Cult Following : U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Review (by Ewan Gleadow)

Long-suffering U2 fans may be waiting for another album as interesting or relevant to the times as How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. You can wait a little longer. How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, the so-called shadow album to the studio release from twenty years ago is on the horizon. With the context of those additional songs, it feels almost necessary to head back into How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, to reflect on the rock makings and staggering cultural message it had at a time of wavering peace in places we expected calm from. But no, the world has always been a warzone and the rise of tech to showcase this for us has been a miserable experience – not least because it continues but also due to how frequently we see it. This was not the point U2 made with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb but it has morphed into something new, something pertinent once again.

Read More

The Guardian : Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? reissued as all-star mashup – including three generations of Bono

For 40 years, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? has been praised by some as a triumph of charitable fundraising and festive songwriting – and condemned by others as the most high-profile example of white saviourhood in pop. Now, to mark its latest anniversary, the song is coming back around for a fourth time, in the form of an all-star splicing of the three previous official versions. Announcing the new version, Bob Geldof, who masterminded the 1984 original, says Do They Know It’s Christmas? “tells the story not just of unbelievably great generational British talent, but still stands as a rebuke to that period in which it was first heard. The 80s proclaimed that ‘greed is good’. This song says it isn’t. It says it’s stupid.” Proceeds will benefit the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports health and anti-poverty initiatives across Africa.

Read More

The American Songwriter : The Story Behind the Lengthy Evolution of “Vertigo” by U2 (by Al Melchior)

Some bands may be comfortable with putting out music that is less than perfect, but those bands aren’t U2. The Irish superstars have built a reputation for second-guessing their own work and spending months—or even years—tweaking their compositions. Perfectionism hasn’t always translated into perfect songs, but in the case of their 2004 hit “Vertigo,” it resulted in one of their biggest chart successes. One could plausibly argue that “Vertigo” was U2’s last truly big hit.

Read More

Rolling Stone : Hear U2 Get (Kinda) Funky on Long-Lost Song ‘Happiness’ (by Brian Hiatt)

It has somehow been 20 years since U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb— the one with “Vertigo” — and the band is rolling out a “shadow album” of ten outtakes from it, dubbed How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, on Nov. 22. The band already dropped one of the songs, the chiming mid-tempo anthem “Country Mile” and now they’ve released a second track, “Happiness,” which is a bigger sonic surprise. In the wake of mixed reactions to their underrated 1997 album Pop, which incorporated some electronic dance beats into their sound, U2 shied away from their funkier instincts for a while. But “For this anniversary edition I went into my personal archive to see if there were any unreleased gems and I hit the jackpot,” the Edge recently wrote. “We chose ten that really spoke to us."

Read More

ScreenRant : U2’s Bono And The Edge Talk Art Against Oppression In Kiss The Future Documentary Clip (by Owen Danoff)

Kiss the Future is a new documentary about an underground artist community during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo that inspired a U2 concert, and Screen Rant has a clip featuring the hit band themselves. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was a major locale in the Bosnian War and was ultimately besieged for a whopping four years—from April 1992 to February 1996. During that time, a vibrant community of artists utilized art and music to affect change, which inspired a U.S. aid worker to propose that U2 help raise awareness of the conflict.

Read More

Se7en : ‘Sarajevo Concert Documentary ‘Kiss the Future’ by U2, Executive Produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Set to Land on Paramount+’

"Kiss the Future", the docudrama regarding U2’s spots 1997 show in Sarajevo. The movie, created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for Artists Equity and Sarah Anthony and guided by Nenad Cicin-Sain, is based upon author Bill S. Carter’s narrative Fools Rush In, which catches the imaginative defiance bordering the 1990s siege of Sarajevo throughout theBosnian War [...] U2 lead guitar player The Edge included: “Kiss the Future documents how through superhuman acts of courage and creativity, the people of Sarajevo kept going while their city was under siege during the bloody Balkan civil war of the early 1990s. Their story of defiance and resistance against extreme nationalism couldn’t be more relevant to today. To have been even a small part of this amazing story is a huge privilege.”

Read More

Forbes : U2 Announces A Series Of New Music Releases (by Hugh McIntyre)

U2 is fresh off their first Las Vegas residency and ready to head into their next chapter. But while the world waits for completely brand new music from the Irish rockers, they have announced a year-long series of musical re-releases, ones which will surely be of interest to their most die-hard followers. On Friday (April 5), U2 dropped a new collection of remixes and alternate editions of their single “Discothèque.” [...] The new album runs an hour and 12 minutes long, with plenty of renditions of “Discothèque” for fans who can’t get enough of the tune. The tracklist includes the original radio edit, as well as remixes that come with names like the DM Deep Club Mix, Howie B, Hairy B Mix, and the Hexidecimal Mix, among others.

Read More

Variety : Bono Leads U2’s Audience in Chanting Alexei Navalny’s Name During Impassioned Anti-Putin, Pro-Ukraine Speech (by Chris Willman)

U2 has been performing Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” in concert at the band’s Sphere residency recently, and before Saturday night’s show, the introduction to that song extended far longer than usual, as Bono paid tribute to the dream of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who died in prison days earlier. The singer spoke up for the freedom of the Ukrainian people and against Russian leader Vladimir Putin — who many believe is directly responsible for the political prisoner’s still-unexplained death — before leading the crowd in a chant of Navalny’s name.

Read More

American Songwriter : The Meaning Behind “I Will Follow” by U2

Long before their Las Vegas residency at Sphere, before all of their many reinventions, before The Joshua Tree made them international superstars, U2 released Boy. As far as debut albums go, U2’s 1980 release did fairly well, reaching No. 63 on the Billboard 200 and getting into the Top 20 on Canada’s and New Zealand’s album charts. It also spawned U2’s first hit single, “I Will Follow.”

Read More