain undone
We wait all day
For night to come
And it comes
Like a hunter child

:drool:
 
blueyedpoet said:

- about HTDAAB, "It's the best collection of songs we've put together - there's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."
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Wow, I couldn't agree more.

I actually agree with most of Bono's assessments (album-wise anyway)...I think he overrates ATYCLB slightly and underrates...Pop, what else? :p but his comments on Mofo are, I think, indicative that they will play it. at least, I hope so...is it too late in the game to switch up the encore and make it, say, Mofo/Disco/The Fly? or Mofo/Disco/Dirty Day... :drool: or, hey, how about ELECTRICAL STORM? if he thinks it's one of U2's best songs ever (which. um. :huh: i love ES, but it's probably not even in my top 50, and definitely not in my top 25. but OKAY BONO!!), why aren't they playing it live? Do the other three hate it or something?

I do think U2 are going to try and go for a more complete album feel next time 'round. Or maybe try to find the magic in the guitar sound they were looking for when they were making HTDAAB. Hell, maybe both.

I do love the lyric "swimming in the sound"
 
Well fans of Stay have got to feel pretty vindicated at this point. But I'm still wondering why it never showed up on the POP tour, and still hasn't been given the full band treatment it deserves.

You can't expect someone to give their opinion like that and not be contradictory to some extent, especially when talking about their own work.

There was an interview before The Bomb came out, I think from an Australian magazine, where he said that ATYCLB was a case of the sum of the parts being better than the whole. Now it's possible that in the year since its release he's come to view HTDAAB the same way.

Is he right? That's a tough call. There's no disputing that ATYCLB is more of a "singles" or jukebox album. And although some wouldn't agree, many feel that as an ALBUM it doesn't have enough weight. While HTDAAB feels more dense and thematic, I might have to agree with Bono because it doesn't have anywhere near the power of JT and AB. It doesn't take you on that same kind of a journey.

Unfortunately, just because Bono recognizes the shortcoming doesn't mean he can do something about it. Here's a key part of the interview:

"The idea was: What is the essense of our band? If you distill it, what do we have to contribute? For ten years, we'd been doing exactly the opposite. We'd been thinking, "What is it we don't have?" and going after it. Now, in order to keep it fresh, we say, "What is it we do have?" and let's go after that. We've done that for two albums."

It shouldn't take a great leap of logic for Bono to realize that "doing what they do best" and simply writing great songs isn't going to lead them to their next true masterpiece. If it pisses him off so much then he needs to think about his own feelings toward their recent work, or about exchanges with tough critics like Greg Kot who bravely challenged the new material to Bono's face.

Stuff like One Step Closer is, no pun intended, a step in the right direction. It's not a great "song", but it takes you down a side road for a bit, and makes HTDAAB more of a journey. Music like that and Mercy are what's going to lead this band to what may be the final and most satisfying stage of their entire careers, when they can finally blend who they are with what they imagine they could be.
 
namkcuR said:
To see Bono himself admitting that 'the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts' on Bomb and that JT and AB are more sonically sophisticated, elates me.
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I agree 100%...i actually think ive been saying this since the album came out, and i was just bashed for being a Hut-bomb hater. :scratch: :shrug:

:wink:
 
I highly doubt they'll ever play electical storm live, considering how much stress it must put on Bono's voice. It's almost as high as Red Hill Mining Town at some points.
 
Thanks for sharing this.

Stay, one of my favourite songs, I'm glad to read that :wink: But Vertigo and Electrical Storm as two of their best songs? :eyebrow: I also liked the reference to "Your Blue Room" :drool:

Oh, and I agree 100% with his opinion about HTDAAB. Same for me.
 
I'm glad he said that about HTDAAB. He's made one other comment (in his book) defending the concept of the 'album' in this day and age, but has made numerous other comments about downloading and cherry picking songs and albums of singles etc that made me worry that U2 had abandoned great albums for collections of great songs. One of the major things that left me dry on The Bomb was the feel of it being a compilation album. It's good news to hear that Bono recognises it as a shortcoming as well. Here's to a coherent, complete album next time around...
 
lazarus said:
It shouldn't take a great leap of logic for Bono to realize that "doing what they do best" and simply writing great songs isn't going to lead them to their next true masterpiece. If it pisses him off so much then he needs to think about his own feelings toward their recent work, or about exchanges with tough critics like Greg Kot who bravely challenged the new material to Bono's face.

Stuff like One Step Closer is, no pun intended, a step in the right direction. It's not a great "song", but it takes you down a side road for a bit, and makes HTDAAB more of a journey. Music like that and Mercy are what's going to lead this band to what may be the final and most satisfying stage of their entire careers, when they can finally blend who they are with what they imagine they could be. [/B]
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Amen. :|
 
lazarus said:
Well fans of Stay have got to feel pretty vindicated at this point. But I'm still wondering why it never showed up on the POP tour, and still hasn't been given the full band treatment it deserves.

You can't expect someone to give their opinion like that and not be contradictory to some extent, especially when talking about their own work.

There was an interview before The Bomb came out, I think from an Australian magazine, where he said that ATYCLB was a case of the sum of the parts being better than the whole. Now it's possible that in the year since its release he's come to view HTDAAB the same way.

Is he right? That's a tough call. There's no disputing that ATYCLB is more of a "singles" or jukebox album. And although some wouldn't agree, many feel that as an ALBUM it doesn't have enough weight. While HTDAAB feels more dense and thematic, I might have to agree with Bono because it doesn't have anywhere near the power of JT and AB. It doesn't take you on that same kind of a journey.

Unfortunately, just because Bono recognizes the shortcoming doesn't mean he can do something about it. Here's a key part of the interview:

"The idea was: What is the essense of our band? If you distill it, what do we have to contribute? For ten years, we'd been doing exactly the opposite. We'd been thinking, "What is it we don't have?" and going after it. Now, in order to keep it fresh, we say, "What is it we do have?" and let's go after that. We've done that for two albums."

It shouldn't take a great leap of logic for Bono to realize that "doing what they do best" and simply writing great songs isn't going to lead them to their next true masterpiece. If it pisses him off so much then he needs to think about his own feelings toward their recent work, or about exchanges with tough critics like Greg Kot who bravely challenged the new material to Bono's face.

Stuff like One Step Closer is, no pun intended, a step in the right direction. It's not a great "song", but it takes you down a side road for a bit, and makes HTDAAB more of a journey. Music like that and Mercy are what's going to lead this band to what may be the final and most satisfying stage of their entire careers, when they can finally blend who they are with what they imagine they could be.
Click to expand...

Try fans of last two albums for vindication too.

I think Bomb is thematic and cohesive as a whole, more than ATYCLB, there's the whole "journey from fear to faith" and like someone posted when the downloads came, it feels like you're reading Bono's diary.

The question is, can they do an album as strong as JT and AB at this point? I don't think so. And: is it necessary to have a "journey" for a good album? I don't think so.

"Tough critics" aka a critic heavily biased towards 90's U2 were in the minority on Vertigo tour. Loved Bono's and Larry's answers to Kot and DeRogatis.
 
U2girl said:


is it necessary to have a "journey" for a good album? I don't think so.

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I agree, how many 'journeys' are there, for example, on Beatles albums.

Revolver - none
Sgt Pepper - The concept album that never was, very clever that.
The White Album - certainly not.
Abbey Road - Probably the best example of a 'songs' based album.
 
Well considering The Beatles practically invented the conceptual "album" with Sgt. Pepper's, Revolver isn't going to bear those signs. I think you're taking my word "journey" too literally. But there's no doubt that the song structure on Peppers is meant to be the beginning, middle, and end of something. While a song like Good Morning might have nothing to do with Lovely Rita, the song selection is not arbitrary.

And the White Album, despite having the band's best material along with Revolver, is a mish mash. It really depends on what you mean by "that's a great album". Does it mean it has great songs on it? Or that the complete package has a certain importance to it? Song for song Revolver is a better listen than Sgt. Pepper's, but the latter stands out more as a complete piece. It's the reason Bono spoke in terms of the whole not being better than the sum of the parts.

If you can't tell the difference between the musical arc of JT, AB, or even UF compared to the last two, maybe you're young or ADD or something. Because the first three have a breadth and epic quality that is not found on the latter. Having said this, I love the new album and find that it gets closer to that place we're talking to. The understaded One Step Closer into the showstopping OOTS into an elated Yahweh could be the conclusion to a true "album" that Bono's aiming for, but I don't know if the beginning and the middle are written or arranged well enough to those ends.

I'd also like to add one thing that I feel vindicated about: From the day I heard of ATYCLB's original track order, I put down the release version and haven't listened to it since, preferring my own altered copy. The idea that Bono feels something's not right there was nice to read.
 
lazarus said:
Well considering The Beatles practically invented the conceptual "album" with Sgt. Pepper's, Revolver isn't going to bear those signs. I think you're taking my word "journey" too literally. But there's no doubt that the song structure on Peppers is meant to be the beginning, middle, and end of something. While a song like Good Morning might have nothing to do with Lovely Rita, the song selection is not arbitrary.

And the White Album, despite having the band's best material along with Revolver, is a mish mash. It really depends on what you mean by "that's a great album". Does it mean it has great songs on it? Or that the complete package has a certain importance to it? Song for song Revolver is a better listen than Sgt. Pepper's, but the latter stands out more as a complete piece. It's the reason Bono spoke in terms of the whole not being better than the sum of the parts.

If you can't tell the difference between the musical arc of JT, AB, or even UF compared to the last two, maybe you're young or ADD or something. Because the first three have a breadth and epic quality that is not found on the latter. Having said this, I love the new album and find that it gets closer to that place we're talking to. The understaded One Step Closer into the showstopping OOTS into an elated Yahweh could be the conclusion to a true "album" that Bono's aiming for, but I don't know if the beginning and the middle are written or arranged well enough to those ends.

I'd also like to add one thing that I feel vindicated about: From the day I heard of ATYCLB's original track order, I put down the release version and haven't listened to it since, preferring my own altered copy. The idea that Bono feels something's not right there was nice to read.
Click to expand...

Care to share you altered ATYCLB tracklist?
 
JT, AB, and UF have that "sonic architecture" holding them up, they bring you physically to a place, just like the band has said in the past, and this is very true, I can feel it. HTDAAB, again, great collection of songs, but not at all cohesive sonically. Perhaps some don't mind that this is lacking, but for me, that is what MAKES a U2 album complete. :drool:
 
lazarus said:
Well considering The Beatles practically invented the conceptual "album" with Sgt. Pepper's, Revolver isn't going to bear those signs. I think you're taking my word "journey" too literally. But there's no doubt that the song structure on Peppers is meant to be the beginning, middle, and end of something. While a song like Good Morning might have nothing to do with Lovely Rita, the song selection is not arbitrary.
Click to expand...

That's interesting because John Lennon certainly didn't agree with you. :hmm:

Just out of interest, in your opinion, what was the musical concept of Sgt Pepper? What exactly links all those songs together?
 
jonnytakeawalk said:



For me, what Bono terms 'unfinished lyrically' I term 'fucking brilliant lyrically.'

I mean all the lyrics off Bomb were supposedly finished and bomb is the worst album lyrically by far imo, whereas the 'unfinished' lyrics of JT and UF, well.......:drool:
Click to expand...

I'm with you on this one...how can Bono say that the lyrics on JT are unfinished? It is arguably(I say arguably because, well, it depends on a person's taste)their best album ever! And he thinks that HTDAAB is finished? Come on, let's be serious here...I'm not a Bomb basher, I actually like the album, but to say that the lyrics are finished is just crazy talk from Bono.
 
roy said:


That's interesting because John Lennon certainly didn't agree with you. :hmm:

Just out of interest, in your opinion, what was the musical concept of Sgt Pepper? What exactly links all those songs together?
Click to expand...

I'm not saying it was a concept album like The Walll or Tommy. I'm just saying that McCartney conceived the thing as a complete package. Introducing the band at the beginning, the reprise, the coda of A Day in the Life. Before then it just seemed like songs were thrown onto albums with no thought to a running order. With Peppers that changed.

Also, the songs do all SOUND like they're from the same sessions. And that goes back to what kakvox said more succinctly than I was able to--sonic architechture. Abbey Road had it. Let it be had it in its stripped-down way. Those albums do not sound like each other. Conversely, you get the feeling you could make many different albums from the songs on the last two U2 albums. They're rather interchangeable, even if the more recent stuff seems to have a bit more bite. Those two albums DO NOT have a noticeable "sound" to them, whereas most of U2's other albums do, with the exception of Rattle & Hum, War, and maybe October.
 
namkcuR said:


Care to share you altered ATYCLB tracklist?
Click to expand...

Supposedly it was changed at the last minute. If I'm not mistaken, some computer media programs pulled up this original tracklisting:

1. Beautiful Day
2. Elevation
3. Walk On
4. Stuck in a Moment
5. Peace on Earth
6. Kite
7. New York
8. In a Little While
9. Wild Honey
10. When I Look at the World
11. Grace

a couple things to point out: going from BD to Stuck to Elevation is idiotic--you don't sandwich something lightweight like Elevation between two serious tracks like Stuck and Walk On. If I'm not mistaken Bono & Edge have an ongoing argument about putting a ballad as the second track.

There's also some nice thematic stuff going on this way--the death of a friend in Stuck to the death of children in a community in Peace on Earth to Bono talking to his own children in Kite. Which leads into the "midlife crisis" of New York. NY adds some kick in to the middle (aka start of "side 2") of the album, and by putting WILATW as the penultimate song, it gives the song a prominence it loses on the release version. That second to last song is always better when it's a summation of an album's theme, or something very important. NY doesn't have that weight, but WILATW, like Please and Acrobat before it, does.
 
lazarus said:


I'm not saying it was a concept album like The Walll or Tommy. I'm just saying that McCartney conceived the thing as a complete package. Introducing the band at the beginning, the reprise, the coda of A Day in the Life. Before then it just seemed like songs were thrown onto albums with no thought to a running order. With Peppers that changed.
Click to expand...

"In later years John commented that, although ‘Sgt Pepper’ is referred to as the first concept album, "it doesn’t go anywhere." He pointed out that his contributions to the album have absolutely nothing to do with the idea of Sgt Pepper and his band. "It works", John said, "because we said it worked." He went on to say that the album was not put together as a concept album. The idea of presenting the album as a ‘concept’ was an after-thought. Apart from the intro and reprise, according to John, "every other song could have been on any other album."

Sgt Pepper is all smoke and mirrors.
 
I agree with the earlier post on an album not needing to be a "journey" to be a good album. This is all my opinion though, and I'm sure everyone listens to an album their own way.

I always find that I listen to a new album like I would listen to a Greatest Hits CD. I listen to each song individually like they aren't connected to the previous or next one. This way, I have found, lets me enjoy the music alot more. (once again, I realize this may not work for others) I can listen to Vertigo, LAPOE, and ABOY if I want a little more rocking vibe a certain day, or go to Sometimes and Original if I wan't more slow beautiful music. I don't need a "mood" to my albums, and that's why I love HTDAAB so much more than ATYCLB. Because I love the SONGS more. The album is so all over the place that it can't settle on a mood. They really are an amazing collection of songs. I agree with Bono on that point.

When I count up my favorite songs that I like to listen to on each U2 album I find alot of them end up having about 7-8 with maybe like 3 or 4 songs I can live without. On HTDAAB though, I have 10 that I love! More than any of their other albums. I think alot of the flack that the last two albums get on these forums are because they're not 90's geared. They play it "safe" and don't follow the whole techno-funk devil-horn-wearing glow-stick-waving persona that U2 wanted to run towards in that decade, climaxing in Pop. And seeing as ALOT of people seem to worhsip at the foot of that album here, it's understandable that the two most recent releases are badmouthed the way they are. I don't think its fair though. You can't expect a middle-aged man to come out and sing a song called "Mofo" and prance around in a muscle costume. It just isn't U2 anymore. At least not to me.

Anyway, I felt like ranting and agreeing with Bono's opinions on their albums. I'll give someone else a turn now. lol.
 
You also have to remember that Sgt Peppers was Beatles response to being blown away by the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" album.

So if there was a concept to Sgt Peppers it was just to make an album that was inspired by Pet Sounds.
 
blueyedpoet said:

"'Stay' is perhaps the greatest U2 song.
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True. Perhaps.

blueyedpoet said:
- he said that Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are more sonically sophisticated but ATYCLB and HTDAAB have better songs
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:tsk:

blueyedpoet said:
"It's the best collection of songs we've put together - there's no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."
Click to expand...

Best collection of songs... my bottocks.
 
roy said:


"In later years John commented that, although ‘Sgt Pepper’ is referred to as the first concept album, "it doesn’t go anywhere." He pointed out that his contributions to the album have absolutely nothing to do with the idea of Sgt Pepper and his band. "It works", John said, "because we said it worked." He went on to say that the album was not put together as a concept album. The idea of presenting the album as a ‘concept’ was an after-thought. Apart from the intro and reprise, according to John, "every other song could have been on any other album."

Sgt Pepper is all smoke and mirrors.
Click to expand...

In his later years Lennon trashed a lot of stuff The Beatles did, including much of his own work, which you can find in the infamous Playboy interview from 1980 if I'm not mistaken. But just because John says the songs could be from any album doesn't make it so. If we're not taking anything Bono says as law, why extend the same courtesy to Lennon?

Say what you want, but those Sgt Pepper songs DO have a similar sound. Go find me a McCartney quote saying the tracking was arbitrary and then we'll talk.
 
lazarus said:

And the White Album, despite having the band's best material along with Revolver, is a mish mash.
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Naaaah. I wouldn't say that. For me, it's their greatest album, because it shows us the Beatles at work. You hear them solo, you hear them together - Revolution beats the hell out of any full-band song they've ever made, so does Helter Skelter and Happiness Is A Warm Gun. I'm So Tired and Cry Baby Cry are two of the best John songs ever. I'm So Tired could be his greatest song ever released on an album actually (Don't Let Me Down wasn't).

Blackbird - genius. I mean, I don't like Paul all that much, but that is a great song, and so is Helter Skelter.

George rocks on this album. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is surely his greatest song from the Beatles period.

There are so many others; Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Glass Onion, Dear Prudence (this one is really really outstanding actually), Birthday, Mother Nature's Son.... The list is endless (ok, it only has 30 songs, but you know what I mean).

And the great thing about Honey Pie, Wild Honey Pie, I Will and The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill and (sigh) Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da is that it's just the Beatles experimenting. It feels great, even if they're crap, because that's the sound of the album. The Beatles experimenting, making music. For that, it feels like a very whole album.

I forgot to mention Sexy Sadie by the way. That song rocks.

That song really rocks.
 
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