{"id":73849,"date":"2025-10-12T13:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/73849\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T13:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:02:08","slug":"the-u2-album-bono-thought-was-forbidden-to-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/73849\/","title":{"rendered":"The U2 album Bono thought was “forbidden” to them"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bono<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Sun 12 October 2025 11:00, UK <\/p>\n

When they first came around, U2<\/a> were dismissed by many peers and audiences alike as a gimmick band. How wrong they were.<\/p>\n

To be hounded with such labels on such a grand scale, you have to have earned a significant level of commercial success. U2 already had that, of course, but what people likely didn\u2019t realise was that they were also far from the sonically one-dimensional operation people misinterpreted them as.<\/p>\n

But a big part of this is making decisions that also end up under scrutiny. As a natural-born risk taker, Bono knows a thing or two about audiences changing their minds about whether they like you or not, and yet he still stands by most of the decisions that got them there in the first place, like the infamous iTunes situation. Which he still defends, by the way. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also easy to see why. Because, as we all know, any risk in the music industry is a big gamble. Artists take risks every day, some more successfully than others. And with the way Bono talks about his mishaps, as it were, it\u2019s hard to even see them as mishaps at all. When he addressed Songs of Innocence, he packaged it up as something they did as a gift to fans. Which, in all honesty, is hard to argue with.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know a tiny fraction of people didn\u2019t like it and found it offensive,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the intent from Apple was a beautiful thing, because these are people who pay for music, and the gift was from Apple to them.\u201d As annoying as it was, the intent behind it was to give out music for free to people who wanted to listen. Which is a fair strategy, even if the execution was undeniably irritating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This thinking is all over U2\u2019s catalogue like a strange mist you can\u2019t avoid. In the more artistic or conceptual cases, it comes in the shape of them changing their approach or sound to go against all expectations and build on the universe they created. With The Joshua Tree, they departed from their \u201coptimistic\u201d tone to explore something more solemn which, as usual, Bono was equipped to defend at every turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could say this is forbidden ground for U2 because we\u2019re the optimistic group,\u201d he told Musician magazine in 1987. He explained that therein lies the artistic value \u2013 that \u201cto be an optimist, you mustn\u2019t be blind or deaf to the world around you.\u201d <\/p>\n

If that didn\u2019t dispel U2\u2019s one-dimensional allegations, his next line did: \u201cI don\u2019t even know what the act is in \u2018Exit\u2019. Some see it as murder, others a suicide, and I don\u2019t mind. The rhythm of the words is nearly as important in conveying the state of mind. The album\u2019s real strength is that though you travel through these deep tunnels and bleak landscapes, there\u2019s a joy at the heart of it, and I can\u2019t explain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incidentally, \u2018Exit\u2019 was actually one of their more ambitious affairs, drawing on The Executioner\u2019s Song and In Cold Blood to paint a story from the perspective of a killer. But it was also a funnel for Bono\u2019s views on violence, both looking out at America and the version of it that exists within him. Which, once again, if nothing else, proves just how deep and complicated U2 always were \u2013 even when they sounded optimistic. Because even in those moments, the cogs were always turning, and what came out the other side was art that both reflected and challenged modern society.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Sun 12 October 2025 11:00, UK When they first came around, U2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[57991,156,157,111,139,69,57992,4931],"class_list":{"0":"post-73849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bono","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-the-joshua-tree","15":"tag-u2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}