Setlist Discussion Part II - Spoilers Allowed, Enter At Your Own Risk

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Commence discussion of all things setlist related - including leaked rehearsals and potential setlists, and/or video or photo from inside the venue.

No need to use SPOILER tags here. If you're here, you know what you're getting into.

[BOYO3221]

Bono Said in an Interview that the Fly would be returning. Any have any leaks?
Is he gonna dye his hair black again? Fly shades? etc

[LuckyNumber7]

I believe they intend to open with a medley of With a Shout into Miami. You heard it here folks.

In all seriousness, I do not know what the latest is. I cannot imagine them opening with Atomic City. Too high profile of a show to start with a song people don’t know.

[prbiker15]

So for those who didn’t see it in the previous thread, U2songs shared some info and Adam + Bram shared some setlist spoilers on U2-X Radio. A small recap below:

https://www.u2songs.com/news/spoiler..._video_content

U2songs says:
1. Achtung Baby not being rehearsed in order; songs will be spread out throughout the set
2. Zoo Station starting the show
3. Atomic City likely to be played in the encore
4. Vertigo, Beautiful Day, Streets and WOWY have been rehearsed and worked on
5. Very little acoustic stuff; show will be fairly high-energy
6. 5 songs from Zooropa have been worked on, including some lesser-played ones

Gavin Friday says:
1. A segment of the show will be Earth and climate change-related, with StormStock and Es Devlin providing content related to natural phenomenons and species facing extinction, etc.
2. Stage is based on Brian Eno’s turntable and will change colors throughout the show.
3. The show is overwhelming in certain parts and they paced it so that everyone can get a breather.

Adam and Bram say:
1. Beautiful Day will be played every night (no shit)
2. No PITNOL (Pride) for now - at least that was the plan when they did the U2 X-Radio interview

Carry on.

[DomCobb]

Wonder what the Zooropa songs are... The Wanderer, Lemon, Numb, Stay, Dirty Day? Would love to hear the title track personally.

Anyway to listen to the interview? I'm curious if people have more insight on the Pride decision. Does Larry have a particular attachment to that song? He does have a great part on it - but he has a great part on a lot of songs! I wonder if SBS has been left off (or kept as a rotational) for similar reasons. Personally I'm fine if either sit this out, classic songs that they are.

[88mph]

I would bet on exactly those five

[clerks]

I assume Larry joins them for encore during AC. That way they keep playing together streak alive -- unless there was a show or two Adam missed, but that doesn't count right?

[prbiker15]

A pretty big content spoiler and sneak peek that I won’t be watching but will share the article anyways:

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023...egas-sphere-u2

The latest Elvis extravaganza is the work of London-based artist Marco Brambilla: a four-minute, hyper-detailed, image-dense video starring the King in his different incarnations—from young army officer to swaggering movie star to bloated has-been—as well as the dream-city of Vegas itself, which somewhat similarly evolves from a small desert oasis into the neon epicenter of debacle-spectacle. In keeping with its themes of celebrity-image proliferation and saturation, King Size (2023) is Brambilla’s biggest video collage yet, using 1,000 looped video clips from different movies, including all 33 Elvis films.

“I’m using the language of excess,” says Brambilla. “I wanted it to be a spectacle in the tradition of Hollywood, Busby Berkeley and Irwin Allen. It’s really over the top.”

So is the technology. Made for a screen that spans 160,000 sq. ft and curves over 180 degrees, the video has an extremely high, 16K resolution. It was commissioned by the artistic director Willie Williams for the band U2 to play during their concerts at the Sphere (29 September-16 December), with other artists such as John Gerrard providing videos as well. King Size will play, appropriately enough, during the group’s 1991 hit “Even Better than the Real Thing”; Brambilla then plans to show the work at his Berlin gallery, Michael Fuchs Galerie, using an Elvis-inspired soundtrack.

The artist has worked with CGI (computer-generated imagery) for his earlier “digital-psychedelic” productions like Heaven’s Gate (2022). This time, he also used artificial intelligence (AI) to create likenesses of Elvis and the outlandish Vegas settings, with some memorable results. One image, created with the Midjourney AI image generator, shows Elvis rising from stacks of gold coins on a gaming table—his body made of gold. Another resulted from feeding the Stable Diffusion generator the prompt: “What would Elvis look like if he were sculpted by the artist who made the Statue of Liberty?”

Brambilla turned to AI instead of human researchers or video editors this time because, he says, he was on deadline to complete this project quickly, within four months. “What I found is that it was very good at sketching, making conceptual sketches and hybrid images. It often comes up with things that are very magical,” he says. “I was able to upload my library of 12,000 to 15,000 video clips into an AI engine and then train the AI to find images I wanted to use,” whether it was an image of a limo in front of a hotel or a neon sign in front of a sunset.

[clerks]

Seems some of my predictions are coming true. I enjoy being right more times than im wrong.

[DomCobb]

Some huge visual spoilers in this article
https://www.wallpaper.com/art/making...here-las-vegas

[prbiker15]

Originally Posted by DomCobb

Some huge visual spoilers in this article
https://www.wallpaper.com/art/making...here-las-vegas

Beat me to it! Looks like these are actual rehearsal pics.

I see “Everything You Know is Wrong” and Blond-o…umm, Bono, with Fly shades.

[DomCobb]

The show is broken into three parts, starting with Achtung Baby, then on to songs taken from this year’s Songs of Surrender album, which features revisited and reworked tracks from the band’s copious discography. For this section, the physical stage setting comes into itself. A scaled-up version of Brian Eno’s Turntable, a fully-function deck originally shown at Paul Stolper Gallery in London, it promises a unique light show. ‘It almost started as a joke, but we quickly realised it would be brilliant,’ says Williams. Just like the original, the stage Turntable cycles through an ever-changing series of ‘colourscapes’, generated by an algorithm.

The final section dips into the most richly anthemic seam of U2’s back catalogue. ‘Es has made a couple of wonderful pieces to close the show, and there’s work by John Gerrard and ILM as well,’ he says. ‘The building is a canvas we’ve been given, so we have to use it. So we don’t just deliver fireworks, we blow up the whole building.’ In this section, the full cinematic potential of the Sphere is unleashed. ‘It would be rude not to,’ Williams concedes. ‘Although simple graphics work really well, you can completely shapeshift the room.’

Insights into the setlist. I don't know if we should take this report as literal gospel, could be the writer's interpretation, since we've heard that Achutng Baby will be broken up rather than played in full.

Thoughts on which pictures go with which songs? The flags make one think of "Red Flag Day," although I wonder if those images actually belong to Streets.

[clerks]

Stage looks much bigger there... i just hope they show a lot of the band on the screens too and not just giant Elvis

[88mph]

This is starting to get really fucking exciting

[NightGardener]

Longtime lurker, I’m putting this here instead of the general chat since it might be considered a spoiler. The first surprise content for the Zoo TV Cinema has been revealed in an entertainingly anticlimactic series of posts by U2Start on Instagram.

[prbiker15]

What a surprise!

I forgot about that one. Should have been the Berlin eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE show.

[dan_smee]

lol. I’m shocked.

[JWR1992]

Lol how lame. They could’ve done something genuinely worthwhile like the Joshua Tree 2017 concert film or even U23D.

[clerks]

You mean the Joshua Tree concert DVD/Bluray that they never released?

[JWR1992]

Originally Posted by clerks

You mean the Joshua Tree concert DVD/Bluray that they never released?

Would’ve been a genuine surprise instead of the same content fans have already seen a million times.