Listen To U2’s “Boy Falls From The Sky” From The ‘Spider-Man’ Musical

Becky Bain | September 10, 2010 11:10 am

Good news! The first song we get to hear from U2’s oft-delayed, mostly recast, incredibly expensive musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is a pretty good U2 track! The bad news is it’s not really a great Broadway tune. The song, “Boy Falls From The Sky”, is sung by Reeve Carney, the lucky guy who nabbed the role of Peter Parker/Spidey, and her performed the solo number on Good Morning America today. Listen below.

“You can fly too high and get too close to the sun / See how the boy falls from the sky,” Carney sings like he’s playing an even angstier Emo Spidey with the swoop haircut from Spider-Man 3. Maybe we’re just used to Tobey Maguire’s aw-shucks performance in the movies, but is Spider-Man really this turmoiled?

Vulture notes that the song sound eerily familiar to U2’s song “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”, which was featured on the Batman Forever soundtrack. We think the song as an entity in itself is fairly hummable and wouldn’t be out of place on the radio, but the track’s ability to delve into Peter/Spidey’s character and is lacking in these uncreative, mostly humdrum lyrics. (Though we realize Julie Taymor probably has some visual stage theatrics planned during this number to spice up the excitement or further the character development.)

A bigger red flag is that Carney, the lead singer of his own band called, unsurprisingly, Carney, sing/mumbles like he’s a rock star, not a Broadway performer who needs to enunciate so the audience can fully understand each word he’s saying. The cast of the other musical scribed by rockers currently on B’way, Green Day’s American Idiot, was able to avoid mimicking Billie Joe Armstrong’s tendency to slur his words together. Let’s hope Carney can open up his mouth before opening night.

Tickets for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark go on sale tomorrow, with previews starting November 14. Will you be coughing up $135 (plus tax!) for orchestra seats? Or will you just play The Joshua Tree on your iPod for free?

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