Credit: Far Out / Daniel Hazard
Thu 30 July 2026 17:30, UK
Bono has always been a champion of the kind of rock and roll that he grew up on.
Even though there are many people who have tried to rebel against the system, U2 included, the frontman knew that if you wanted to get under someone’s skin, you were going to need to have the kinds of hits that people couldn’t turn away from if they tried. Because when you break everything down, rock and roll has basically been pop music ever since it started, only with a little bit more attitude behind every single word.
The same could be said of most of what U2 has been doing throughout their career. They have never been afraid to turn their voices up and say how they felt about hot-button issues throughout their career, but when you look through some of their mainstream hits, every one of them went back to the same kind of pop framework that went all the way back to Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.
‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ has a bit more modern structure to it, but the bones that built the song all came from the blues and gospel tradition that they loved in America. A lot of their best tunes were indebted to the past, but Bono knew better than to stay in one lane. To be a true artist means having to adapt every single time you make a record, and Bono was willing to go the extra mile to make his idols like David Bowie proud whenever he worked on something new.
Achtung Baby is one of the greatest pivots any rock and roll band has undergone, but the Irish legends probably didn’t know that the tide was already turning. They had got in early on the post-modern irony slant that a lot of bands would end up working with as the 1990s progressed, but even when grunge was dominating the mainstream, Bono had love for those who were on the fringes of the pop charts every time he listened.
He loved what people like Trent Reznor and The Chemical Brothers had been doing with digital technology, so when he heard a band like Radiohead doing the same thing and bringing it into the rock world on OK Computer, it was like his prayers had been answered. This was a band that was going to take that ambitious side of rock and roll to the next level, and Bono would have killed to hear another version of their 1997 masterpiece all over again.
Because to him, that’s what important rock records were supposed to sound like, saying, “I want to hear Radiohead, extraordinary band that they are, on MTV. I want them setting fire to the imaginations of 16, 15, 14-year-old kids. [They] proved how elastic a band could be with melody and guitar. They write extraordinary melodies. OK Computer is full of beautiful pop songs. I just want rock music to expand and challenge people.”
Further reading: From The Vault
The album was ambitious; it marked a new guard in rock and roll, and it was also a record that no member of Radiohead has any intention of making ever again. They had left that kind of music behind by the time they reached Kid A, and while In Rainbows did show a little bit more of that musical shine on every single one of its tracks, there was always going to be a bit of sonic sheen around everything that landed on this record, whether it was the epic ‘Paranoid Android’ or the beautifully depressing ‘No Surprises’.
Bono can certainly keep dreaming about getting that version of the band back somewhere down the line, but what makes Radiohead so interesting is not knowing where they’re going to go next. There are times when they could remind people that they were a great rock band, but if something didn’t feel right for them to perform, they weren’t going to force themselves into repeating their formula.
