onyourkneesboy
The Fly
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2004
- Messages
- 244
Because:
From Boy onto The Joshua Tree, they built their songs from their own limitation as a band. (These were also Brian Eno’s words! And I think he was right.)
Back in those days the songs major backbones and structure were: passion, eagerness, sound, drive, originality, chord-sequences that draw up unexpected emotion, (or no chords at all, more (bass)guitar-riffs and notes that fall together). They were not able to write songs that have to mainly float on thought up compositions. And I thank God for that!
Because of that quality we got War, Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, instead of: Total Eclipse Of The Heart, November Rain (Guns and Roses), I Would Do Anything For Love (Meatloaf), Everything I Do I Do It For You (Brian Adams), Angels (Robbie Williams), and other cheesy compositions…
U2 back then was like the A-Team: locked up in a wooden shed with only a few shovels, a broom and a hammer, and half an hour later they fly out with a Apache-helicopter!
That might be the problem that I have with several spots on the last 2 albums: U2 looking for how to create a good composition! Because they are good now and know how to write a song. They have access to the best technology, producers, money, so there’s hardly anything to strive for. (Relevancy maybe…)
Don’t get me wrong: I’m absolutely NOT drawing a parallel between U2’s songs and those whiny, over-the-top emotional puke-songs that I mentioned earlier!!
But the way they work and write songs tends to shift in that direction. That’s why a lot of fans/people find U2 too mediocre nowadays. Strange thing is when they sound at their best (original) nowadays, the song is a drop out or something and not on the official U2 album! Like: Stateless, Always Forever Now, Electrical Storm, Falling At Your Feet, Levitate, Smile, Mercy, …
80% of the songs on the latest 2 albums are all written to please the big crowd (including the “classic” U2-fan) IMO. Written by composition and to immediately crab the attention of the big crowd: City Of Blinding Lights (cheesy and a U2-caricature), Sometimes You Can’t…, Vertigo, Stuck In A Moment, Elevation, All Because Of You,… good songs in themselves but too mainstream and in-your-face for U2 standards. Composed to speak to as much people as they possibly can.
By the release of these two latest albums the big crowd was expecting and hoping for these songs and got them!
During UF, JT, AB, Zooropa, AND Pop, we got everything we DIDN’T expect and they smashed us with it! Man, what a songs! As a fan you got tickled to COME UP TO THEM. Nowadays they dropped that and COME DOWN TO US! Maybe in they’re fear they might not stay relevant. That’s were that “U2-specialness/otherness” gets lost IMO.
Now is the time for U2 to “dream it all up again”. Even more than in the R&H days!
If they want to stay relevant and renew themselves, they have to completely alienate themselves from the big crowd by sounding in a way we never heard them before. Not sounding the exactly the same as in AB, Zooropa or Pop, but with the same smashing effect when you first hear the new songs. I remember when I first heard Until The End Of The World, The Fly, Streets, God’s Country, Exit, Ultraviolet, Lemon, Zooropa, Mofo, Gone…
Or if that is not an option: sound mystical, mysterious and poetic again. Like in: Stay, In A Lifetime, Walk To The Water, The Unforgettable Fire, Acrobat, Love Is Blindness… I think there’s a real lack of it, and need for it in music nowadays.
Anyway, like some other member here stated: maybe you can’t expect “out-of-this-world-tunes” with great depth, multi-dimensional atmospheres, poetic mysterious quality, when you have been living a glossy glamorous life for years now in a large French sunny beach house. Zipping expensive wine, wearing over-the-top Prada’s, getting fat on foie grass (French delicatesse), partying with super-models and Prince Albert of Monaco, and driving around in fast Austin Martin’s, when your not on your yacht.
Back in the 80’s U2 (mainly Bono) was against all this glamorous exposure. For example: U2 wouldn’t even spit on a band like Duran Duran! (Who are back better than ever btw, and top-notch!)
I’m curious: what would the Bono, of say UF/JT-era, think of the Bono of the 2000’s? Anyway: Simon LeBon (Duran Duran) could take lessons from the ‘nowadays-Bono’ in being glossy and decadent!
This is NOT a bashing thread, and I really think they’ve earned these luxury’s but it doesn’t seems to be doing the music any good! I want the “good”, sincere U2 back who dies trying to make a killer album again! Put everyone on the wrong leg!
From Boy onto The Joshua Tree, they built their songs from their own limitation as a band. (These were also Brian Eno’s words! And I think he was right.)
Back in those days the songs major backbones and structure were: passion, eagerness, sound, drive, originality, chord-sequences that draw up unexpected emotion, (or no chords at all, more (bass)guitar-riffs and notes that fall together). They were not able to write songs that have to mainly float on thought up compositions. And I thank God for that!
Because of that quality we got War, Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, instead of: Total Eclipse Of The Heart, November Rain (Guns and Roses), I Would Do Anything For Love (Meatloaf), Everything I Do I Do It For You (Brian Adams), Angels (Robbie Williams), and other cheesy compositions…
U2 back then was like the A-Team: locked up in a wooden shed with only a few shovels, a broom and a hammer, and half an hour later they fly out with a Apache-helicopter!
That might be the problem that I have with several spots on the last 2 albums: U2 looking for how to create a good composition! Because they are good now and know how to write a song. They have access to the best technology, producers, money, so there’s hardly anything to strive for. (Relevancy maybe…)
Don’t get me wrong: I’m absolutely NOT drawing a parallel between U2’s songs and those whiny, over-the-top emotional puke-songs that I mentioned earlier!!
But the way they work and write songs tends to shift in that direction. That’s why a lot of fans/people find U2 too mediocre nowadays. Strange thing is when they sound at their best (original) nowadays, the song is a drop out or something and not on the official U2 album! Like: Stateless, Always Forever Now, Electrical Storm, Falling At Your Feet, Levitate, Smile, Mercy, …
80% of the songs on the latest 2 albums are all written to please the big crowd (including the “classic” U2-fan) IMO. Written by composition and to immediately crab the attention of the big crowd: City Of Blinding Lights (cheesy and a U2-caricature), Sometimes You Can’t…, Vertigo, Stuck In A Moment, Elevation, All Because Of You,… good songs in themselves but too mainstream and in-your-face for U2 standards. Composed to speak to as much people as they possibly can.
By the release of these two latest albums the big crowd was expecting and hoping for these songs and got them!
During UF, JT, AB, Zooropa, AND Pop, we got everything we DIDN’T expect and they smashed us with it! Man, what a songs! As a fan you got tickled to COME UP TO THEM. Nowadays they dropped that and COME DOWN TO US! Maybe in they’re fear they might not stay relevant. That’s were that “U2-specialness/otherness” gets lost IMO.
Now is the time for U2 to “dream it all up again”. Even more than in the R&H days!
If they want to stay relevant and renew themselves, they have to completely alienate themselves from the big crowd by sounding in a way we never heard them before. Not sounding the exactly the same as in AB, Zooropa or Pop, but with the same smashing effect when you first hear the new songs. I remember when I first heard Until The End Of The World, The Fly, Streets, God’s Country, Exit, Ultraviolet, Lemon, Zooropa, Mofo, Gone…
Or if that is not an option: sound mystical, mysterious and poetic again. Like in: Stay, In A Lifetime, Walk To The Water, The Unforgettable Fire, Acrobat, Love Is Blindness… I think there’s a real lack of it, and need for it in music nowadays.
Anyway, like some other member here stated: maybe you can’t expect “out-of-this-world-tunes” with great depth, multi-dimensional atmospheres, poetic mysterious quality, when you have been living a glossy glamorous life for years now in a large French sunny beach house. Zipping expensive wine, wearing over-the-top Prada’s, getting fat on foie grass (French delicatesse), partying with super-models and Prince Albert of Monaco, and driving around in fast Austin Martin’s, when your not on your yacht.
Back in the 80’s U2 (mainly Bono) was against all this glamorous exposure. For example: U2 wouldn’t even spit on a band like Duran Duran! (Who are back better than ever btw, and top-notch!)
I’m curious: what would the Bono, of say UF/JT-era, think of the Bono of the 2000’s? Anyway: Simon LeBon (Duran Duran) could take lessons from the ‘nowadays-Bono’ in being glossy and decadent!
This is NOT a bashing thread, and I really think they’ve earned these luxury’s but it doesn’t seems to be doing the music any good! I want the “good”, sincere U2 back who dies trying to make a killer album again! Put everyone on the wrong leg!
My fanatism is scary? Man, look at the whole pseudo-psychological analysis you made of me based on two sentences in a post from me.
