SOE 25 - The Freakout

[BigMacPhisto]

Well, we already know the video for the single is going to be that actress walking around in a jacket pretending to be a big U2 fan...almost seems more like a tour promo then a video for a single....but then I realize that all of their new music is effectively just a commercial for the tours since nobody really cares about their recent LPs outside of the hardcore fan base.

It kind of says it all when some girls in their 20s next to me at an SOI show were singing along to none of the new stuff and then went crazy for "City of Blinding Lights"...it's a long gone era when U2 could write a masterpiece.

 

[clerks]

"There's been a lot of talk about this next song. This song is not a terror song. This song is Blackout."

 

[Gonna Run 2 U]

"There's been a lot of talk about this next song. This song is not a terror song. This song is Blackout."

Maybe too much talk

 

[KUEFC09U2]

Well, we already know the video for the single is going to be that actress walking around in a jacket pretending to be a big U2 fan...almost seems more like a tour promo then a video for a single....but then I realize that all of their new music is effectively just a commercial for the tours since nobody really cares about their recent LPs outside of the hardcore fan base.

It kind of says it all when some girls in their 20s next to me at an SOI show were singing along to none of the new stuff and then went crazy for "City of Blinding Lights"...it's a long gone era when U2 could write a masterpiece.

Opposite for me in Glasgow, where really in to the new stuff, it's almost like your posts are trying to push for a reaction

 

[TinKnight]

It's not U2's fault.

Rock is dead. It lasted longer than people thought. But music has moved on from rock, or at least in the vein of rock that U2 writes. There's still popular rock bands, but they've adopted a style akin to pop music. Think Maroon 5 or Train, which are "bands" but they're really just a platform for their lead singers with instrumentation underneath that may or may not be relevant to the actual instrument they play. It's a producer's market.

That being said, U2 is a pop band. I think they still can produce a hit. But they have to ignore their worst instincts and work with people who "get it", all while still trying to feel organic.

 

[mikal]

I'm sure they'll either give details next week or have decided to wait on giving the details until a later time.

 

[Bubble]

"You are the best thing about me" September 6? next night? NFL season opener.

Good chance a snippet will be play during the broadcast

 

[Hewson]

Wouldn't it be funny if they pulled an Invisible. Release the song and then.......


.......nothing.

A total news Blackout!

 

[CMIS]

Wouldn't it be funny if they pulled an Invisible. Release the song and then.......


.......blackout.

Fixed

 

[Nick66]

Fixed

 

[Registered Dude]

I'm sure they'll either give details next week or have decided to wait on giving the details until a later time.

truth bombs abound..

 

[Nick66]

"You are the best thing about me" September 6? next night? NFL season opener.

Good chance a snippet will be play during the broadcast

Where have I heard this before?

They'll play the NFL opener! Superbowl! They'll announce the new record on the first night of Jimmy Fallon's new show!

Crikey this is deja vu all over again.

 

[clerks]

I love talk about what a song is about because as a writer (humble brag) and a fan of any creative work you all know that 99% of the time what you think they were trying to do in a song is wrong.

First few listens I feel it's a happy song about the band performing on stage and just getting lose in their 2 hour performance. Blacking out into it.

But it could easily be about Bono's trip to the dentist. Or Adam drunk in 1988.

It sounds too happy to me to be about the world ending. But what do I know.

Also can anyone explain to me what the fuck Get On Your Boots is about? I think it's just about bad lyrics and terrible lead single that I still haven't gotten over. I tried to like that song so much and failed.

Blackout keeps getting better the more I listen. When Bono "moans" as I call it on songs, I'm in.

 

[2861U2]

Also can anyone explain to me what the fuck Get On Your Boots is about? I think it's just about bad lyrics and terrible lead single that I still haven't gotten over. I tried to like that song so much and failed.

Something about being at a carnival and seeing fighter jets overhead. And women need to rule the world or something. I don't really know or care. Boots is literally their worst album song, IMO.

 

[TinKnight]

Also can anyone explain to me what the fuck Get On Your Boots is about? I think it's just about bad lyrics and terrible lead single that I still haven't gotten over. I tried to like that song so much and failed.

I always thought that Boots was about emptiness of fetishizing the "sexiness" of war. Contrasting fun imagery with something very terrifying.

But it's a mess so no one really knows.

 

[rennowba]

I always thought that Boots was about emptiness of fetishizing the "sexiness" of war. Contrasting fun imagery with something very terrifying.

But it's a mess so no one really knows.

Wasn't boots about women being powerful and taking over the world.

To be honest boots isn't about anything is it. It's pants

 

[Y2K]

Get On Your Boots is about:

Thematically, the song is about Bono taking his family on vacation to France and witnessing warplanes flying overhead at the start of the Iraq War; some of the lyrics are from the perspective of a man writing a letter to his first love as he relates witnessing the same event.

 

[trevgreg]

Seems like there could've been a better song with that concept though. Musically. Lyrically. Everything.

 

[clerks]

It's the perfect song for if this wasn't U2, I'd never listen to it again. So Blackout and the songs we've heard of on this album (and this last album) are really great considering to me we hit a low point with that 360 album that I don't even want to name. I really really loved that IE tour and can't wait for part 2.

I'm probably alone in that I saw the JT tour and it just felt off in every way to me. Great to hear album, but I couldn't help thinking the reason they said they did this tour and not the E tour right away and it made it hard for me to focus. U2 is / was supposed to make me feel better about the world. Sadly last show just reminded me about the world's issues... if that makes any sense.

Anyway -- how's that for a fun derailment?

 

[Nick66]

Debating what this song is about reminds me of the great SOI album cover interpretation debate of '14.

 

[rennowba]

Let's stop talking about boots leave that song in the cemetery

 

[FazeCraze]

The Blackout owns Volcano. Can't say yet how it compares to Vertigo.

Other than that, I do miss the sonic magic of the 80s and 90s, but 21st century U2 has its pleasures, and they do rock as hard as anyone. It is, indeed, very masculine. Just throbbing with peen.

I just spit my lunch all over my computer reading your last sentence. Dying.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Blackout does sound like what Volcano would sound like if Volcano didn't suck.

 

[super fly guy]

Opposite for me in Glasgow, where really in to the new stuff, it's almost like your posts are trying to push for a reaction

Same here in Dundee,love it!

 

[coleloco]

It's starting to really grow on me. It gets a little repetitive toward the end -- I think an Edge solo would have been better than repeating the chorus. But it really is starting to grow on me. I didn't like it at all on the first listen.

 

[super fly guy]

Well it still says on U2.com first single next week,so I won't panic just yet!

 

[Northside]

Same here in Dundee,love it!

Yeah, I saw I&E twice in New York, and I was taken aback by how well the new material went over. A ton of people were screaming along to the Raised by Wolves chorus, for example. It made me think the Apple release gambit actually worked...

 

[popacrobat]

are people really panicking? come on.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

are people really panicking? come on.

Are you that surprised?

 

[Hewson]