Great quote about the effect of Bono's activism on the music...

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namkcuR

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I found this while googling other U2-related things...it's just some non-famous music reviewer on some obscure site, but I love this quote...he voices his concerns about the effects of Bono's activism on the music without in any way putting Bono's activism down...

"Bono said during the election that he could get more accomplished by being non-partisan and I thought that was an interesting stance — and I really do admire him for his humanitarian efforts. His heart is in the right place and he's using his celebrity as a key to open doors that the rest of us can't, and you simply have to applaud him for that. But the desire to be non-partisan, or essentially everything to everyone, and the fact that every interview with him has become a mechanism for firing out a slew of tired sound bites, has seeped into the music and made it pedestrian."

LINK: http://www.usedwigs.com/listenup_26.html
 
Conveniently he forgets Edge did the large chunk of the music for Bomb. It may be the album with least Bono involvement so far.
If his activism really got into the music, how come we've only had a single lyric directly related to the issues since 98?
 
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U2girl said:
Conveniently he forgets Edge did the large chunk of the music for Bomb. It may be the album with least Bono involvement so far.
If his activism really got into the music, how come we've only had a single lyric directly related to the issues since 98?

Perhaps this is why the music is more pedestrian -- because it doesn't have the attention of all members. And lyrics don't have to be explicitly direct to relate to his social/political causes. :shrug:
 
I don't think Bono contributes 50% or more to the music, especially as he spent so much time on his activism. I don't see the point of blaming the music exclusively on the one member of the band who spent less time in studio than anyone else. You know... why not blame the guy(s) who actually wrote the album and was/were in the studio the whole time?

As for lyrics, for all the talk of his activism getting into the way of music (specifically the lyrics, as he writes almost all of them), he sure talks little of Africa on U2's albums. The themes of faith/family/mortality would have ended up on the last albums either way IMO.

I remember a quote from Adam in 2000, when he said Edge tends to do his homework nowadays and bring chord structures in studio. Might explain a lot.

:shrug:
 
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It's called the Phenomenon of Blaming the Frontman.
Same crap happened when Creed hit the skids.
Happens all the time - the most visible is the most vulnerable and culpable.
 
It's an interesting point, but I still think the main reason the music sounds so pedestrian now is in reaction to how the public failed to respond to Pop. They are now trying to please as many people as possible and are making themselves bland in the process.
 
i disagree. i think U2's music is daring in that they know how to change over time. Beuatiful Day doesn't like it belongs on Pop and LAPOE doesn't sound like it belongs on ATYCLB.

activism hurts music? well so can drugs and alcoholism and Yoko Ono.

so now their music can mean something to their world. bono doesnt just talk about it, he does something about it. why do people want him just to be their court jester?
 
namkcuR said:

"Bono said during the election that he could get more accomplished by being non-partisan and I thought that was an interesting stance — and I really do admire him for his humanitarian efforts. His heart is in the right place and he's using his celebrity as a key to open doors that the rest of us can't, and you simply have to applaud him for that. But the desire to be non-partisan, or essentially everything to everyone, and the fact that every interview with him has become a mechanism for firing out a slew of tired sound bites, has seeped into the music and made it pedestrian."

LINK: http://www.usedwigs.com/listenup_26.html

That's the quote of a backward-thinking wuss who'd rather hide out on one side of the road with his hermetically sealed buddies.

I'm all about picking sides when the time is right, but for shit's sake the whole world has turned into a slew of encampments. This guy is just an advocate for that tired mentality.

How come nobody ever considers that the middle of the road could possibly be the most dangerous place to be? Probably because most think like that goof.

Think about it, since the whole world has essentially turned into a my politics vs. your politics, my music tastes vs. your music tastes, my religion vs. your religion, my this vs. your that and on and on. Anybody who dares taking the middle of the road, braving the arrows being slung from one side to the other in an effort to find some sort of common ground has got to be doing something interesting. That's not a place I'd find a mere pedestrian, I'd dare say.

Now some might say that this is more reflective of Bono's activism than of U2's music, but I'd disagree. I'd argue that they're pretty much one and the same. The philosophies and ideas that guide Bono's activism are the exact same ones that guide U2's music of late. It's weird to me when people applaud one and not the other since they're so obviously driven by the same things.

Bono brings right-wingers and left-wingers together through his activism. HTDAAB attempts to make the whole world sing. Exact same philosophy. Bono has brought a third way to the modern political spectrum. HTDAAB is the blueprint of how that happened.
 
Great quote. I think this is why so many hardcore U2 fans went gaga over Mercy -- it harkens back to the dark, moody, artsy, up-in-the-slipstream lyrics of the AB-Zooropa-Pop days ("What's the use of religion / if you're any good"). So many of the last 2 albums' lyrics are banal, and make me cringe. It's like I'm reading a Hallmark card, or watching Oprah or something.
"Some things you shouldn't get too good at / like smiling, crying or celebrity" and "Freedom has a scent / like the top of a newborn baby's head"... yikes.

(Standard disclaimer -- yes I idolize Bono, and U2, but just think the lyrics have gotten lazy and weak in spots.)
 
LyricalDrug said:
Great quote. I think this is why so many hardcore U2 fans went gaga over Mercy -- it harkens back to the dark, moody, artsy, up-in-the-slipstream lyrics of the AB-Zooropa-Pop days ("What's the use of religion / if you're any good"). So many of the last 2 albums' lyrics are banal, and make me cringe. It's like I'm reading a Hallmark card, or watching Oprah or something.
"Some things you shouldn't get too good at / like smiling, crying or celebrity" and "Freedom has a scent / like the top of a newborn baby's head"... yikes.

(Standard disclaimer -- yes I idolize Bono, and U2, but just think the lyrics have gotten lazy and weak in spots.)

I fail to see how Mercy is some kind of return to the dark, moody, interesting U2 of old. It sounds like exactly what it is - something from the HTDAAB sessions that didn't happen to make the album. It would have sounded right at home on HTDAAB if they had put it on there.
 
Bono's shades said:


I fail to see how Mercy is some kind of return to the dark, moody, interesting U2 of old. It sounds like exactly what it is - something from the HTDAAB sessions that didn't happen to make the album. It would have sounded right at home on HTDAAB if they had put it on there.

Well, I'm talking purely about the lyrics, and really just the intro. "I was drinking some wine / and it turned to blood / what's the use of religion / if you're any good" has got to be Bono's most creative line in years.
 
This seems like it may end up becoming a Bomb discussion thread.

I think what was said in the article wasn't that the music is purely mechanic activism (although Crumbs... fits into that category nicely, and, lyrically, Love and Peace.), but that the music as whole has suffered from being daring at all, which it has, and I agree with him 100%. Bono always talks about other older groups retiring into a routine of safeness, and that they won't, they'll continue to dig deep, but U2 does too, albeit a little deeper.

Take Sometimes... It's safe to say that everybody on this board knows the history of Bono and his father. Honestly, do you think what he really wanted to say about him/to him he put into that song, sugar coated over with all the big belt buckle strings? Just listen to the Bomb Outtakes and you can literally hear them weiny up every single song, avoiding any hint that anybody may possibly be affected by this song in a controversial stance, to the point of avoding. "This is too loud!" (All Because..)
 
Bono's shades wrote: fail to see how Mercy is some kind of return to the dark, moody, interesting U2 of old. It sounds like exactly what it is - something from the HTDAAB sessions that didn't happen to make the album. It would have sounded right at home on HTDAAB if they had put it on there.
i 2nd that. mercy imho is totally overrated. nothing special at all and another lame repetetive melody.
 
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MrBrau1 said:


The part in-between the lines.

That may be true, but I think what that means for Bono to tell the truth aka how he really feels, which we know he isn't. Bono has become more political in a "no comment" kinda way.
 
Earnie Shavers said:
Fucking hell, I could have written that.

Yeah, I just went back and read the entire thing, not just the bit quoted in the original post. It's almost spooky. Has the writer been reading my posts on Interference or something? :wink:
 
MrBrau1 said:

The part in-between the lines.

Oh yeah, 'between the lines'. Between the lines I read that he also clearly doesn't like Bono's hair or the Discotheque video.
I think he's just saying the writing is dull, middle of the road. Whether it's the creativity in the music itself, or the tackling of it's topics, whether it's politics, sex, or whether pineapple ever has a rightful place on pizza or not. I think he's saying that the appeal to the masses mindset that has (most would agree rightfuly - including this guy) found it's way into Bono's politics, has worked it's way too far into the bands music. As formulatic, cliched and aimed at the middle as the average Bono interview/speech has become, so has the average U2 song. I don't even think he's suggesting that Bono is to blame, or that the two have a direct link, just that as the need in one area appears to have become a certain thing, and I guess, the culture or 'the plan' whether deliberate or not, has also become that in the other as well. I think he's just found an analogy that's conveniently very close to home.

And yes, it's all opinion. He's not right, I'm not right, but we're not wrong and those who find the same creativity and depth in Vertigo as they do in the Fly, or in City of Blinding Lights as they do in The Unforgettable Fire are not right or wrong either. Pineapple shouldn't ever be on pizza though. That's fact.
 
"Pineapple shouldn't ever be on pizza though. That's fact."

:wave: Imagine this with only one finger up. Only U2's biggest fans dig fruit on cheese. Awesome post, too.
 
If there was a tune with some clever, or even wide open smack on Bush, he'd be praising the record. It's a punk rock web site. It's all about attitude. He praised "Pop" as a great record. That's all the proof I needed.
 
MrBrau1 said:
If there was a tune with some clever, or even wide open smack on Bush, he'd be praising the record. It's a punk rock web site. It's all about attitude. He praised "Pop" as a great record. That's all the proof I needed.

That's a little judgemental.
 
MrBrau1 said:
If there was a tune with some clever, or even wide open smack on Bush, he'd be praising the record. It's a punk rock web site. It's all about attitude. He praised "Pop" as a great record. That's all the proof I needed.

Gee, I must have missed the part on Pop where conservatives were being bashed.
 
MrBrau1 said:
If there was a tune with some clever, or even wide open smack on Bush, he'd be praising the record. It's a punk rock web site. It's all about attitude. He praised "Pop" as a great record. That's all the proof I needed.

Way to discuss based on something that doesn't exist. The fact that he likes Pop = Original of the Species would be sooooo much better to him if the lyric were simply changed to being about Bush as a monkey? You're normally pretty good at making your case, but you're not even challenging what he's saying, just assuming that perhaps there's a chance, not necessarily based on anything else he's said, but you know, a chance he might also say something else and that you are going to make your judgement based on that.

a) He thinks the Bomb is a dull, lifeless, cliched, formulatic and thus substandard record.
b) He otherwise clearly loves U2, including All That You Can't Leave Behind.

How you get to

c) Well he'd love the Bomb if it had a Bush bash because he likes Pop so that makes sense.

I don't know.
 
Earnie Shavers said:

Original of the Species would be sooooo much better to him if the lyric were simply changed to being about Bush as a monkey?

That sort of proves my point. If Bono had 1 line bashing Conservatives or Liberals or any political party he's been working with, the whole notion that his bipartisian stance is seeping into his music falls flat.
 
The idea that the music/lyrics will take a shocking turn just because Bono will/would spend more time in the studio is far fetched.

If the politics have come into the lyrics/music now, with Bono spending so much time apart from the band, well, better watch out should he really lock himself up in the studio with the band.
 
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