Firstly, I think - and hope - that the days of U2 being wedded to opening a show with a new song are over. Look at how well EBTTRT went on 360. They want the crowd pumping straight away, and surely they've realised by now that there is no correlation between relevance and opening with a new song (or quality). I wouldn't be shocked if they open with a couple of older songs and then some new stuff. In fact, I can see them pairing Vertigo/The Miracle as songs two and three.
Every Breaking Wave is obviously a lock and will probably be later in the set. It'll be one of the more prominent songs, and it's already got live exposure. I'd tip Volcano and/or Cedarwood Road to appear in the first five or six songs, playing a similar role to NLOTH on the last tour - the rockin' non-single album track that really gets the place going. I'd fancy Raised By Wolves to show up mid-set, and not flop as badly as Unknown Caller did in a similar position. People might actually shout out "raised! by! wolves!", for one thing.
I don't see The Troubles getting a run, except for a one-off if Lykke Li does a guest appearance - but I would really like it to appear in an encore, as I reckon Edge could do an amazing conclusion with it live, like he used to do with Love Is Blindness. I hope to god California doesn't get played, but you know they will at the least do it at shows in California and I'm already putting money down on a Barbara Ann snippet.
It's hard to tell with some songs - will Song For Someone be a single and get played, or is it just a bland generic song that will quickly be forgotten? Will they give Iris a go or is it too personal for Bono? Is Sleep Like a Baby Tonight a bit too slow, especially for stadiums, or will Bono make us endure some shitty falsetto every night in a vain attempt to recapture his youth? Do they still give a shit about Invisible and Ordinary Love or are they yesterday's news already (cf Window in the Skies, Electrical Storm, and The Hands That Built America, albeit slightly different circumstances)?
At the end of the day, they're going to have to be selective. They're not getting any younger so the sets aren't getting longer, but there are more and more albums to squeeze into the same 22-24 song space. I'll be pleasantly surprised if they do more than five tracks from Songs of Innocence live. And, of course, if there is a second album, then any guessing we can do now will probably go right out the window.
Every Breaking Wave is obviously a lock and will probably be later in the set. It'll be one of the more prominent songs, and it's already got live exposure. I'd tip Volcano and/or Cedarwood Road to appear in the first five or six songs, playing a similar role to NLOTH on the last tour - the rockin' non-single album track that really gets the place going. I'd fancy Raised By Wolves to show up mid-set, and not flop as badly as Unknown Caller did in a similar position. People might actually shout out "raised! by! wolves!", for one thing.
I don't see The Troubles getting a run, except for a one-off if Lykke Li does a guest appearance - but I would really like it to appear in an encore, as I reckon Edge could do an amazing conclusion with it live, like he used to do with Love Is Blindness. I hope to god California doesn't get played, but you know they will at the least do it at shows in California and I'm already putting money down on a Barbara Ann snippet.
It's hard to tell with some songs - will Song For Someone be a single and get played, or is it just a bland generic song that will quickly be forgotten? Will they give Iris a go or is it too personal for Bono? Is Sleep Like a Baby Tonight a bit too slow, especially for stadiums, or will Bono make us endure some shitty falsetto every night in a vain attempt to recapture his youth? Do they still give a shit about Invisible and Ordinary Love or are they yesterday's news already (cf Window in the Skies, Electrical Storm, and The Hands That Built America, albeit slightly different circumstances)?
At the end of the day, they're going to have to be selective. They're not getting any younger so the sets aren't getting longer, but there are more and more albums to squeeze into the same 22-24 song space. I'll be pleasantly surprised if they do more than five tracks from Songs of Innocence live. And, of course, if there is a second album, then any guessing we can do now will probably go right out the window.
