U2 working with pop songwriter for new album

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doesn't anybody meet the band any more?

"Hi! Big fan. What do your new songs sound like? I'm excited to hear them."
 
HBK-79 said:
I wasn't referring to song quality or song structure. I was talking about the overall vibe of each of those three songs. Elevation, Vertigo, and GOYB are all driving rockers designed to get a stadium full of people jumping.
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Is that what Get On Your Boots was trying to do?
 
Rachel D. said:
I think GOYB's lyrics were too negative compared to BD and Vertigo. A song mentioning Satan, bomb scares, ghosts, and dark dreams isn't really very catchy to sing along to, especially to the average Top 40 listener. (When I say that, a soccer mom with a minivan full of kids comes to mind.) And I'm not saying that U2 should try to appeal to that demographic (I wish they wouldn't worry about that so much), but I just think that maybe that's why GOYB didn't catch on and BD and Vertigo did.
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foster the people - pumped up kicks lyrics - YouTube

it wasn't that the song's lyrics were too dark or negative. it's that the song stunk. it had no real hook, it was strange, disjointed, and confusing... all of the worst possible things you could possibly think of when thinking of a hit single.

how it was chosen as the single baffles the mind.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
foster the people - pumped up kicks lyrics - YouTube

it wasn't that the song's lyrics were too dark or negative. it's that the song stunk. it had no real hook, it was strange, disjointed, and confusing... all of the worst possible things you could possibly think of when thinking of a hit single.

how it was chosen as the single baffles the mind.
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:up: my teenage daughter loves this song! she's taught it herself on the bass - i'd not heard of them before then!
 
Niceman said:
Achtung Baby is 12 singles.
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Not at all. Starting with the lead "single", for example.


As for the charges that come up every so often

- Springsteen and Pearl Jam do a live show differently than U2. The comparisons are silly (frankly, given how weak they tend to sound live when they play unrehearsed, they're better off to sticking to most of the set being practised tightly). And the fans were given plenty of treats the last few tours.

- Hold your horses re: Stones and Aerosmith teritorry. U2 is 20 or so years younger, and unlike those, well known for shaking it up with each new decade (and unlike those, their last album deemed great wasn't written a few decades ago). Like working with DM. I still vote for Rubin but if DM is working out for them...bring it on.

- U2 did exactly what they wanted to do, as always. You win some, you lose some.

- If Boots is supposed to be "experimental"...they'd better think again. I always thought it desperately wanted to follow Vertigo's lead, except it failed.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
foster the people - pumped up kicks lyrics - YouTube

it wasn't that the song's lyrics were too dark or negative. it's that the song stunk. it had no real hook, it was strange, disjointed, and confusing... all of the worst possible things you could possibly think of when thinking of a hit single.

how it was chosen as the single baffles the mind.
Click to expand...

I agree that it was a bad single, but those qualities do not make a bad song for everyone.
 
U2girl said:
Not at all. Starting with the lead "single", for example.
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The Fly was a great single. Out of 12 songs on the album, The Fly, Mysterious Ways, EBTTRT, WGRYWH, One, UTEOTW were all radio singles. (UTEOW may not have been an official "single," but it was released to radio stations for play. I still have one of the CDs.) That's 6 of the 12 right there, and the other 6 were all radio friendly too.

I remember seeing copies for sale back in the day which proudly announced that the album contained the singles: and it then proudly announced half of the album! I remember radio stations playing the album all the way through!
 
U2girl said:
- Springsteen and Pearl Jam do a live show differently than U2. The comparisons are silly (frankly, given how weak they tend to sound live when they play unrehearsed, they're better off to sticking to most of the set being practised tightly). And the fans were given plenty of treats the last few tours.
Click to expand...

If this is a political way of saying that U2's musicianship is not on par with the other two, therefore they are better off sticking to tightly rehearsed sets, because they're simply not capable of going too far off the leash... then yes, I agree with your assessment here.


But the point of bringing them up here is simply to state that there are other acts out there who perform anything and everything from their back catalog, yet still seem to do quite well for themselves. Nothing more.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
Link to video - removed for space
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I agree with you Headache.

However, I don't want to dismiss lyrics completely.

"Discotehque" was similar in its day. That song may not have been quite as disjointed as GOYB. But U2 doing a song about "discos" is probably all the public saw. In this case, the public saw U2 doing a song about "getting dressed". Add in the disjointed aspects of GOYB and it's little wonder it flopped.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
If this is a political way of saying that U2's musicianship is not on par with the other two, therefore they are better off sticking to tightly rehearsed sets, because they're simply not capable of going too far off the leash... then yes, I agree with your assessment here.


But the point of bringing them up here is simply to state that there are other acts out there who perform anything and everything from their back catalog, yet still seem to do quite well for themselves. Nothing more.
Click to expand...

Pearl Jam are all incredible musicians, but I think U2 are better players than they are given credit for. They probably don't have the same natural ability as PJ (or a lot of other bands) but they've been doing it for 35 years so they must be able to jam and play unrehearsed. I think the main reason they don't switch things up is because their shows are a tight arc and everything has to be in sync with the visuals. Granted, for every song that fills a particular spot they have several others that do the same thing. The main problem might be in the four of them deciding what they should play. It's like when you're trying to decide where to go for dinner and you want Mexican and your dining companions wants Thai, so you end up settling on the same Japanese place you always go.
 
U2girl said:
- Hold your horses re: Stones and Aerosmith teritorry. U2 is 20 or so years younger, and unlike those, well known for shaking it up with each new decade (and unlike those, their last album deemed great wasn't written a few decades ago).
Click to expand...

No need to hold our horses. Just crank up the horsepower in the critical part of your brain and you can see it. Do you know what relativity is?

If I say that the Stones last relevant album was Tattoo You, that would be quite accurate. So you're talking 30 years ago. Aerosmith's last relevant album was 20 years ago (Get A Grip). And your argument is essentially saying "U2 have X number of years to go before they reach there..." Without figuring that both The Stones and Aerosmith had already been a band for 20 years by their last relevant albums. You're not judging them relative to each other.

U2 would be somewhere around the Dirty Work version of the Stones.
Dirty Work was one album removed (Undercover) from Tattoo You and was really the first step into chart irrelevance (in terms of hit songs). And it had been just 22 years since their first album, whereas it will be at least 32 for U2. Think about that. Jagger was 53 then. Bono will be 53 next year.

Steven Tyler is only 5 years younger than Jagger. He was about 45 when they made their last relevant album. Same rough age as Bono during the Vertigo tour. If apples were to apples, U2 would currently be in their Nine Lives phase. An irrelevant album released 15 years ago that largely tanked Aerosmith.

To sum: This is not a present day comparison between present day Aerosmith, present day Stones and present day U2. It is a relative comparison of current day U2 and the relative equivalent stages of those two bands. I can also draw (different) U2 comparisons to both Bon Jovi and Metallica. But anytime there is anything remotely smelling of 'criticism' (by way of negative comparisons), we end up spending page after page of posts having to justify the obvious to some deluded U2er that got their feelings hurt by the mere mention of (just say) Radiohead.

Mind you, I don't give a fuck about U2 being relevant. I hope they make the best album of their lives and if they become totally irrelevant in the process, I couldn't care less. But for them, it matters. I just hope they decide that's it's better to be more like the Stones (caricature) than desperately seeking the 'U2' of old by contriving for "hits". For the record, I say again, I don't think U2 are actually outsourcing pop hacks for songs.
 
Edge lives and dies by his rig. He can't change the delay without it being synced beforehand; think of what a delay that's out of sync with Larry would do to the rhythm of the track and you'll realize that asking U2 to "mix it up like other bands do" likely seems a bit greedy to them. And playing without it risks losing the atmosphere and texture that Edge so reliably provides.

This is probably one of the reasons that Pop tracks are performed so sparingly and why Popmart was such a pain in the ass for the first leg. Have you ever looked into what it took to make those sounds happen?

Howie B created sequenced patterns of The Edge's guitar work, which The Edge, having never done it before, found very interesting. Howie B explained, "Sometimes I would sample, say, a guitar, but it wouldn't come back sounding like a guitar; it might sound more like a pneumatic drill, because I would take the raw sound and filter it, really destroy the guitar sound, and rebuild it into something completely different."
Click to expand...

U2 aren't hacks; they're fearful of falling short of the album versions and if they feel they can't replicate them, they tend to avoid them. Edge has stated that When I Look At The World has never been played live because he forgot how to recreate its guitar tone. Do I think this is a bullshit excuse? Sometimes, and I tend to not be a fan of note-for-note recreations of studio versions at live shows, but it's the reality of the matter.
 
That's an excuse for sine songs, not for every non warhorse song from pre-achtung baby that has been ignored for decades.

For the record I dint think U2 are hacks... I do think the sum of the whole is greater than any of the parts. And that's why they don't feel safe stepping out of their comfort zone live. And that's why they keep it simple and overly rehearsed.

Hey, they put in a hell of a show. I always said that if they're gonna do static sets then bring back the multimedia clusterfuck extravaganza. They did just that. I just wish I could hear some of their incredible back catalog performed live again.
 
U2DMfan said:
No need to hold our horses. Just crank up the horsepower in the critical part of your brain and you can see it. Do you know what relativity is?

If I say that the Stones last relevant album was Tattoo You, that would be quite accurate. So you're talking 30 years ago. Aerosmith's last relevant album was 20 years ago (Get A Grip). And your argument is essentially saying "U2 have X number of years to go before they reach there..." Without figuring that both The Stones and Aerosmith had already been a band for 20 years by their last relevant albums. You're not judging them relative to each other.

U2 would be somewhere around the Dirty Work version of the Stones.
Dirty Work was one album removed (Undercover) from Tattoo You and was really the first step into chart irrelevance (in terms of hit songs). And it had been just 22 years since their first album, whereas it will be at least 32 for U2. Think about that. Jagger was 53 then. Bono will be 53 next year.

Steven Tyler is only 5 years younger than Jagger. He was about 45 when they made their last relevant album. Same rough age as Bono during the Vertigo tour. If apples were to apples, U2 would currently be in their Nine Lives phase. An irrelevant album released 15 years ago that largely tanked Aerosmith.

To sum: This is not a present day comparison between present day Aerosmith, present day Stones and present day U2. It is a relative comparison of current day U2 and the relative equivalent stages of those two bands. I can also draw (different) U2 comparisons to both Bon Jovi and Metallica. But anytime there is anything remotely smelling of 'criticism' (by way of negative comparisons), we end up spending page after page of posts having to justify the obvious to some deluded U2er that got their feelings hurt by the mere mention of (just say) Radiohead.

Mind you, I don't give a fuck about U2 being relevant. I hope they make the best album of their lives and if they become totally irrelevant in the process, I couldn't care less. But for them, it matters. I just hope they decide that's it's better to be more like the Stones (caricature) than desperately seeking the 'U2' of old by contriving for "hits". For the record, I say again, I don't think U2 are actually outsourcing pop hacks for songs.
Click to expand...

What this guy said. Times ten million.
 
Hollow Island said:
Pearl Jam are all incredible musicians, but I think U2 are better players than they are given credit for. They probably don't have the same natural ability as PJ (or a lot of other bands) but they've been doing it for 35 years so they must be able to jam and play unrehearsed. I think the main reason they don't switch things up is because their shows are a tight arc and everything has to be in sync with the visuals. Granted, for every song that fills a particular spot they have several others that do the same thing. The main problem might be in the four of them deciding what they should play. It's like when you're trying to decide where to go for dinner and you want Mexican and your dining companions wants Thai, so you end up settling on the same Japanese place you always go.
Click to expand...

The visuals excuse was a good one... until they played the same static sets on Elevation.
 
Fans of old artists fret about the Rolling Stones WAY too much. Not sure there's any real point in it. The Stones get grief now cause people enjoy ripping on old people, especially the pop music world. They could put out a masterpiece and it wouldn't matter. The public wouldn't have it. You get to a certain age and that's all that matters: you're old. It's rather sad.

I do wish there were some cosmic equalizer that wouldn't allow someone to make the Stone comparison w/o first proving to the universe that they'd actually listened to a Stones record from the past 20 years. That would get rid of 99.99% of their mentions. Some of their newer stuff is pretty good.

It's really funny cause in country music age becomes a benefit. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, etc. Some of their best stuff came after they were in their 70's. If someone told Dwight Yoakam he was in danger of becoming Willie Nelson he'd take it as a complement, as he should. Loretta Lynn fans enjoyed her working with Jack White, they didn't dissect it into nothing with accusations of trying to be hip or recapture lost youth.

rock fans have a major glitch.
 
Von Schloopen said:
Fans of old artists fret about the Rolling Stones WAY too much. Not sure there's any real point in it. The Stones get grief now cause people enjoy ripping on old people, especially the pop music world. They could put out a masterpiece and it wouldn't matter. The public wouldn't have it. You get to a certain age and that's all that matters: you're old. It's rather sad.

I do wish there were some cosmic equalizer that wouldn't allow someone to make the Stone comparison w/o first proving to the universe that they'd actually listened to a Stones record from the past 20 years. That would get rid of 99.99% of their mentions. Some of their newer stuff is pretty good.

It's really funny cause in country music age becomes a benefit. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, etc. Some of their best stuff came after they were in their 70's. If someone told Dwight Yoakam he was in danger of becoming Willie Nelson he'd take it as a complement, as he should. Loretta Lynn fans enjoyed her working with Jack White, they didn't dissect it into nothing with accusations of trying to be hip or recapture lost youth.

rock fans have a major glitch.
Click to expand...

Tell you what, lets see the Stones put out a record, or even a single that's a masterpiece and then we can debate it.

Johnny Cash DID do his best work towards the end of his career. Bowie did some of his best towards the end. The Stones are the archetypical band which has had nothing to say for 30-40 years, but is still somehow touring and making money based on nothing but nostalgia.
 
I sometimes wonder if U2 couldn't actually fake a cool album easier than trying honestly to make one. I give them credit for trying to remain true to themselves, even if some of the results are a bit cringe-worthy.:reject:
 
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