Bono on HTDAAB: "it f-ing annoys me."

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doxxer

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Bono said of HTDAAB: "[t]here are no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it f–ing annoys me."

Agree? Disagree? Discuss!
 
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Personally, I kind of have to agree with him. There are no songs that I actively dislike or think are genuinely awfully, yet the album doesn't quite gel and flow together as cohesively as many of their previous albums. It's probably one of U2's strongest records from a songwriting perspective, yet I feel that it doesn't sound as focused as it should. The album art is lazy and the engineering & mixing of the album is terrible.

I'm also ticked that Mercy wasn't included. How that one was left off is still beyond me. Despite all my complaints, I still dig this one every once in a while, so I guess the songs themselves managed to stand-out against all the negatives. And hey, it won 9 Grammy awards so..
 
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Gee I wonder why... not like the whole McGuinness promising lots of hits thing wasn’t a meme in its own right. Perhaps the band was too focused on each song in a vacuum?
 
Agreed but I listened to this album a few months back and it was such a fun listen.
 
Hate to be Thread Police again, but this really needed its own thread instead of being posted in the one that was already talking about HTDAAB being the beginning of the end for the band? A thread that you also created?

This is from your first post in there:

One safe, 'back to basics', adult contemporary album after POP was acceptable for most U2 fans as it achieved what it set out to, make U2 relevant again, but for many fans HTDAAB was a bridge too far & that's when the tide started to turn. And with that release & corresponding tour it seemed like the U2 hate train/machine really started to take off during that period..

That lingering after-taste that originated circa HTDAAB-era still endures for many music critics today.

So your last thread was positing a dubious theory that most people who replied didn't seem to agree with. And now this thread is "SEE BONO AGREES WITH ME, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT??"


:huh:
 
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I remember the quote. It was probably during the promo for No Line, as they have a habit of trashing the last album while telling us how great the new one is going to be, they've been doing this shit since post-Pop.
 
It does sound like a collection of singles, but they’re good singles. I’d take it over SOE or No Line.
 
Probably my least favorite U2 album. I really love Vertigo and City Of Blinding Lights, and One Step Closer and A Man And A Woman are pretty good, and Miracle Drug is just okay, but the rest all have problems either with production issues, subpar-to-bad vocal takes, or clunker lyrics. I have ideas for how it could have been better, but I’m sure we all do any probably nobody cares about mine. Haha!
 
It's inextricably tied to memories for me, so it's hard to rate it objectively. My first U2 album, it was such an expansive time for me. I don't listen to it often, but it holds a very special place in my heart.
 
Truly the most Meh U2 album ever. Second would be ATYCLB. But Bomb has a firm grasp on this title.

One really good song, a few good songs and the rest are bland or bad.
 
you are right on.

i’d swap out Miracle Drug for Original if the Species on your list, but you hit the nail on the head
 
This was my least favourite U2 album until SoE came along and upon a re-listen although it still isn't a great album there are sone real high points. Vertigo, COBL, Fast Cars, SYCMIOYO and a few others.
The low points are still really low though, Miracle Drug for example.
 
For me, this is a really good album, and the best U2 album since 1993. I agree that 'Mercy' (despite some lyrical cringes) should have been on there in place of 'One Step Closer', but anyway it's a really solid collection of tunes.

I personally dislike operatic U2, so 'Sometimes You Can't Make It' is a track I don't need to hear again, but besides this and the okay-but-dull 'One Step Closer', I think all the songs have quite a lot going for them.
 
I won't hear any bad words about One Step Closer. It's absolutely one of the best songs on the album. That said, Mercy would be the best song on it.
 
Yeah I appreciate the understated nature of One Step Closer, especially compared to Sometimes, which verges into Coldplay territory. Maybe it doesn't sit easy between the overproduction of OOTS and Crumbs, I don't know. But taken on its own it's very well done; the presence of Lanois on this track is not hard to recognize.
 
Agreed but I listened to this album a few months back and it was such a fun listen.

I did the same recently and enjoyed it. To be fair, that's often the case with U2 albums where we absolutely dissect them to pieces on here, but away from that, there's very few songs I actively hate or skip when listening to them.
 
I did the same recently and enjoyed it. To be fair, that's often the case with U2 albums where we absolutely dissect them to pieces on here, but away from that, there's very few songs I actively hate or skip when listening to them.

100%. I had taken an extended break from Interference, I don't know, a year ago. During that break I listened to every U2 album and other than a couple gripes here or there, I realized that U2 is way better than people think they are on this forum. It was such a refreshing revisiting of their catalog.
 
So I think with a little order-changes, decision changes about previous releases, and tweaks to versions, this could have been their strongest album after Pop. All of this is fantasyland stuff since some of these things are maybe far-fetched and others don’t exist. It would also include a lot of ignoring half of the songs currently on the album.

01. Vertigo - as is, this is a perfect lead single, album opener, and pop hit. I wouldn’t change a thing about the song or it’s placement.

02. Xanax and Wine - lyrically I like this better than Fast Cars, but marry the lyrical content with the Jacknife Lee version of Fast Cars, and it would be great here.

03. She’s Gonna Blow Your House Down - here’s the first curveball! I think this was one of their best unreleased songs prior to this album. The drum beat is similar to All Because Of You, but the execution and melody is better. It could have scratched that itch. Possibly add in some of the very good guitar lines from All Because Of You, because really to me that song is a mess squarely because of Bono - both lyrically and vocally.

04. Electrical Storm - second curveball! I personally hate when bands release new songs to Best Ofs. It’s ridiculously presumptuous. I’ve always found the band version (eg. not the William Orbit version) would have fit in perfectly on this record. Only change I would make is the stupid heavy as a truck line.

05. Mercy - I’ve long been a guy who has detracted Mercy. Hear me out: it’s 100% due to the production. The version we got is waaaay over limited. Example? The guitar at the beginning is very loud. When the rest kicks in, it immediately gets quiet. That’s just one little example of the production issues in the version we have heard. This always has bothered me. Fix that and it’s a great song. (Note: the changes later were not for the better, it should be the original version)

06. Crumbs From Your Table - remove the clipping and this is a perfectly fine song.

07. Miracle Drug - maybe a better vocal take from Bono on the chorus, or having Edge double him would make it better. And get rid of that stupid freedom has a scent line and replace it with something not terrible.

08. Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own - I don’t really have a problem with this song. It’s not my favorite but I know it’s probably the most important to Bono - but I like this placement better.

09. One Step Closer - no changes except placement.

10. City Of Blinding Lights - I think this is a natural closer/showstopper, so I’d end it with this.

Singles: Vertigo, Electrical Storm, City Of Blinding Lights.

Notable absences of songs I like: A Man And A Woman. I tried to get it to fit. I couldn’t. I think it could’ve been a good non-album single or a good fit for the ditched Rubin album as a complete song. Possibly all of the songs I cut could’ve been in line for that though (Love And Peace Or Else, Original Of The Species, Yahweh, and add in Window In The Skies, All My Life, and A Man And A Woman and you’ve got the backbone of a Rubin album).

Anyway, this is just daydreaming, but I think that fantasyland version of the album flows more musically and thematically.
 
Miracle Drug is a weird song, but I like it a lot. And live it had a sense of urgency. I’d cut Crumbs. Total filler that feels like an earlier version of WILATW, U2 by the numbers sound complete with first draft lyrics.

Fast Cars > Xanax. Again, more of a properly developed song. Wish they had broken LAPOE out again for I+E or E+I.

$5 someone at Live Nation has written a proposal for a love bomb tour focused on ATYCLB and HTDAAB. I’d call it the suitcase bomb tour but that’s why I don’t work for LN…


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Miracle Drug is a weird song, but I like it a lot. And live it had a sense of urgency. I’d cut Crumbs. Total filler that feels like an earlier version of WILATW, U2 by the numbers sound complete with first draft lyrics.

Fast Cars > Xanax. Again, more of a properly developed song. Wish they had broken LAPOE out again for I+E or E+I.

$5 someone at Live Nation has written a proposal for a love bomb tour focused on ATYCLB and HTDAAB. I’d call it the suitcase bomb tour but that’s why I don’t work for LN…


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I love miracle drug,great bass in it. Of course the baby's head line is daft,but it's a great tune.
 
I'm sure there's lots of things that bug them about how the finished albums turn out, although is Pop the only one which they have been very vocal about and remixed/reworked some songs from?
 
I honestly don't pay much attention to what the guys say about Pop. I love it! The late 90's were a kooky time. Just like Bomb was a kooky time. Arguably their worst album cover, but loved the music. The only thing I didn't "love" was the tour. Bono mangled some classics and I actually was slightly annoyed. Lol! COBL is one of my all time favorites.
 
I preferred the Vertigo tour to Elevation.

They actually busted out Gloria and An Cat Dubh, and Electric Co. for the first time in a while.

Plus, Zoo Station put back into heavy rotation.

The visuals were cooler, too.

And they had the benefit of touring an album with better songs.
 
mfw when i fly to philly for my first u2 show and finally get to see them play streets live for the first time, and bono goes off yelling a bunch of stuff about africa and shout-singing complete nonsense over the entire intro. :|

i'm jealous of those of you who were able to see the elevation tour.
 
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It was pretty amazing seeing U2 in GA in Miami and in Philly at the peak of my obsession. There was not such a thing as a bad set list or a bad song or a bad Bono blabberspeak. I have video snippets from both shows as a little piece of memorabilia. It’s very pre-social media cringe with my camcorder. I love it.
 
100%. I had taken an extended break from Interference, I don't know, a year ago. During that break I listened to every U2 album and other than a couple gripes here or there, I realized that U2 is way better than people think they are on this forum. It was such a refreshing revisiting of their catalog.

My brother and I, both huge U2 fans. did our U2 albums ranked, and our favorite U2 songs ranked. This is like Rosemary’s baby. I mean it was not easy. but listening through all the albums and really soaking it in and dissecting them, does give you a a new perspective on things and how songs and albums have stood the test of time.
Our choices were made made in the view of what we we would most enjoy listening to. Both of us have been listening since the mid 80’s.
My song list of top 20, leaves off about 18 of their top commercial/popular songs yet still includes many of them, which made me realize just how deep of a catalog of material they have.
Several albums are more a sum of their parts that makes them special to me. Like SOI, POP and Zooropa.
It was both an enjoyable and excruciating task, but also eye opening to really dig into things.
 
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It was pretty amazing seeing U2 in GA in Miami and in Philly at the peak of my obsession. There was not such a thing as a bad set list or a bad song or a bad Bono blabberspeak. I have video snippets from both shows as a little piece of memorabilia. It’s very pre-social media cringe with my camcorder. I love it.

I love this. I was fortunate enough to see them at Rosemont Horizon in Chicago in the little test leg of ZooTV. Just life changing. Then waited 3 days in line to get tickets for Outside Broadcast. Pure ecstasy seeing these shows(and their mind blowing opening acts) as a 16 and 17 year old kid. Saw every tour after multiple times up through 360. 360 being the one show that was sort of meh.
 
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