U2 2U?

Well, you all have heard enough variety in the music offerings in this course to know I’m not just a one-dimensional, U2 lover. But I can hardly resist a chance to supplement my comments in class regarding U2’s significance with a blog posting.

I’m always rather confused by the term “selling out” when I hear it (whether referring to U2 or to most bands). What does this mean? Because U2 follows up the overly-earnest Joshua Tree with a big, bombastic, multimedia, sensory overload, postmodern spectacle like ZooTv and PopMart, does that mean they’ve “sold out”? Isn’t that to ignore that those tours were mostly about being satirical and parodic regarding the excesses of rock stardom (hey, we just saw clips from This is Spinal Tap, after all), as well as to interrogate (and at times celebrate) the influence of technology and global connectedness represented by satellites, the circulation of cultural productions, the fraught notions of “home” and identity construction, etc.? Or is it “selling out” when they depart from the big, supposedly overdone tours and return to their traditional influences and styles on their two most recent cds (and accompanied by a pair of very stripped down tours)? Is it “selling out” when they try to get their music in the heads of today’s young people (new fans, from their perspective, who might give them the ability to say that they’re still “relevant”) by debuting a snippet of their new single in an I-Pod commercial for which they do not get paid?

Did Dylan “sell out” when he put the electric guitar around his neck at the Newport Folk Festival? Are the Shins selling out when they allow their song “New Slang” to appear in the Garden State movie and on the accompanying soundtrack? Not to give myself previously underground academic “street” credibility, but am I selling out by posting flyers around campus for a Literature and Music class? I guess it’s just rare that I understand what that term actually implies.

I think a lot of the U2 antagonism that exists might be residual feelings from Bono’s period of more overt and occasionally uncomfortable pontificating (the “am I bugging you? I don’t mean to bug ya” lines from Rattle and Hum, for example). If he’s on the cover of Time magazine now for his work on behalf of the world’s poor and disenfranchised, is that his fault? The guy was, after all, just nominated for a Nobel peace prize (the only individual to win a Grammy, and Oscar, and to be nominated for a Nobel prize, incidentally), so it’s no longer possible to claim he’s putting himself in the limelight for selfish, egotistical, self-righteous reasons, etc.

I will always think Achtung Baby was the pinnacle of their career, and that “One” will go down as their most memorable, endlessly interesting, and perfectly constructed song. But when you hear a song like “In a Little While” on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”—a song that is supposedly about a hangover but that becomes something of a beautiful and ravaged gospel song the more you listen to it (especially when you contemplate the fact it was the song Joey Ramone chose to listen to before he died)—it’s hard to argue they’re no longer writing brilliant music.

Others want to enter the arena on this one? Bring it on!

(By the way, if you ask me in class (again) to perform the indignity of showing you that moment 22 years ago when I was Bono in a high school air-jam, I’ll project the picture (and probably immediately go hide); if nothing else, it’ll give me some data that someone is still visiting this blog!)