eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour predictions setlist

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So I guess I have to be the Bruce guy here...

U2 could rotate the setlist more. They've opened the last two tours with 4 straight songs that don't use any visuals whatsoever. These songs stayed static. Yes, i/e had a rotating slot, which rotated the same 3 songs.

The post intermission set on i/e was light on visuals, save for a couple of songs. Again, minimal rotation.

The post JT set didn't exactly have ground breaking visuals, either. Once again, very minimal rotation of songs.

And let's not talk about Vertigo and Elevation.

The idea that the multimedia part of their show prohibits them from doing more rotating of their setlist is, mostly, bullshit.

They don't want to, or they don't feel confident enough in their ability to do so.

As for Bruce having a minimal stage set?

Yea. True. He's able to command an audience without any bells and whistles. His energy and craftsmanship is otherworldly. He can keep an audience engaged for 4 hours straight.

But he's a freak. There are very few who can work what he can.

I love U2's live sets. I love that they break new ground with their use of technology. I loved the theatrics of i/e.

Would I trade all of it for a tour where I had no clue what was going to be played with I walked in the door?

Absolutely.

But that's never happening. We know it's never happening. But there are still plenty of opportunities within the crazy multimedia clusterfuckaroo to mix things up, and U2 almost always pass on those opportunities.

Apologies if you thought I was dissing the Boss. I wasn't. As you say, "he's a freak", and I can't help but admire what he's able to do, and how long he's been able to do it.

I suppose the technology could provide enough flexibility for U2 to rotate songs more often, but I think you hit the nail on the head with this: "they don't feel confident enough in their ability to do so". They're not singer/songwriters, and they know it. So they go with their strength, which is performing their best (in their opinion) songs in the most compelling manner possible, variety be damned.

And if they ever do that "no clue setlist" show, I'll be right there beside you, losing my mind with every song.
 
I'm going off the same setlist they used for i&e

1 The blackout
2 elevation
3 until the end of the world
4 discotheque
5 lights of home
6 red flag day
7 summer of love
8 little things that give you away
9 beautiful day
10 vertigo

11 get out of your own way
12 American soul
13 New Year's Day
14 Sunday Bloody Sunday
15 you're the best thing about me
16 every breaking wave
17 mysterious ways
18 angel of Harlem
19 all I want is you
20 pride
21 bad
22 with or without you

23 where the streets have no name
24 one
25 I will follow
 
Blackout
Lights of home
Get out of your own way
American soul
Beautiful day
One / Kite
New years day
Red flag day
Every breaking wave (Full Band)
Gone / UTEOTW
Vertigo / Elevation
Best thing
B-Stage: All I want is you / Stay
B-Stage: Desire / The Showman / Staring at the sun
B-Stage: Summer of love
Bullet
Love is all we have left
Where the streets have no name
Pride
Wowy

The Fly (Elevation Tour Version)
Mysterious ways / Discotheque
Acrobat
Little things
13
 
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I've only gone back as far as ZooTV, but the only tours in the past 28 years to not have the lead single out of the way through the first couple of songs was PopMart (not counting JT30 obviously), and technically speaking the lead single of Zooropa wasn't, but that's a special circumstance.

So I think the odds are fairly high that Best Thing will be in the first couple of tracks on this tour.

i/e: First
360: Second or third
Vertigo: second or first
Elevation: second
Pop: encore opener
All things Zoo: second for Achtung, 8th for Zooropa
 
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I've only gone back as far as ZooTV, but the only tours in the past 28 years to not have the lead single out of the way through the first couple of songs was PopMart (not counting JT30 obviously), and technically speaking the lead single of Zooropa wasn't, but that's a special circumstance.

So I think the odds are fairly high that Best Thing will be in the first couple of tracks on this tour.

i/e: First
360: Second or third
Vertigo: second or first
Elevation: second
Pop: encore opener
All things Zoo: second for Achtung, 8th for Zooropa

Interesting stats. I think The Best Thing screams "e stage," but I could see it showing up earlier. Especially if the early set follows the i+e structure: 3-4 fast songs to start, speech about experience / writing as if you are dead, then The Best Thing leads off a couple of the SOE songs that really leaned into the "letters to people" theme. Perhaps the TBT-GOOYOW-AS album sequence.
 
the Best Thing also screams acoustic. It's exactly the type of synth driven pop the band always struggle to perform. so they will do to it what they did to EBW. It will be a good beer break song.
 
Here we go:

Volcano
Vertigo

You're the best thing about me
Red flag day

New Year's day
I will follow
Sunday bloody Sunday

Lights of home
Get out of your own way
American soul
Landlady

Beautiful day
Pride
Love is all we have left (segue into)
Streets
The Fly
Acrobat
----------------
Encore:

Desire acoustic
Staring at the sun acoustic

One
The showman
Little things that give you away
Love is bigger than anything in its way
 
If they open with volcano or actually play volcano at any one of the gigs I'll run around my local town stark bollock naked [emoji2]
 
If they open with volcano or actually play volcano at any one of the gigs I'll run around my local town stark bollock naked [emoji2]

Haha! I put it there because I just listened to the innocence album for the first time in a couple years (not my favorite), and this tune jumped out as "old school U2" and imo a pretty solid track. Seems like opening with something from innocence is appropriate, and they didn't play this one before , or am I wrong about that?
 
For Headache, with a hidden message:

Twilight
Heartland
I Fall Down
Some Days Are Better Than Others

Seconds
Electrical Storm
Two Hearts Beat As One
Luminous Times
If God Will Send His Angels
Surrender
Tomorrow

I Threw A Brick Through A Window
So Cruel

A Sort of Homecoming

Please
I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (album version)
Peace On Earth
Exit
Drowning Man
Red Flag Day
Elevation (because… U2)
Acrobat (because… U2 fans)
Mercy
 
For Headache, with a hidden message:

Twilight
Heartland
I Fall Down
Some Days Are Better Than Others

Seconds
Electrical Storm
Two Hearts Beat As One
Luminous Times
If God Will Send His Angels
Surrender
Tomorrow

I Threw A Brick Through A Window
So Cruel

A Sort of Homecoming

Please
I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (album version)
Peace On Earth
Exit
Drowning Man
Red Flag Day
Elevation (because… U2)
Acrobat (because… U2 fans)
Mercy

A pipe dream indeed!

Yet you still must include elevation?! Lol
 
Here we go:

Volcano
Vertigo

You're the best thing about me
Red flag day

New Year's day
I will follow
Sunday bloody Sunday

Lights of home
Get out of your own way
American soul
Landlady

Beautiful day
Pride
Love is all we have left (segue into)
Streets
The Fly
Acrobat
----------------
Encore:

Desire acoustic
Staring at the sun acoustic

One
The showman
Little things that give you away
Love is bigger than anything in its way

Replace Volcano with Blackout and you may be on to something...
 
After they played Bad alot during the JT tour i think they will rest it. But i'd love them to play it, it's my fav song so.
 
okay I spent a lot of time and put a lot of thought into this...I know it's a pipe dream of course, but I had fun doing this anyway! if you care to read my endless drivel about this, it's in spoiler tags at the bottom so I don't take up too much of a page.

01 the blackout
02 the fly
03 desire
04 this is where you can reach me now
05 the lights of home
06 red flag day
07 please
08 bullet the blue sky
09 drowning man
10 gone

11 numb (performed by edge in screen)

12 get out of your own way
13 american soul
14 vertigo
15 discotheque / staring at the sun (medley)
16 ESTAGE SONG
17 ESTAGE SONG
18 you’re the best thing about me (acoustic)
19 dirty day
20 acrobat
21 love is all we have left
22 where the streets have no name
23 beautiful day
24 all i want is you / walk to the water

25 zooropa
26 hold me thrill me kiss me kill me
27 love is blindness
28 bad
29 the little things that give you away

(BONUS OCCASIONAL ENCORE)

I think the show will open with some expansion of the idea of "dinosaur, wonders why it still walks the earth", so the first four songs are the idea of this. The Fly and Desire are two big hits/live favorites that will get the crowd going early, and I see Desire being played in the style it was for the iHeartRadio performance, which was great. Reach Me Now is probably going to end up being forgotten, but I'm amazed it was never attempted during IE, and it could lend into this theme well. LOH will begin the narrative of what it's like living in these modern times, the "experience" if you will. this will be the electric version, like on the record. RFD continues this idea with a slightly more political angle, which Please will further. I wanted to be bold and predict no JT songs aside from Streets, but I could see Bullet come crashing out of the quiet ending "please..please.." with a new slant updated for the times (but I don't think will be overly Trump-focused, as there's so much else going on in the world). I will go as far as to predict Drowning Man's live debut, it's been discussed a good amount in interviews, Bono sang a good bit of it at the end of One on the JT tour, and plus it's already been rehearsed a lot in the last decade. I think this is as good a fit of any. Gone makes for a logical resurrection, replacing UTEOTW from the last tour as the catharsis that ends the first act.

Numb as a sweet "intermission" with cool, in-the-screen visuals would be a great thing that I'm lead to believe was tossed around as an idea for I&E. GOOYOW is a logical Invisible replacement and perfect way to start the second half. American Soul makes sense coming out of it and starting the E-stage segment for several reasons...and Vertigo also would work well coming right out of it. plus, e-stage Vertigo would be alot more fun compared to e-stage Elevation. Discotheque will come in for Mysterious Ways, as it should've last tour. played in the style of the Elevation tour with the lengthy Staring at the Sun snippet at the end, so you kill two birds with one stone. I hope for more e-stage variety (list below), but we'll probably get the same songs over and over again. I agree with the prediction earlier in the thread that TBT will get the EBW-acoustic treatment. this will effectively wrap up the e-stage segment, before Dirty Day slowly rises from the ashes to bring us back to the main stage segment. this will again tie back to the "troubled times we live in" idea from earlier in the show, with a full video/etc show on the screen. U2 will finally shut up everyone and play Acrobat, tying into this whole "no matter what you do things are going to be hard..." thing, leading right into LIAWHL as the bridge between darkness and hope, which is where the casual fans get rewarded with Streets/BD/AIWIY after sitting through a bunch of shit they don't know. AIWIY features the Walk to the Water snippet because how do they not play it that way every time??

I thought I had a better narrative idea for this encore but ultimately I do not. I just want them to play Zooropa with crazy visuals and the flying crosses and put COBL to bed. I guess this actually living up to the the idea that the I&E encore was supposed to reflect "the future". for some reason I could see Your Blue Room working here too (they could use the same visuals as COBL!) but I've made enough ridiculous predictions. I don't think any U2 fan would be opposed to HMTMKMKM's return, and Love is Blindness is also pretty due for a revival (shocked it didn't happen on 360!). I think some combo of Bad/Little Things will end the show, with possibility for IWF/OOC/Gloria/Electric Co/etc as a surprise ending.

they're obviously gonna play One and Pride and all that other shit but I really wish they wouldn't, I mean we've heard all of these a ton by now. I think SBS will take a backseat this tour, as stated up thread since it was crucial to last tour's narrative and opened every JT show. it could use a break. NYD could be played but I didn't know where to put it in the set. same goes with Summer of Love, which I really like but couldn't figure out where to put. I don't like Love is Bigger like the rest of this forum does, and I think it would be a pretty lame closer, a retread of what Walk On already did on Elevation and 360.

okay, I've put too much thought in this for what will only be read by like 20 people.
maybe I should send this to Willie Williams???

e-stage songs:
two hearts beat as one
surrender
a sort of homecoming
the sweetest thing
van diemen’s land
hawkmoon 269
heartland
angel of harlem
when love comes to town
god pt. II
even better than the real thing
who’s gonna ride your wild horses
so cruel
trying to throw your arms around the world
stay (faraway, so close)
daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car
some days are better than others
the first time
do you feel loved
if god would send his angels
the playboy mansion
north and south of the river
a man and a woman
one step closer
no line on the horizon
magnificent
volcano
the crystal ballroom
the showman

occasional encore songs:
I will follow
out of control
the electric co
gloria
rejoice (Bono mentioned this song a lot in interviews...I have some weird feeling it may show up somehow)
 
This would be my ideal setlist for this tour:

Red Flag Day
Vertigo
Surrender
Landlady
New Years Day
Acrobat
Do You Feel Loved
Heartland
The Blackout
Iris
A Sort of Homecoming
Bad
Beautiful Day
Lights Of Home
With Or Without You
City Of Blinding Lights
Kite

Encore:
Love Is All We Have Left
Streets
Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Love Is Bigger Than Anything In It’s Way
40
 
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