As a rule, U2 fans can be categorized based on when it was that they stopped becoming fans of U2. For many fans, the period of departure occurred after Joshua Tree. I myself am a Pop man. I appreciated U2’s attempt at experimenting in earnest with their sound over the next few albums – something that came to an abrupt halt with the arrival of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Critics at the time hailed the album as a “return to form,” but for those of us that hadn’t been taken in by Bono’s dramatics, the album actually marked U2’s accidental lapse into a new format – adult contemporary. In fact, if you look at U2’s catalog after Pop, there are a great number of songs that could probably be passed off as workable Celine Dion singles. This is not surprising if you consider that both divas have a penchant for pleasant pop, brimming with operatic vocals and emotional bombast.
U2’s latest effort, Songs of Innocence, finds the band in a similar trudge through the wastelands of adult contemporary.
Take “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone),” a confusingly overproduced tribute to the late singer of The Ramones. Any musical reference to Ramone is reduced to a single guitar hook, which is then obliterated by Bono’s pristine laser-like vocals, dishing out oddly tacky lines. (“I was chasing down the days of fear/Chasing down a dream before it disappeared/I was aching to be somewhere near.”)
“Every Breaking Wave” uses nature metaphors to describe the difficulty that time poses for a relationship. It’s a pleasant song, but Bono isn’t a good enough melody writer to give the concept the heft that it deserves. A comparison with “Seasons” by Future Islands – which trades in the exact same themes and metaphors – reveals how far U2 has fallen as songwriters. Samuel Herring, with his comparatively diminutive voice, is still somehow able to deliver a song with more emotional resonance, measure for measure.
Much of the rest of the album is a similar exercise in songwriting middle-of-the-road. “Song for Someone” features Bono sounding out generic poetics of love before belting out a perfunctory soaring chorus. In “Iris,” Bono unironically pleads, “Hold me close/Hold me close and don’t let me go,” solidifying his tragic slide into adult contemporary mediocrity. “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” is an odd political protest song that is too heavy-handed to be inspiring. (“Soldier, soldier, we signed our lives away/Complete surrender is the only weapon we know/We come from an ancient place, beyond what we can see/We’ve come to colonize your night and steal your poetry.”)
This isn’t to say that Bono was always the greatest lyricist, but in earlier albums, there was an earnestness to the music that made his words more palatable. Young Bono was a brash, idealistic fool, and it was okay for him to say things that a brash, idealistic fool would say. Hearing modern Bono act out a similar musical persona today, the songs feel inauthentic and awkward – especially when paired with the easy-listening tendencies that populate U2’s later work. This isn’t to say you can’t be idealistic when you grow up, but when you do grow up, you should do it with at least a hint of nuance and grace.
In fact, I think this probably explains why many people, including myself, stopped listening to U2 oh so many years ago. Pop was released around the time that I went to college. That was around the time that I grew up.