Word to whoever said that if U2 played the POP album people would be like what? What planet are you on?? My guess is that a few of the 10 MILLION PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT POP might be at the concert. It was a huge record!! I saw Pop Mart and guess what, it was the 2nd sold out stadium show.
Every U2 record except for the first two and the last one are gigantic! They could pick 25 random songs and the crowd would know most if not all of them, and a bunch would be hits.
can't you see that they are doing the same old thing, and that they grew their reputation by being unpredictable? That they never gave people what they wanted?
You're proving the argument that U2 fans are the most ignorant music fans around.
1.)I'm all for them playing a couple Pop songs- preferably Gone, Please or Last Night On Earth, but Pop is definitely less well known than most U2 albums. Boy is a bigger, more famous and well known among the fan base and general public album than Pop is at this point.
Also, Popmart, though I personally loved it, came far from selling out many nights, especially in America. It was, in terms of percentages(maybe not raw number because it was stadiums), U2's least attended tour.
Zooropa was also far from a huge album. It certainly did not have any big time radio hits on it, and most of the general public/casual fan crowd viewed it as a weird little side project for the AB/Zoo TV era.
U2 has many, many people attending shows these days who were fans of all the 80s work and checked out either in 1991 with AB, 1993 with Zooropa or 1997 with Pop and didn't come back until ATYCLB.
2.)There are plenty of songs they're not playing that the crowd would either know or not know and respond to well because they're great live songs(Electric Co, Ultraviolet, etc). I agree with you there. But they definitely couldn't pick 25 songs at random and have all or even most people know them with a stadium tour of the size of 360. No way.
3.)U2 has always played the hits, and they've always stayed away from loading up the set with deep tracks and obscure b-sides. They've played some, for sure, but they're not Pearl Jam or Bruce.
And with U2, it's harder because they, unlike most other bands their age, still release relevant, well selling albums with hits on them. Think of the songs since 2000 that younger people attending the shows are going to need to hear- BD, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo and Elevation. Bruce and Tom Petty don't have this problem, nor do the Stones or John Fogerty or Paul McCartney, etc. You get the idea.
As is the case with any act of U2's stature and career length, there are songs that people coming to a U2 show expect to hear. That is just as fact, and it can't be changed. Any other view is entirely unrealistic.
Take this list(I may be forgetting some hits/warhorses but the basic idea is there)
I Will Follow, New Year's Day, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride, Streets, Bullet, WOWY, Still Haven't Found, Angel of Harlem, All I Want Is You, Desire, Mysterious Ways, Until The End, Beautiful Day, Elevation, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo.
They have to play not all, but 75% of these at each show. So that's 12 songs out of 24 or 25. So while they play the hits/warhorses, they definitely do not just stick to the hits. You never see all 17-20 of them.
And U2's set lists have always been pretty much done the same way. There is a basic outline, but a few songs are rotated in and out, played in a little different order, etc each night. The Boy, War and TUF tours had some of their most static set lists ever. JT a little more variety. Zoo TV very static save for the rotating piece on the B-stage, Popmart even more static, Elevation about the same variety as JT. Lovetown and Vertigo are really the only tours where they really mixed things up.
360 is easily their least static set list for a stadium tour. Just look at all the different songs they played in 2010 as compared to 2009.
My complaint is really not with variety, which has always been about the same or could use maybe just a little improvement, or with the hits, because that's just ridiculous to think they won't play them.
My complaint with 360 is how they've chosen the other half of the show that isn't the hits/warhorses. ATYCLB overload with no Pop or Zooropa tracks even though they'd fit very well. No digging deep into War and JT, which they definitely need to do. They don't need to keep playing Miss Sarajevo and Walk On every single night. They could stand to replace the MLK/Scarlet slot with something more substantial, etc.
Most importantly, please understand that I am not saying they're perfect or that I'd jump off a bridge if they told me to. If I were writing the set list, it would be different than it is right now. Probably not different in the way most people here want(the 1st thing I'd do is get 2 Hearts and Trip Through Your Wires in there), but certainly different.
I personally agree—although there is a reason they play the songs from their latest album—because it's the one that's supposed to be played on tour since it's the one just released. 
Aww, we have a new little troll on our hands. 
I'm just gonna edit what I wrote because it's not even worth it. 
