I’ve been an on again off again U2 fan since the early days, bought all the albums, even Auchtung Baby, I’ve seen them live in Dublin, Berlin and Oakland…great shows all.
But this new album, at least the song that seems to be on my radio continually, is an absolute pile of steaming kaka. I have to change stations when it comes on its that bad. It sounds like they patched together all the bad bits from 6 or 7 songs and tried to make one tune. Its a disjointed collage of musical cliches, topped off with some of U2’s most contrived lyrics of all time…and they have had some howlers over the years.
I am honestly expecting U2 to have a big press event in a couple of months to laugh at everyone who is playing it, that this is a big practical joke…stupid commercial radio stations playing this garbage cuz they think that our name can still sell ads even if the music is that bad.
Anyone else think that Crazy Tonight is some sort of a joke?
I don’t know which song is being played on radio – is it “Get on Your Boots”? I just watched a video clip on the BBC website of U2 playing that song on a rooftop for some BBC show. Ohmigosh did it suck.
I have been a big fan for a long time but not of their “dark period” during the 90’s. Based on this song, I’m worried they are may have entered dark period #2.
Big fan of the old stuff, especially “Boy” and “War”. I saw them in '87 with the Pogues as the opening act, awesome show. I don’t really care for the new stuff; I bought the 25th anniversary DVD of the '83 Red Rocks show a few months back since it now includes the entire concert, nice reminder of when they were truly great.
I preordered the CD tonight and will get it Tuesday. I hope I didn’t waste $9…yes…they are discounting it already.
My 14 year old son really wants to see them this summer on tour. He’s heard every one of their cd’s since he was a little kid. He ALWAYS goes back to the old stuff!!!
As a guitar and bass player himself he seems to really like the beat of the old stuff.
I just opened the new Rolling Stone today - they gave the album 5 out of 5 stars. They also gave Chinese Democracy a four or five star rating, so they’ve pretty much lost all credibility in that department.
I agree, what I’ve heard on the radio sucks worse than I ever would have imagined.
Achtung Baby was the last U2 album I bought. Bono needs to pick either international politics or music because he’s not doing so hot trying to do both of them at the same time.
Rolling Stone, like Roger Ebert, is nearly always far too kind. I think they are afraid if they give a record or song 2 stars and it turns out to be “classic” and/or maybe historically significant they will look bad. They used to trash some pop crap like Bon Jovi. Now they give all kinds of garbage 3 or 4 stars.
I’m not a big U2 fan but did kind of like this song when it first came out. I just gave it a listen from beginning to end for the first time and have to agree with your assesment.
I think this actually had a lot of potential. Whoever was producing it really failed them. I think it has some great sounds and some good hooks, but they just slapped a bunch of unrelated parts together that, as you said, gave it an unrelated collage feel to it.
I’ve been writing for a while now and though I am no U2, here’s how I would have structured it:
Intro
verse 1
repeat intro
verse 2
“You don’t know how” but cut it in half. Use this as a pre-chorus.
“Get on your boots” and use this as the chorus.
verse 3
Pre-chorus
chorus
Bridge…but not that shit they played.
chorus.
With the exception of the bad bridge they wrote, I think you could seriously take the parts that they wrote and just arrange them in the right order and the right lenghts and you would have a solid radio play pop song.
For whatever reason, they tried to make “You don’t know how” be the chorus (I think) and they dragged it out too long. That’s a cool sounding section, but thats not the section that pops out with a hook. “Get on your boots” should be the chorus. Hell…they named the song after that section for a reason. Why did they try to hide it in the song? Anyway, the way they used “You don’t know how” made it sound like two misplaced bridges in the song.
It sounded to me like they were trying to hard to break the formulaic rules of song writing. Some people call this “creativity” which can be a good thing…but often times it just sucks. Cliche’s often exist for a reason. Muse does a pretty good job of breaking the mold. This song sounded almost like U2 was trying to write a pop version of Knights of Cydonia and just fell flat.
Anyway, with the way they oddly threw this song together, it gave the very effect that Matt referred to…a collage…which is not generaly good music.
