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ARTISTS: will.i.am, David Foster, Faith Hill, Seal, Bono, and Mary J. Blige
TITLE: “America’s Song”
WEB DEBUT: Jan. 19, 2009
U2’s “Get On Your Boots,” a song title that has received some grammatical criticism from certain quarters of my buddy list, debuts this coming Monday at 3 a.m. ET on the Irish radio station 2FM. Do you think Bono is really really excited that the new U2 song is premiering on Martin Luther King Day? I know, I know, it’s debuting on Irish radio and MLK Day is a US holiday, but it has to be sorta deliberate, right?
So, Bono’s first New York Times column appeared in yesterday’s paper, and the topic at hand was not poverty or world peace or even losing that hat of his a few years back but Frank Sinatra’s Duets. Which just so happens to be an album that, hey what do you know, Bono himself appeared on. The overall gist of the column is about the uncertainty surrounding the present day and the duality of moments and how a true artist can bring duality and complexity out of his work. All well and good, but I couldn’t help flashing back to monologues from the 1991 film The Commitments, about an Irish soul band with lofty (some might even say Bono-like!) aspirations but only limited success, while trying to get through Bono’s slightly purple prose. After the jump, try to pick which quotes from the movie and which are from yesterday’s Week In Review section.
Billboard reports that U2’s new record, No Line on the Horizon, is slated for release on March 3— a few months after its original release date, which had been slated for this year—on Interscope Records. U2 fans should be excited that it was recorded with the holy triptych of U2 producers: Steve Lillywhite, Brian Eno, and Daniel Lanois. Heck, I’m excited. I admit it; I’m a huge U2 fan. Huge. There was a time where I think I wanted to marry Bono (side note: I typed “bury Mono” first!). Yeah, I know. He’s pompous and arrogant and U2 sucks, etc. etc. I get it. I understand the haters’ complaints and even agree with a lot of them, but I still love U2. Sometimes I just want unbridled anthems and romanticism, okay? Sometimes I want big statements and big recordings. I must admit, however, the 2000s have left me feeling a little “meh” on the band. I liked All That You Can’t Leave Behind for the zing it added to the live shows (that was a good tour), but How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was just crappy.
ARTIST: U2