← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
With or Without U2 Edition Part 2
00:58:53
How Bono and the boys pivoted from the earnest ’80s to the ironic ’90s. They’ve always been both cool and cringe.
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- [00:03]
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Felix Salmon
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- [00:32]
Chris Melanfi
Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, we walked through the 80s history of Irish rockers U2, who turned punk ideals into anthemic pop that galvanized fans, filled arenas and by the time of 1987's The Joshua Tree topped the charts. They became rock's conscience, even as lead singer Bono's crowd rallying antics became sport for pundits. By the end of the 80s, after a flop film and middling album called rattle and hum, U2 perceived that the only way they would survive the transition into the 90s was to reboot the band. During U2's hiatus, guitarist the Edge was keeping tabs on what was happening in British rock. As we discussed in our Brit pop episode of Hit parade, the late 80s saw a trend of English rock bands, many from Manchester, adopting dance beats, acid house and rave psychedelia into a style variously tagged as baggy or Mad Chester. Bands like the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays were showing how rock bands and.
- [02:12]
Unnamed Speaker
Drum machines could coexist.
- [02:24]
Chris Melanfi
The Edge and Bono took a keen interest in this this sound, which they felt could freshen up. U2 bassist Adam Clayton and especially drummer Larry Mullen Jr were not so sure. Mullen fretted that drum machines were designed to replace him. In 1990, the band tried what turned out to be a beta test for their new sound when they were asked to contribute a track to an AIDS research charity album. 1990s Red Hot and Blue consisted of modern pop acts interpreting the pre rock songs of Tin Pan Alley songsmith Cole Porter on their cover of the Porter standard night and day, U2 fused their brooding late 80s sound with drum machines and industrial style synthesizers. Night and Day served as a stopgap single in the long break between U2 albums. It peaked at number two on Billboard's Modern Rock chart. Then in the fall of 1990, seeking inspiration, U2 decamped to a studio in Berlin, Germany, one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Eno had famously worked in Berlin on three of David Bowie's late 70s albums and U2 were hoping for similar productivity. But U2's Berlin sessions were as bleak as the rebuilding city and often frustrating, with the band casting about for new material, bickering among themselves and unsure of what a 90s U2 should sound like. Before they left Berlin, they did stumble onto one promising song in their jam sessions that helped give shape to the project, a moody ballad with ruminative Bono lyrics.
- [04:56]
Bono
We're one but we're not the same. Well, we hurt each other, then we're doing again, you said.
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Chris Melanfi
Encouraged by this ballad and some of their other experiments, U2 reconvened in Dublin in early 1991 to finish their seventh studio album, which they decided to give a deliberately cheeky title, Miles removed from the likes of War or the Unforgettable Fire. It was a line their sound engineer quoted around the studio, one he borrowed from the 1983 Mel Brooks comedy film To Be or Not to Be, in which Brooks played, no kidding, a rapping Adolf Hitler Baby, I got me a plan. What you got, Adolf? What you gonna do?
- [05:53]
Unnamed Speaker
I said how about this one?
- [05:55]
Bono
World War II.
- [05:57]
Chris Melanfi
Bono decided that Achtung, Baby would both allude to the album's German origins and convey its sacred cow slaughtering spirit. During the Dublin sessions, Bono made his bandmates laugh by wearing a pair of oversized wraparound sunglasses that he'd pinched from the band's wardrobe department. He thought they made him look like a house fly. So Bono invented an entire Fly character, a leather clad egomaniac rock star, and the band in turn came up with a song called the Fly. This was certainly not the U2 of old. Clayton and Mullen played with heavy syncopation, emulating the Madchester and industrial music the Edge loved. For his part, the Edge put heavy distortion on his guitar that was Nothing like his trademark 80s chime, and Bono's lyrics were cryptic aphorisms every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief that were meant to sound arch, destabilizing, mischievous. His singing voice ranged from an echoey whisper to a loungy falsetto. Bono would later describe the Fly as the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree. Released a couple of months ahead of the album in the early fall of 91, the fly served as notice of U2's new direction. Island Records treated it as a low key marketing experiment, avoiding pop radio in.
- [08:16]
Unnamed Speaker
America and issuing a video with Bono.
- [08:20]
Chris Melanfi
As the Fly character wandering the streets of London and Dublin while LCD signs flashed slogans. The song only reached number 61 on the Hot 100, but topped the modern rock chart in just three weeks. Alternative stations were hungry for new U2 music.
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Unnamed Speaker
Then, when they were ready to launch.
- [08:44]
Chris Melanfi
The album in November, island dropped the album's second single, on which U2 found the funk. Mysterious Ways was built out of a groovy Adam Clayton bass bass line and yet another novel guitar effect by the Edge that produced a squelching disco style riff. Mullen was his own human drum machine, and Bono invoked the sacred and the profane, idealizing the female form and likening sex to the divine.
- [09:33]
Bono
She moves in mysterious.
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Chris Melanfi
When Mysterious Ways topped the modern rock chart in November 1991, it fit right in alongside the other danceable rock on alternative radio, including then current hits by Britpop bands Primal Scream and Blur.
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Bono
There's no other way, there's no other way all that you can do is watch the other way.
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Chris Melanfi
Moreover, the song Mysterious Ways replaced at number one on the Modern Rock chart that week in November 91 was by Nirvana, who were unofficially kicking off the new sound of 90s rock. U2 were a decade older than all of these bands, but they were credibly in sync with the alternative vibe. Mysterious Ways also reached the top 10 on the Hot 100, and Achtung Baby opened in early December at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. U2's first disc to launch atop the album chart, Ah Tong, also proved remarkably deep with hits. The Most of any U2 album songs that wound up charting on the modern and album rock charts included until the End of the World, A syncopated rocker U2 wrote for the Wimvenders film of the same name.
- [11:17]
Bono
In the garden I was playing the tide, I kissed your lips and broke your heart. You, you are acting like it was the end of the world.
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Chris Melanfi
And even better than the Real Thing, a song originally titled simply the Real Thing until Bono and producer Brian Eno changed it to make it more sardonic and tongue in cheek. In addition to topping the album rock chart, Even Better than the Real Thing cracked the top from 40 on the Hot 100. But the song that emerged as the standout and a standard from Achtung Baby was its quietest song, the One U2 had demoed back at the beginning of the project that gave them hope the band didn't have to break up. Appropriately enough, it was titled one.
- [12:40]
Bono
Is it getting better or do you feel the same?
- [12:50]
Chris Melanfi
Four years after, with or without you and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. It was a successor to those spiritual ballads with a darker worldview structured as a bitter dialogue between two people who may be breaking up. It presents togetherness as a burden. We get to carry each other, bono sings. He has described the song as the opposite of a hippie song, that the oneness it proposes is an obligation, not a utopian ideal. It also sounded like 90s U2 with layers of overdubs and a shimmer that reflected their new production style. Released as the third single from Achtung Baby, one topped both the modern and album rock charts and cracked the pop top 10. To this day, one routinely makes surveys of the greatest singles of the rock era, often the highest ranked U2 song on those lists, it has been covered dozens of times, most famously one year after its release by a one time supergroup of members from REM and U2. They teamed up in January 1993 under the name Automatic Baby to perform it at the inaugural ball of new U.S. president Bill Clinton to the lepers in.
- [14:36]
Bono
Your head Much more than a lot you gave me nothing now all I've got.
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Chris Melanfi
The Octung baby reboot reset U2's image for the rest of the 90s. Everything they did in that decade existed in its shadow. That included their Zoo TV tour, an elaborately staged multimedia spectacle that satirized televisual oversaturation and sought to give the audience sensory overload. Bono performed as both the fly and a devil character named MacPhisto, as well as U2's 1993 follow up album, which contained material left over from the Ah Tung sessions and was positioned as the album's sequel. Zuropa was named after the European leg of the Zoo TV tour. The made up word rhymed with Europa, and It affirmed that U2 was no longer defined by any one U2 sound. The electronic textures were even more pronounced, the songs veering further away from verse chorus structure structure. Its first single, the droning Numb, even featured lead vocals, not by Bono, but by the Edge. And on the follow up single, Lemon, Bono sang entirely in falsetto, and the backing track was described by one critic as space age German disco. None of Zuropa's singles was a major.
- [16:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Top 40 hit, but critics raved about.
- [17:00]
Chris Melanfi
The album's spirit of experimentation. Some rated it even higher than Achtung Baby, and it topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks as Loyal fans were now willing to follow this new, new Glossier U2 anywhere. How glossy were U2? They spent the middle of the 90s going Hollywood, taking on projects that would have been unthinkable during their earnest 80s phase. One year after the last Zuropa single fell off the charts, U2 were back with a song from a comic book movie.
- [17:45]
Bono
Me, Kiss Me.
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Chris Melanfi
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me was recorded for the soundtrack to the third film in Warner Brothers Batman series, 1995's Batman Forever. The song topped both Billboard rock charts and reached number 16 on the Hot 100. With its orchestral overtones, dramatic swoops and jokily violent title, Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me sounded like what you two might do if offered the chance at a James Bond theme. Oh wait, except they did that too.
- [18:33]
Bono
You'll never know how I watch.
- [18:44]
Unnamed Speaker
For.
- [18:44]
Chris Melanfi
1995'S Bond film Goldeneye, Bono and the Edge wrote the title song for rock legend Tina Turner to perform. Less than a year after that, the other half of U2 got their Hollywood moment. Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, performing as frontline artists for the first time, did a cover of the Mission Impossible theme from the 60s TV series, updated for the 90s as the theme to the first movie in the new Tom Cruise film franchise. Amazingly, Clayton and Mullin's instrumental made the top 10 on the Hot 100, peaking at number seven in June of 1996.
- [19:42]
Unnamed Speaker
U2's rhythm section, five years after getting.
- [19:46]
Chris Melanfi
Funky on Achtung Baby, was still groovier.
- [19:50]
Unnamed Speaker
Than a drum machine.
- [20:04]
Chris Melanfi
In short, the post achtung phase of U2 gave them the freedom to try anything. No idea was too outlandish or glitzy. At one point in 1995, they even recorded an album with Brian Eno under a pseudonym, Passengers, and its lead single, Ms. Sarajevo, featured guest vocals by opera star Luciano Pavarotti. Though not a hit in America, the song went top 10 in over a dozen countries. After being hailed in the 80s for their conscience, U2 in the 90s were being ruled rewarded in the marketplace for their insouciance. We'll be back momentarily.
- [21:06]
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- [22:12]
Unnamed Speaker
U2 finally discovered their hyper modern tech savvy, uber pop approach had its limits on last album of the 90s, which they titled with tongues still firmly in cheek, simply Pop. They could more accurately have called the album techno or electronica as it explored sampling, looping and synthesizers more deeply than either Achtung Bebe or even Zuropa had. In theory, that once again put U2 on trend as it coincided with the late 90s wave of electronica marked by dance rock and DJ driven acts like Underworld, the Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk. But the pop album wound up labored and overwrought with recording sessions stretching over nearly two years. In fact, U2 manager Paul McGinnis finally compelled the band to finish the album by booking a tour called Pop Mart starting in early 1997. The band came to regret agreeing to tour when the sessions to complete the CD in time were rushed. When pop finally arrived In March of 97, it led off with the band's kitschiest single ever, the dance rock track Discotech. Even after a half decade of puncturing their own Image On Discotek, U2 seemed determined to take it further. Its lyrics were about the flimsiness of pop music itself. You know you're chewing bubblegum, bono sang. You know what that is, but you still want some. In the video, U2 played inside a giant mirror ball, struck disco moves and even dressed up like the Village people. Given the four year wait for this new U2 CD, Discotek was so hotly anticipated that it made a grand chart entrance, debuting at number one in the UK, number three on the US modern rock chart. It then shot to number one instantly and even number 10 on the Hot 100, U2's only single to ever start that high. But then it fell quickly. A similar fate befell the Pop album, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and did go platinum quickly, but its sales turned out to be heavily front loaded to die hard fans. Pop was out of the top 10 in just three weeks, an attempt to revive the album with a better reviewed single, the melancholy Britpop esque anthem Staring at the sun could only do so much. Sun peaked at number 26 on the Hot 100 and the album never returned to the top 10 or sold beyond single Platinum Platinum all of U2's previous five studio albums were double platinum or better. With hindsight, pop was the moment. U2's dalliance with irony had run its course, a collection of deconstructed ideas rather than an inspiring rock album. In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine put it best when he wrote that pop quote never seems joyous. It's an easy record to admire, but a hard one to love. Unquote. As the 90s drew to a close, U2 released their first greatest hits album, a move typical of a band regrouping after a career downturn. For the compilation, U2RE recorded an old 80s B side from their Joshua Trip Tree days, the frothy Bono penned love song Sweetest thing. It was U2's first single to make the top 20 on Billboard's Adult Pop Airplay chart, but it missed the top 40 on the Hot 100. It appeared U2 were transitioning from their MTV years to their VH1 years. This would have been predictable, even respectable. All of the band members were pushing 40 and the pop charts were now awash in hip hop and teen pop.
- [28:12]
Bono
I love you.
- [28:17]
Unnamed Speaker
But they weren't quite ready to become a legacy act. What's truly unusual about U2 is not that they decided in their late 30s they didn't want to give up being frontline hitmakers. Generations of artists have tried to keep up with the charts in middle ages, from Johnny Cash in the late 60s.
- [28:43]
Bono
Some guy laughed and I bust his head. I'll tell you life ain't easy for a boy named sue.
- [28:51]
Unnamed Speaker
To Katy Perry in 2024. The 30something career reboot didn't work out so well for Perry. This no, what's exceptional about U2 is not just that they pulled it off. Several of their most indelible hits were still ahead of them in the 21st century.
- [29:22]
Chris Melanfi
It's that they pulled it off a.
- [29:24]
Unnamed Speaker
Second time after presenting themselves as one thing in the 80s and then a near opposite thing in the 90s. Starting in 2000, U2 rebooted their image again back toward earnestness and classic U2.
- [29:42]
Chris Melanfi
And it worked.
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Unnamed Speaker
But this wasn't a total reversal. U2 had learned how to be sincere but not so self serious.
- [29:56]
Bono
The Heart is a blue.
- [30:02]
Unnamed Speaker
YouTube pointedly titled their 2000 album all that yout Can't Leave behind, an acknowledgement of their back to basics approach. The lead single from the set, Beautiful Day took its place among the band's catalog of anthems, but it was no Sunday Bloody Sunday Pride or even where the Streets have no Name. Though it was fundamentally a rocker, Beautiful Day shimmered with a digital sheen and soared like a pop song from the Max Martin era. The song reached number 21 on the Hot 100, not bad for a comeback by a band in its 20th year of recording. And all that you Can't Leave behind wound up being one of their longest charting albums, riding the charts longer than Zuropa and Pop combined, probably because it came packed with very ingratiating songs. These included Stuck in a Moment you can't get out of, which combined a gospel piano melody played by the Edge with heartfelt lyrics by Bono, who was trying to convince a friend not to succumb to suicidal thoughts. It was a top 30 pop airplay hit or, on the rockier side, Elevation, which built off a distorted guitar effect by the Edge and a howling Bono vocal that showed just how far their rock sound had traveled since the era of boy and War. Six months after the album launched, U2 remixed Elevation for the soundtrack to Angelina Jolie's first Lara Croft Tomb Raider film in 2001. That made it a top 10 alternative rock hit that summer. Perhaps most remarkable about all that you can't leave behind was what it did at the Grammy Awards in back to back years. In 2001, the beautiful day single was nominated and won the Record of the Year prize, one of the Recording Academy's flagship awards. And then one year later.
- [33:04]
Bono
On.
- [33:08]
Chris Melanfi
Walk.
- [33:08]
Unnamed Speaker
On, a song Bono wrote for a Burmese freedom fighter that took on added resonance in America after the September 11 attacks, won the 2002 Grammy for record of the Year. It was the only time in history one album had generated two songs that took that flagship Grammy prize in consecutive years. The same month U2 won that Grammy in February 2002, the band also played the super bowl halftime show, dedicating their performance to the 911 fallen whose names scrolled behind them on a projected screen.
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Bono
America.
- [34:10]
Chris Melanfi
Think of it.
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Unnamed Speaker
At the first super bowl after our national tragedy, an Irish band was comforting America. You two had moved past the status of of hit making act into something like a public resource or national treasure that can be inspiring but also stultifying for a rock band. So on their next album, U2 aimed to show not only that they could still rock, but that they could still be cheeky.
- [34:47]
Bono
Let go. It's everything I wish I didn't know. Give me something.
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Unnamed Speaker
Vertigo, the lead single of U2's 2004 album how to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, was arguably their most punk rock hit it fused the earnest U2 of the 80s and oughts with the ironic U2 of the 90s. The Edge built the song out of a hard Fender Telecaster riff, upon which Bono tried numerous lyrics before settling on the hello, hello chorus. At one point, he wrote an entire set of lyrics for the song in Spanish, some of which survived into the final track, mainly the backing vocals of Hola and Donde Esta? And of course, the song's much parodied count, in which, as any rudimentary Spanish speaker knows, means 1, 2, 3, 14, you do you bon U2's savviest move to introduce the song, and the album was teaming with Apple Computer, which was then selling millions of its ipod music players. By 2004, Apple was a year into its Silhouette ad campaign that showed shadowy figures with bright white ipods and earbuds jamming to tune tunes. Usually the ads featured songs by new up and coming bands like Stereogram or Jet, and the silhouetted performers were anonymous commercial actors. But U2's iPod ad was a first for Apple. It not only featured an established band's music, the members themselves were the Silhouette duets on the song charts. Vertigo reached number one on alternative songs and cracked the top 40 on the Hot 100. In one last promotional coup, just a few weeks before the album dropped, Bono and the Edge joined Apple CEO Steve Jobs on stage to introduce their own U2 branded Apple swag. This was back in the days when Jobs could wow crowds just by unveiling new gadgets.
- [37:36]
Chris Melanfi
This is the U2 iPod. It is a gorgeous black with this beautiful red click wheel, and on the back we've laser engraved the signatures of each band member.
- [37:51]
Advertiser
I see it as the beginning of a new era of music distribution, and that's really one of the main reasons why we're here today. And we're very happy to be part of history.
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Unnamed Speaker
Thanks in large part to this shrewd Apple gambit, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb became U2's biggest opening album ever. It not only debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, it did so with with first week sales of a staggering 840,000, nearly twice as big as any sales week in U2's SoundScan history. In the era of Eminem and Beyonce, you two were setting new chart benchmarks. A decade later, after Steve Jobs passing, the band's relationship with Apple would take a turn. But in 2004, this promotion, however crass, made the decades old U2 chart megastars all over again. We'll be right back.
- [39:07]
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- [39:36]
Felix Salmon
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- [40:13]
Unnamed Speaker
I think people are focusing on celebrities right now partly because the bigger macro problems are really overwhelming and terrifying.
- [40:20]
Felix Salmon
Where California needs to go from here, and how we should be thinking about the use of inmates as firefighters and whether this choice given to inmates is really a choice at all.
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- [40:34]
Felix Salmon
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- [40:44]
Unnamed Speaker
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- [41:38]
Chris Melanfi
By the mid 2000s, U2 had been serving up stirring anthemic rock for so long, they now had imitators from Snow Patrol to Arcade Fire. And many critics contend that the entire career of Coldplay is one long homage to YouTube. Eventually, Coldplay even followed directly in U2's footsteps by getting none other than Brian Eno to produce their smash 2008 album Viva La Vida was by the mid 2000s the only ones trying harder to sound like U2 than any of these bands were U2 themselves. Through two smash albums, all that yout Can't Leave behind and how to Dismantle an atomic bomb, U2 had successfully rebuilt their stadium rocking brand.
- [43:16]
Bono
Because of you.
- [43:20]
Chris Melanfi
Probably the last eagerly anticipated U2 album was 2009's no Line on the Horizon, which came five years after Atomic Bomb and reunited them with all three of their classic era producers Steve Lillywhite, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Together they tried to help the band recreate some of their old atmospheric magic. But while the album did debut at number one in March of 09, fueled by the loyal U2 fan base, the first single, a half assed rewrite of Vertigo called Get on your Boots, was widely agreed to be a dud. Killing the album's momentum, no Line on the Horizon settled for platinum sales roughly matching the performance of pop a decade earlier. The silver lining was that Horizon spawned the band's Most successful tour, U2 360 degrees, an all stadium series for which the band commissioned an innovative in the round stage structure, allowing more fans to see the show from any angle. The 360 degree production increased the capacity of venues by up to 25%, leading to attendance records at most of the stadiums they played. For About a decade, U2 360 degrees ranked as the highest grossing and most attended tour of all time, only recently surpassed by post pandemic tours by Elton Johnson, Coldplay and Taylor Swift. During the last decade, U2 have issued three more studio albums, a thematically connected trilogy of meditations on the band's own history, titled Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience and Songs of Surrender. But the first of these, Songs of Innocence, released 10 years ago in the fall of 2014, caused some controversy not for its content, but for the way U2 released it out into the world. In an echo of their ipod promotional gambit of a decade earlier, U2 made a deal with Apple to give away Songs of Innocence to all itunes and iPhone users directly into their music libraries. U2 joined Apple's Tim Cook, who had taken over as CEO after Steve jobs death in 2011. At one of the Apple product launch events that Jobs had made famous live on stage, Cook and Bono touched fingers as they counted down the launch so.
- [47:22]
Felix Salmon
YouTube, let me just get this straight.
- [47:25]
Bono
YouTube's new album, Songs of Innocence is going out for free to a half a billion people in the next five seconds.
- [47:37]
Chris Melanfi
Five, four three, two, one.
- [47:44]
Bono
Wow. That's instant gratification.
- [47:47]
Chris Melanfi
This move has been called a PR disaster for both Apple and U2. So what was so wrong with giving away a free album in 2014, Apple still was not in the streaming business. Music on itunes and on iPhones consisted of physical music files that took up valuable MacBook and iPhone Drive space. Apple Music, the company's streaming competitor to Spotify, wouldn't launch until 2015. When the U2 album materialized on people's phones, it was an unasked for memory hall. Worse at first, Apple made the song files impossible to delete. You owned Songs of Innocence whether or not you wanted it, like a stock or weather app that comes preloaded on your phone and can't be trashed. Critics and Apple users called it worse than spam. One week after the album's launch, Apple had to release a bespoke application just to allow users to delete U2's Song of Innocence from their itunes libraries. The album came in like a computer virus, and Apple had to produce a vaccine. And what about you two? What did the Songs of Innocence Apple experiment mean for them? It made a band of 50 somethings look thirsty, sweaty, a little desperate, and as the kids say, totally cringe. It also wasn't a smart charts move. The free digital giveaway meant that the album wasn't eligible to chart until physical copies were on sale, and it wouldn't sell many copies when they were. When CDs of songs of Innocence finally reached stores a month later, the album debuted at a lowly number nine and was off the Billboard 200 in just eight weeks. With hindsight, however, not just to 2014 but to U2's whole career. The Songs of Innocence gambit was unadvisable, but understandable. In 2004, a similar Apple promotion had made U2 newly hip and produced their biggest ever sales week. And further back, U2 had been rewarded for adopting new ideas, sounds and technologies, at least since Ah Tung Baby Heck, the Edge was geeking out over new gadgets like effects pedals. As far back as U2's 1980 debut album, technology made U2. Moreover, U2 found joy in surprising their fans at multiple junctures in their career. Just when the audience thought they had the band pegged, they tried something new or refurbished, something old with a new twist and prolonged their life. Life as a chart topping band. It was hubristic, yes, but U2 always had hubris from the jump. They wanted to be the biggest band in the world, and for quite a few years they actually were, U2 will probably never stop seeking new ways to stay on the radar of people decades younger than them. To date, their last appearance in the Hot 100's top 40 came in 2017 as featured performers on rapper Kendrick Lamar's single XXX aka X rated from Lamar's Pulitzer Prize winning album DAMN. Months after the song peaked at number 33 on the Hot 100. U2 and Kendrick performed the song together on the 2018 Grammy Awards.
- [52:30]
Bono
Me a thought that offers grace for every welcome that is Run your life, I live a better life I'm rolling.
- [52:41]
Advertiser
Several dice Run your life, I live.
- [52:43]
Bono
A better life I'm rolling several dice.
- [52:46]
Chris Melanfi
Run your life, I live on their own, you two seem to have finally accepted, you might say surrendered to their status as a legacy act. The last album in their Songs Trilogy, 2023's Songs of Surrender, is a series of stripped down covers of their own back catalog, mostly performed by Bono and the Edge, informed by age and wisdom.
- [53:24]
Bono
Tonight to drag the past out into the light.
- [53:31]
Chris Melanfi
But you two are, as the poet Dylan Thomas might say, not going gentle into that good night. One year ago they were the first band to perform in the new Las Vegas immersive concert venue called Sphere. Their 40 concert Sphere residency, which ran through early March of 2024, featured video projections on the venue's massive wraparound screen, beam forming and wave field synthesis audio technologies and, well, the same well worn songs. U2 fans.
- [54:23]
Bono
Is it getting better? Do you feel safe?
- [54:31]
Chris Melanfi
Another technical first for you too. Does this make them culturally relevant again? As long as they're playing their deep catalog of hit hits? Maybe not. But fear not. Larry, Adam, Edge and Bono, great and also full of shit, will find new mysterious ways to make a ruckus soon enough. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Kevin also produced the latest installment of our monthly Hit Parade, the Bridge shows, which are available exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, I welcome back esteemed critic Stephen Thomas Erlwine, who has written extensively on U2 and helps me make sense of the twists and turns in their career. To sign up for Slate plus and hear not only the Bridge but all our shows the day they drop, visit slate.com hit parade plus Derek John is executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts and we had help from Joel Meyer. Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfi.