I’ve been thinking a bit about people’s fears that U2 just don’t have it anymore. A lot of dislike among the long time fans of the period 2006-now. I know I am largely in the U2-apologist bucket, but I wanted to offer what I think is some context that offers some hope. To do this I will unpack the main gripes for each era, and without trying to invalidate those gripes, I think some sort of context or explanation shows that all is not lost for this next album:
2006 - window in the skies - the beginning of more simple, poppy music, sappy lyrics.
While WITS is not everyone’s cup of tea, I think the fact it came from Rubin sessions is quite important. He works in a way that is very different to U2’s preferred style. They clearly moved away from it after a short experiment, that also yielded an engagement with some odd time signatures (12/8?).
2009 - NLOTH - the issues here are really the underlying problem with the period up to 2021 - lyrically there is no ambiguity, literalness as forced poetry started here and some of the music was so over-worked it had no life left.
I think this is mainly a symptom that the songs just weren’t there. They lost the confidence after 5 years away to put out an album that just wasn’t going to cut it commercially and they don’t yet want to embrace an album that was built entirely on artistic coherence to a single vision. So they second guessed and made something worse than either option.
2014 - SOI - my only note here is that Apple meant that no one can observe this era free of context. Some good songs and a good concept that was DOA. Ordinary Love was a decent tune, relatively well received. As was Invisible.
2017 - SOE - Apple hangover is still a thing, this era suffered more from the variability in quality, and that may be a symptom of them trying to work quickly (but still second guessing). But I also think that the doomsaying perspective of Bono’s writing flaws, Edge disappearing etc is a bit misleading here. There were some great moments on this record, and they are indicators of a step back in the right direction that is only observably an issue on NLOTH and WITS.
2018-2025 - Ahimsa is a perfectly fine song. For many it and the YSSML are indications of a sharp descent. I contend that the 10 previous years meant that fans had no space or tolerance for that style of music, even though Ahimsa is actually a decent example of that style done ok.
During this period we also got SOS. What a great sign this work was REGARDLESS of your thoughts on the music itself. It showed more creative abandon, release of things that were sketches, some rough vocal takes, digging up songs we didn’t think they remembered existed. The documentary version of EBW was sublime.
Atomic City - what I would say here is that people should imagine a world where the last ten years didn’t exist. I think we’d have viewed this for what it was - a tongue in cheek callback to the era they were championing - the excesses of Vegas, the saturation of ZooTV, the fun and bombastic lyrics mirroring the thumping plod of a song that borrows equally from London Calling and Call Me. If we weren’t so desperate for them to correct these compounding issues we’d have viewed this song in a much different light.
Re-Assemble - here’s where the tide turns for mine. Luckiest Man in the World is actually an improvement on Mercy. He didn’t re-write lyrics that lost the magic - he enhanced them. They released an album full of touched up demoes. The music on them was at times a little clunky, but it wasn’t clunky because they over worked it. It was clunky because they didn’t. That is a HUGE difference.
Add all of this to recent quotes about not necessarily trying to be the biggest band in the world. I think they have learned some lessons and I think if people were in the right frame of mind they’d see this era for what it is. My fear is that they are too far gone for a lot of people to not listen while looking out for these flaws.
End of TED talk - I just think that the broad “u2 are lazy, second guess things, are too literal, chasing pop hits” version of the problem is overly simplistic, and I think signs of the last 3 years give me cause to think that it might be shifting to a better place. I just hope people are able to see it if it happens.
