U2 packing it in?

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digitize said:
Exhibit A of how opinions on music can vary: in my mind, Love Me Do is proto-Rick Astley garbage.
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I won't seek out Love Me Do to listen to it as I find it rather plain, but I can respect the impact that it had among a generation who had never heard anything like it. The succession of Love Me Do/Please Please Me/I Want to Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There coming across the radio all in less than 16 months and the instant changes it brought to music must have been astounding to witness.

To me stating an opinion like that would be saying that Twelfth Night was proto-She's The Man garbage. To each their own :shrug:
 
Nick66 said:
Everything is just derivative of Richard Halley anyway. The last true original. Wish I know what happened to him.
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No way, "Grog banging on rock with other rock" is the last genuinely original song ever written.

I was a fan, then Grog's head got too big and he started chewing the funny mushrooms from the meadow in the next valley over and talking about "big ug in cave" too much. It got all too pretentious.
 
DaveC said:
Whatever, all this argument is going to do is piss me off, and I really don't have the energy or time for this today. Sorry for dredging up a post from 10 pages ago. We're all dying for something new and U2-related to talk about (seeing as this is at its heart a U2 message board and all), I get that. Resuming discussion about U2 "packing it in" in 3...2...1...

I really don't think U2 ought to pack it in, but I agree with other posters that if they really just made music that they want to make, rather than stressing over how it's going to do in the charts, I think they would save themselves a whole lot of grief. I know it's how they've always been but the sooner they realize that the general album-buying public nowadays doesn't want guitar rock from 50+ year-olds, the better their music will get.

I see lots of flashes in their post-ATYCLB stuff of brilliance (Love and Peace or Else was interesting in how different it was from their other material, and there were some great moments in songs like Breathe and No Line), but mostly those moments seem to be overproduced or jammed into songs that have been retouched and played with so much that they just get neutered and watered down or completely obscure that original nugget of genius they started off with.

I love U2, and I think they are deservedly in the top pantheon of bands (in my opinion, on the level of The Who/The Stones/Zeppelin - I think the Beatles and Bob Dylan are in a league of their own - and this is only considering "Rock" artists). I hope they put out another amazing album full of great songs that was totally worth the wait and makes up for the general mediocrity of their output from the past 12 years (Electrical Storm is U2's "jump the shark" moment for me). I'm not holding my breath though as all signs point to this being another "chart grasper", and I don't think the people who go out and buy albums nowadays really want guitar rock from middle aged men anymore.
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I think this is a great post.
Agreed.
 
Nick66 said:
Neil Peart has them all beat.

Has U2 ever written a song about an astronaut being pulled into a black hole and emerging in Olympus, where he witnesses the gods Apollo and Dionysus caught up in the immortal struggle between Mind and Heart?

What about a song featuring an air car being chased by thought police in a dystopian future where all automobiles are outlawed?

I didn't think so. Case closed.
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"Stand Up Comedy" covers all of these things!! Come on, give me a harder one...
 
mikal said:
Or "Never Gonna Give You Up".
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when i was a child, i misheard these lyrics as "Then I'm Gonna Give You Up" and i thought the whole song was about being emotionally abusive.


Then I'm gonna give you up
Then I'm gonna let you down
Then I'm gonna run around and desert you
Then I'm gonna make you cry
Then I'm gonna say goodbye
Then I'm gonna tell a lie and hurt you
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it's an even better song in that context.
 
Irvine511 said:
when i was a child, i misheard these lyrics as "Then I'm Gonna Give You Up" and i thought the whole song was about being emotionally abusive.
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:lmao:

When I was a kid I thought George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" went "back up I might siiiit onn youu".

I thought it was just about a really fat guy who was being extra cautious.

"Yo, that's my jam" - Bono, 2014.
 
DaveC said:
:lmao:

When I was a kid I thought George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" went "back up I might siiiit onn youu".

I thought it was just about a really fat guy who was being extra cautious.

"Yo, that's my jam" - Bono, 2014.
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Yes! I used to laugh about this song all the time!
 
LemonMelon said:
But boy do they wish they could.

Not Bruce's finest hour, but it's great, unforced pop music.
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He wrote it for Joey Ramone. Landau for pissed that he always gave away his best pop songs, so he kept it and put it on The River pretty much just to shut him up.

His first top 10 hit only made the album out of spite.
 
DaveC said:
You want people to take you seriously and this is the first line of your post?

You've got to be fucking trolling, there's no way if you know anything about music that you genuinely meant that. "Opinions" aside, that's just objectively ridiculous. :doh:
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So's.... your face!:wink:

Just kidding. Look you have a different musical taste than I have. I won't hold that against you. My comment was 10000% sincere. I would take those songs over any Beatles songs. I love the Beatles, but for me? They are worlds short of U2.
 
DaveC said:
That's fine if you aren't a fan of them, but to state that the Beatles "could never write...anything as good as" U2 is prima facie ridiculous, to the point where I am thinking Niceman has got to be trolling.

State your opinion, that's fine. You like every U2 song more than you like any Beatles song, and that's ok, you're allowed to think that.

But saying that "A Day in the Life" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" are objectively not as good as "Red Light" or "Miami" or "The Playboy Mansion"? REALLY?!?
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You're not arguing against me, because I never said anything like that.
 
digitize said:
I don't think that Niceman is claiming to be speaking "objectively", whatever that means when it comes to music. I personally don't think that The Beatles could ever write songs as good as U2's best songs. But "good" means "pleasing to me", because what else could it mean? We can discuss cultural relevance (The Beatles win) or influence (The Beatles win), but I'm not sure whether "good" can mean much more than "pleases me". At least when it comes to music. There are certain criteria that is search for in music, and, by and large, U2 fill them much better than The Beatles do, nearly universally. Your criteria may be different.

That being said, I don't think that anyone believes that, say, Womanfish is better than Hey Jude.


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
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I agree with everything you said above. And yes, of course, he's arguing against something I never said. There are plenty of great Beatles songs and some U2 songs suck! But the best U2 songs are better than the best Beatles songs.

Do I mean that objectively or subjectively? Well, anyone who would ask that doesn't understand what it means to have an opinion about art. All my opinions are sincere, and they're as subjective as any other opinion anyone has ever expressed about music.

I prefer U2 to the Beatles. To me, it's not even close.
 
digitize said:
Exhibit A of how opinions on music can vary: in my mind, Love Me Do is proto-Rick Astley garbage.



Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
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Yeah, Love Me Do is shit. And I want to Hold Your Hand is the source of all musical evil. I don't like pre-drugs Beatles even a little bit. IMO They were a boy band. THEN they got awesome.
 
Niceman said:
The Beatles could never write Bad, Running to Stand Still, Bullet the Blue Sky, With or Without You, All I Want is You, Acrobat, Love is Blindness or anything as good as them.

Do I like the Beatles? Sure, I love them. But I just don't see that they did anything as good as U2's best work. No one has.

U2's peers were always the other popular and relevant artists of the current day. Yes, early on they were The Police, Simple Minds, INXS. Later it was REM, Faith No More, Guns N Roses, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden. As time went on they outlasted them all and I think as of the 21st century you can only compare them to the upper echelons of Rock history: The Beatles, Floyd, Zeppelin.

IMO on their best days they wrote better songs than anyone else up there, they are a better live act, and they've outlasted them all.

I would rather have a new U2 album than a new Beatles, Stones, Floyd, Dylan, Who, or Zeppelin album, that's for sure!
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Just thought I'd re-post the post of mine which has been so poorly read. Did I say that all U2 songs are better than all Beatles songs? Or did I say, "Do I like the Beatles? Sure, I love them. But I just don't see that they did anything as good as U2's best work. No one has."

YOU BE THE JUDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:applaud::applaud::reject::applaud::applaud:

:lol:
 
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