SOE FAN + industry reviews only
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The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
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Disagree. A lot of casual and non u2 fans will read that article and believe every word they read. Many will access it through their twitter accounts so having a few comments slating the NME will bring some balance at least.
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But who cares?
If someone reads that and goes "oh yes, U2 must suck" they were never going to listen to the album anyways.
cjboog
Refugee
Too bad. That AV Club review is completely unfair and misses the point of what U2 is as a band. It essentially amounts to a criticism of U2 for being too direct, earnest, and emotional (aka “giving a fuck”) when they should be writing ironic Bowie-like “space rock operas.” I wonder what the reviewer would say about The Joshua Tree? Straightforward emotion, earnestness and universal themes have always been at the heart of what makes U2 compelling - even during their ironic stage. “One love, one life, we get to share it...” isn’t exactly zany space opera irony. Yes U2 has written some excellent dark/moody/ironic/experimental/artistic music and that’s an important part of the band. But they seem to give a lot of fucks in the vast majority of their truly great music, so why is that earnestness suddenly “insufferable”/a problem for their music now? It just doesn’t hold as a valid criticism of this band.
popacrobat
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
We already knew which outlets would hate the album and which would like the album seven years ago.
That NME review is written from a point of predefined hatred, this person should not review U2 albums.
The A.V. Club-one is slightly more nuanced and fair in analyzing the actual work (which is saying almost nothing as the NME review is an abomination), but does the barf-inducing hipster cliche of thinking cynicism is the only path to being true art (hence liking The Showman) and proper optimism, genuine or not, is to be abolished.
I also find the old "in the 90's they didn't give a fuck!!" to be complete shit; they gave huge amounts of fucks about how Rattle and Hum was received (an album and film that was actually and almost literally them not giving a fuck) and really worked hard (and struggled) to reinvent themselves in an appealing way. They had discovered what worked and didn't work anymore, and designed characters to give people what they wanted (and parody it at the same time, though Kevin didn't notice): cool, cynical rockstars. It was brilliant, but they gave lots of fucks and were just as ambitious in that as their previous and subsequent attempts at success.
SOE is more than most U2 records an album that doesn't give a fuck. It has several songs that were made to be singles (just like EBTTRT or Mysterious Ways from AB), but when Bono sings that "Are you tough enough to be kind? Do you know your heart has its own mind?" in 13 he knows that it's an uncool and hardly rock-and-roll lyric to write, but he doesn't care, because that's genuinely what he wanted to say.
The A.V. Club-one is slightly more nuanced and fair in analyzing the actual work (which is saying almost nothing as the NME review is an abomination), but does the barf-inducing hipster cliche of thinking cynicism is the only path to being true art (hence liking The Showman) and proper optimism, genuine or not, is to be abolished.
I also find the old "in the 90's they didn't give a fuck!!" to be complete shit; they gave huge amounts of fucks about how Rattle and Hum was received (an album and film that was actually and almost literally them not giving a fuck) and really worked hard (and struggled) to reinvent themselves in an appealing way. They had discovered what worked and didn't work anymore, and designed characters to give people what they wanted (and parody it at the same time, though Kevin didn't notice): cool, cynical rockstars. It was brilliant, but they gave lots of fucks and were just as ambitious in that as their previous and subsequent attempts at success.
SOE is more than most U2 records an album that doesn't give a fuck. It has several songs that were made to be singles (just like EBTTRT or Mysterious Ways from AB), but when Bono sings that "Are you tough enough to be kind? Do you know your heart has its own mind?" in 13 he knows that it's an uncool and hardly rock-and-roll lyric to write, but he doesn't care, because that's genuinely what he wanted to say.
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Can't be doing with her voice in all honesty. As if she's been given horse tranquilisers. Heard a few tracks of her tracks - generic and unidentifiable in the grander scheme of mainstream pop music. That some are comparing her to Kate Bush displays an amazing ignorance for Kate Bush's own music. I guess some are needy for a modern day pop chart hero so have picked her out at random in desperation.
Just can't be bothered by the reviews anymore, even the good ones honestly. Writing overall has dropped over the past decade or more because its all about clicks. It's about being mean and triggering people.
Not a lot of the reviews even talk about the music, instead it's character assassination and I just don't have time for it.
It's a shame because I used to love reading as many reviews as I could before the album came out. To get an idea of the songs, the sounds, the meaning behind them.
Not a lot of the reviews even talk about the music, instead it's character assassination and I just don't have time for it.
It's a shame because I used to love reading as many reviews as I could before the album came out. To get an idea of the songs, the sounds, the meaning behind them.
That "The Best Thing is the Jimmy Fallon of U2 songs" line was a brutal takedown, tho.
Frenchie44
The Fly
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2013
- Messages
- 46
Don't take the reviews on the interwebs to seriously. It's usually the least talented people who don't qualify for a job as a music journalist who are writing for a website. Have you followed the NME website latel? It's a tabloid. It's all about "Liam said this and then Noel said that". Most websites also just have the same stories because they have no one qualified enough to do real research or a proper interview. Most of those website journalist are never invited to do an interview with U2. And if they were invited they would act like a little girl that gets offered candy. Because they have a big mouth behind their little computer but are to afraid to be that bold when meeting the real thing.
Very true. The art of music writing has been ruined by today's pseudo intellectual ironic undergraduate style writing that infests the internet today.
Dragonfave
New Yorker
U2, Songs Of Experience
If 2014’s ill-judged inbox intrusion Songs Of Innocence was titled for its backward glances at U2’s more innocent, formative years tackling the problems and ambitions thrown up by adolescence, then this completion of the Blakean duality surely bears out the jaded weariness inherent in the title. Rarely has a band of such stature sounded quite so enervated and bereft of inspiration as U2 do here, gamely struggling to reconnect with the youthful vitality that roused crowds across the globe, but reduced to hackneyed cheap tricks and tired old truisms barely worth the chords they’re strung on – which are themselves the limpest melodies of their career. There is literally nothing to the bass-driven funk-rock chugger “The Blackout” apart from the bit when Bono sings “Blackout, no fear/So glad that we are all still here”: it’s just something cheaply knocked together to facilitate a simple stadium effect, with all house lights turned off for a moment before blazing back on for the second line. [Cue huge acclaim. Or not, given the song’s blandness.]
Likewise, can you spot the moment in the lumpy rocker “Lights Of Home” when the stage lights get turned on the audience: “Free yourself to be yourself/If only you could see yourself”? It’s chronically under-powered, with possibly The Edge’s dullest guitar break, and Bono blithering on about temptation – such, presumably, being the meaning of the “statue of a gold guitar” glimpsed in the song.
Not that that is the worst lyric featured on Songs Of Experience. Not by some distance. Even the limp – not to mention debatable – claim that “You are rock’n’roll, you and I are rock’n’roll”, in the suck-up anthem “American Soul”, is bested in that category by the extraordinary lines from album opener “Love Is All We Have Left”, where Bono’s voice is nakedly exposed, save for the merest shiver of strings, declaiming “All we have is immortality/Love is all we have left/A baby cries on a doorstep”. Huh? Literally none of these three lines connects with any of the others, so how could it possibly connect with the listener? Then to cap it off, his heavily autotuned voice avers “This is no time not to be alive”. One begs, on this evidence, to differ. And while there’s nothing here quite as maundering as its predecessor’s sub-Coldplay effort “Song For Someone”, neither is there anything with the sheer affirmative brio of that album’s “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)”, which is the more telling shortfall.
The songs were mostly written whilst Bono was recuperating from surgery following a bicycle accident, which seems to have served as the intimation of mortality triggering his creativity. Originally planned as a series of “letters” written to his nearest and dearest, the album’s theme was altered to accommodate comments on political upheavals. But neither bit of grit has produced pearls: instead, routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.
If 2014’s ill-judged inbox intrusion Songs Of Innocence was titled for its backward glances at U2’s more innocent, formative years tackling the problems and ambitions thrown up by adolescence, then this completion of the Blakean duality surely bears out the jaded weariness inherent in the title. Rarely has a band of such stature sounded quite so enervated and bereft of inspiration as U2 do here, gamely struggling to reconnect with the youthful vitality that roused crowds across the globe, but reduced to hackneyed cheap tricks and tired old truisms barely worth the chords they’re strung on – which are themselves the limpest melodies of their career. There is literally nothing to the bass-driven funk-rock chugger “The Blackout” apart from the bit when Bono sings “Blackout, no fear/So glad that we are all still here”: it’s just something cheaply knocked together to facilitate a simple stadium effect, with all house lights turned off for a moment before blazing back on for the second line. [Cue huge acclaim. Or not, given the song’s blandness.]
Likewise, can you spot the moment in the lumpy rocker “Lights Of Home” when the stage lights get turned on the audience: “Free yourself to be yourself/If only you could see yourself”? It’s chronically under-powered, with possibly The Edge’s dullest guitar break, and Bono blithering on about temptation – such, presumably, being the meaning of the “statue of a gold guitar” glimpsed in the song.
Not that that is the worst lyric featured on Songs Of Experience. Not by some distance. Even the limp – not to mention debatable – claim that “You are rock’n’roll, you and I are rock’n’roll”, in the suck-up anthem “American Soul”, is bested in that category by the extraordinary lines from album opener “Love Is All We Have Left”, where Bono’s voice is nakedly exposed, save for the merest shiver of strings, declaiming “All we have is immortality/Love is all we have left/A baby cries on a doorstep”. Huh? Literally none of these three lines connects with any of the others, so how could it possibly connect with the listener? Then to cap it off, his heavily autotuned voice avers “This is no time not to be alive”. One begs, on this evidence, to differ. And while there’s nothing here quite as maundering as its predecessor’s sub-Coldplay effort “Song For Someone”, neither is there anything with the sheer affirmative brio of that album’s “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)”, which is the more telling shortfall.
The songs were mostly written whilst Bono was recuperating from surgery following a bicycle accident, which seems to have served as the intimation of mortality triggering his creativity. Originally planned as a series of “letters” written to his nearest and dearest, the album’s theme was altered to accommodate comments on political upheavals. But neither bit of grit has produced pearls: instead, routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.
Wow, really bad review from a paper that I thought would give u2 a high score.
Really didn't expect these bad reviews after listening to the album the other day. The bad ones are really adding up now. Probably more good ones but certainly a lot of bad ones now
Really didn't expect these bad reviews after listening to the album the other day. The bad ones are really adding up now. Probably more good ones but certainly a lot of bad ones now
TinKnight
Refugee
"which are themselves the limpest melodies of their career."
Are we listening to the same record as these people? These are easily the strongest melodies in a long time.
I try not to get worked up about what professional critics think, but I'm like sincerely baffled by these.
david
ONE love, blood, life
Imma cut some bitches that be frontin as legit publications for dissin’ my boys in U2. Maybe bust some caps in their sorry asses. Pow pow two shots to the dome!
Sorry I been listening to gangsta rap in the office today and eating donuts.
Sorry I been listening to gangsta rap in the office today and eating donuts.
The album got a 4 out of 5 star review in one of the main Belgian newspapers, De Morgen.
https://www.demorgen.be/muziek/u2-songs-of-experience-de-wanhoop-van-een-wervelwind-b8829b2f/
Saying that U2 punches back with this record after the weaker SOI, and saying that it's their best work since ATYCLB.
They say it's not really innovative, but that it sounds full of life and combative.
They also praise Adam's bass work.
But for them the star of the album is Bono himself. They give examples of all the different ranges of emotion and feelings covered by bono. How he sounds desparate in "The little things", but at other times also combative and passionate.
They also mention the influence of death on this album. Not only Bono's own "almost death" experience (or whatever happened there), but also the death of some of his friends, like L. Cohen, or David Bowie.
They refer to lyrics in American Soul and Get out of your own way and they praise the optimisim in Summer of Love “In the rubble of Aleppo / Flowers blooming in the shadows”.
They conclude to say that they strongly believe it's the best album in 17 years.
https://www.demorgen.be/muziek/u2-songs-of-experience-de-wanhoop-van-een-wervelwind-b8829b2f/
Saying that U2 punches back with this record after the weaker SOI, and saying that it's their best work since ATYCLB.
They say it's not really innovative, but that it sounds full of life and combative.
They also praise Adam's bass work.
But for them the star of the album is Bono himself. They give examples of all the different ranges of emotion and feelings covered by bono. How he sounds desparate in "The little things", but at other times also combative and passionate.
They also mention the influence of death on this album. Not only Bono's own "almost death" experience (or whatever happened there), but also the death of some of his friends, like L. Cohen, or David Bowie.
They refer to lyrics in American Soul and Get out of your own way and they praise the optimisim in Summer of Love “In the rubble of Aleppo / Flowers blooming in the shadows”.
They conclude to say that they strongly believe it's the best album in 17 years.
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I'm currently applying for jobs as a music journalist, I've supplied part of my review of The Joshua Tree as a sample:
There is literally nothing to obvious, tacky Where The Streets Have No Name, except for that part when he sings "We're still building then burning down love" (possibly the band referencing building up a promising career and then burning it down with this trite album?): the song's egregious slow build-up is only to facilitate a cheap stadium effect of having the lights off before blazing alight when the bass and drums finally kick in. Likewise, can you spot the moment in the slow, meandering With Or Without You when the lights are to go on and audiences are supposed to sing along: "Oooohhh ooohhh"? The song is chronically under-powered, with The Edge's laziest guitar part ever towards the end, and Bono blithering on about not being able to live with the uncertainty of love - such, presumably, being the meaning of "I can't live with or without you" (I sure know where I stand on the matter when it comes to U2).
But seriously, while there's fair criticism to be found among several of these reviews (alongside all the unfair criticism), this would've looked so different had U2 in their 41st year not been, well...U2 in their 41st year.
There is literally nothing to obvious, tacky Where The Streets Have No Name, except for that part when he sings "We're still building then burning down love" (possibly the band referencing building up a promising career and then burning it down with this trite album?): the song's egregious slow build-up is only to facilitate a cheap stadium effect of having the lights off before blazing alight when the bass and drums finally kick in. Likewise, can you spot the moment in the slow, meandering With Or Without You when the lights are to go on and audiences are supposed to sing along: "Oooohhh ooohhh"? The song is chronically under-powered, with The Edge's laziest guitar part ever towards the end, and Bono blithering on about not being able to live with the uncertainty of love - such, presumably, being the meaning of "I can't live with or without you" (I sure know where I stand on the matter when it comes to U2).
But seriously, while there's fair criticism to be found among several of these reviews (alongside all the unfair criticism), this would've looked so different had U2 in their 41st year not been, well...U2 in their 41st year.
hasin73
Refugee
According to the reviewer...... LIGHTS of HOME has Edge's dullest guitar break. What the fuck ?!?!?!
Super Yo
New Yorker
U2 Releases ‘Songs of Experience.’ Cynicism Not Included | NYTimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/music/u2-songs-of-experience-review.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/music/u2-songs-of-experience-review.html
revolver
The Fly
I think it's amongst the dullest, for sure.
womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Gonna Run 2 U
New Yorker
So what’s the consensus here? To me, this album is getting shitted on or are we just posting the negative reviews?
Super Yo
New Yorker
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/music/u2-songs-of-experience-review.html
U2 Releases ‘Songs of Experience.’ Cynicism Not Included.
People who can’t stand U2’s earnest, heal-the-world side may want to turn elsewhere right now. The word “love,” unironic and high-minded, recurs all over “Songs of Experience,” the band’s long-gestating sequel to its 2014 album, “Songs of Innocence.”
Where “Songs of Innocence” was full of youthful biographical specifics, both euphoric and grim, from the group’s lead singer and main lyricist, Bono, “Songs of Experience” has an adult’s broader, more general perspective. It favors lessons and archetypes, not stories. Like “Songs of Innocence,” the new album employed multiple producers, and U2 has clearly pondered every nanosecond of sound, whether polishing its reverberations or administering calibrated amounts of distortion. It’s not an album that courts new fans by radically changing U2’s style; instead, it reaffirms the sound that has been filling arenas and stadiums for decades.
The album is also a return to the standard commercial market. Apple made “Songs of Innocence” a giveaway that suddenly appeared in the iTunes libraries of both fans and non-fans worldwide. Many greeted it as a corporate intrusion rather than a gift, generating a backlash that threatened to eclipse the album’s worthy songs. “Songs of Experience,” U2’s 14th studio album, is having a more conventional release.
Bono has described “Songs of Experience” as a collection of letters to family, fans and America: messages and advisories from a globally minded public figure. And for most of the album, U2 sets out to counter the anger, despair and cynicism of 2017 with insistent optimism.
That’s a temptation to preach, and some songs are unabashed homilies. Bookending the album (before a bonus track) are songs titled “Love Is All We Have Left” and “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way.” The opener is a celestial benediction over tremulous strings, declaring, “Nothing to stop this being the best day ever,” while the finale is a grand crescendo of a march, an arena anthem declaring, “When you think you’re done, you’ve just begun.”
But in between, there’s more ambivalence, humor, self-questioning and openly political intent. “You’re the Best Thing About Me,” with an exultant leap in its melody and the Edge’s quick-strummed guitar at its core, is a love song that shades into a warning: “The best things are easy to destroy.” The cheerful 1950s-style beat of “The Showman (Little More Better)” gives Bono a springboard to mock the artifice of his role as a pop singer: “Making a spectacle of falling apart is/Just the start of the show.”
Meanwhile, U2 has been thinking hard about migrants. “Red Flag Day” — with the nimble syncopations of the Edge’s rhythm-guitar chords, Adam Clayton’s bass and Larry Mullen Jr.’s drums meshing like the Police — starts as a romp at a Mediterranean beach paradise but ends up thinking about migrants drowned in those same waters. The fuzz-toned stomp of “American Soul” begins as an Irish band’s tribute to American rock ’n’ roll but goes on to praise the idea of America welcoming outsiders from all over: “For refugees like you and me/a country to receive us/Will you be my sanctuary/Refu-Jesus!”
Yet even U2’s faith and hope face their limits in the era of “Brexit” and President Trump. “The Blackout” has a strutting four-on-the-floor beat and a guitar effect distantly echoing “Mysterious Ways,” but it’s not party music. The lyrics wonder if democracy is facing an “extinction event”: “A big mouth says the people they don’t want to be free.” The chorus goes on to insist, “When the lights go out, don’t you ever doubt/The light that we can really be.” It doesn’t sound like love — it sounds like resistance.
U2
“Songs of Experience”
(Interscope) de
U2 Releases ‘Songs of Experience.’ Cynicism Not Included.
People who can’t stand U2’s earnest, heal-the-world side may want to turn elsewhere right now. The word “love,” unironic and high-minded, recurs all over “Songs of Experience,” the band’s long-gestating sequel to its 2014 album, “Songs of Innocence.”
Where “Songs of Innocence” was full of youthful biographical specifics, both euphoric and grim, from the group’s lead singer and main lyricist, Bono, “Songs of Experience” has an adult’s broader, more general perspective. It favors lessons and archetypes, not stories. Like “Songs of Innocence,” the new album employed multiple producers, and U2 has clearly pondered every nanosecond of sound, whether polishing its reverberations or administering calibrated amounts of distortion. It’s not an album that courts new fans by radically changing U2’s style; instead, it reaffirms the sound that has been filling arenas and stadiums for decades.
The album is also a return to the standard commercial market. Apple made “Songs of Innocence” a giveaway that suddenly appeared in the iTunes libraries of both fans and non-fans worldwide. Many greeted it as a corporate intrusion rather than a gift, generating a backlash that threatened to eclipse the album’s worthy songs. “Songs of Experience,” U2’s 14th studio album, is having a more conventional release.
Bono has described “Songs of Experience” as a collection of letters to family, fans and America: messages and advisories from a globally minded public figure. And for most of the album, U2 sets out to counter the anger, despair and cynicism of 2017 with insistent optimism.
That’s a temptation to preach, and some songs are unabashed homilies. Bookending the album (before a bonus track) are songs titled “Love Is All We Have Left” and “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way.” The opener is a celestial benediction over tremulous strings, declaring, “Nothing to stop this being the best day ever,” while the finale is a grand crescendo of a march, an arena anthem declaring, “When you think you’re done, you’ve just begun.”
But in between, there’s more ambivalence, humor, self-questioning and openly political intent. “You’re the Best Thing About Me,” with an exultant leap in its melody and the Edge’s quick-strummed guitar at its core, is a love song that shades into a warning: “The best things are easy to destroy.” The cheerful 1950s-style beat of “The Showman (Little More Better)” gives Bono a springboard to mock the artifice of his role as a pop singer: “Making a spectacle of falling apart is/Just the start of the show.”
Meanwhile, U2 has been thinking hard about migrants. “Red Flag Day” — with the nimble syncopations of the Edge’s rhythm-guitar chords, Adam Clayton’s bass and Larry Mullen Jr.’s drums meshing like the Police — starts as a romp at a Mediterranean beach paradise but ends up thinking about migrants drowned in those same waters. The fuzz-toned stomp of “American Soul” begins as an Irish band’s tribute to American rock ’n’ roll but goes on to praise the idea of America welcoming outsiders from all over: “For refugees like you and me/a country to receive us/Will you be my sanctuary/Refu-Jesus!”
Yet even U2’s faith and hope face their limits in the era of “Brexit” and President Trump. “The Blackout” has a strutting four-on-the-floor beat and a guitar effect distantly echoing “Mysterious Ways,” but it’s not party music. The lyrics wonder if democracy is facing an “extinction event”: “A big mouth says the people they don’t want to be free.” The chorus goes on to insist, “When the lights go out, don’t you ever doubt/The light that we can really be.” It doesn’t sound like love — it sounds like resistance.
U2
“Songs of Experience”
(Interscope) de
Tim Wallach
The Fly
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2008
- Messages
- 267
I have been wondering for a long time what the point of a fan base wanting to read reviews is? I can see it if the album hasn't been released and you want a feel for it. But once you've heard the songs, isn't the only thing that matters how you feel about them?
Listening to someone else's opinion can only do one of two things: Validate your feelings if that's what you need, or make you doubt your initial feelings.
I'll politely just skip them all. Music is far and away too subjective to worry about anyone's opinion other than your own really. A review serves one purpose: For fans who only mildly care about hearing to help them make a call on whether to bother checking it out. That applies to no one here.
Listening to someone else's opinion can only do one of two things: Validate your feelings if that's what you need, or make you doubt your initial feelings.
I'll politely just skip them all. Music is far and away too subjective to worry about anyone's opinion other than your own really. A review serves one purpose: For fans who only mildly care about hearing to help them make a call on whether to bother checking it out. That applies to no one here.
Tim Wallach
The Fly
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2008
- Messages
- 267
Gonna Run 2 U
New Yorker
U2 is like your favorite sports team. You read articles about them and root for them.
I generally agree. The one positive of best of lists (which I do sort of detest) is they can introduce me to other bands/movies/books that slipped by. I've certainly discovered some new bands that way. That said, it's all really subjective and just like what you like at the end of the day.
Super Yo
New Yorker
Not a bad review, but I guess he turned it off early.
It’s a good review, Jon Pareles is an excellent journalist.
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