Yet really, it was only in the closing segment that they completely took it over the top, and broke on through to the other side, playing the classic "I Will Follow." It took all that accumulated power of presence to halfway sell the songs from How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, cause this album pretty well sucks. It's a boring excuse for songwriting.
"Vertigo" was a big hit, and has helped them sell several million copies of this stale rehash of past glories. The power of their legacy, and endless drilling in of the main hook in those damned Ipod commercials fired up the buying button in the consumers. I'm glad I downloaded my copy from the internet though, cause I'd have been cheesed to no end if I had actually spent cash on this crapola.
The song "Vertigo" is ok. However, it really doesn't have much lasting power. It's like they set about writing a "rousing U2 rock song." It's a minimally competently composed song, but sounds much more like an exercise than the result of having anything actually to say. I doubt anyone cares about this song a year or two from now.
Also, it's not really even all that well written. I find the flat, utterly non-melodic chanting of the verses just annoyingly weak. This only exacerbates the weakness of the words, which vaguely seem to describe some indefined state of being disoriented.
Lights go down it's dark
The jungle is your head - can't rule your heart
I'm feeling so much stronger than before
Your eyes are wide
And though your soul it can't be bought
Your mind can wonder
Like much U2 and certainly like much of this album, these words are supposed to look profound. However, real profundity in a pop song needs to come from the MELODY, which is sadly lacking.
At that, "Vertigo" is WAY the best song on the album. If you dig it, download the single onto your damned Ipod, and don't waste money. Give it to tsunami victims instead. I'm sure Bono would approve.
The other song they played from this album on SNL was "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own." Being generous, this song might be considered marginally listenable. It does have at least a minimally decent hook, with the falsetto "And it's you when I look in the mirror."
Still, this second best song on the album constitutes a watered down re-write of their classic "One." Stylistically, melodically, and lyrically, this song re-hashes that former glory without adding anything new. For a better new hit on that pipe, hunt down the Johnny Cash recording of "One" and forget this.
After that, this album goes downhill very rapidly. There's no inspiration here, and nothing at all that could reasonably be described as memorable melody.
They particularly fail to impress me with the tired and unimaginative liberal laments being passed off as song lyrics. Now, perhaps some of this is because I'm a right wing nut job or some such, but "Where is the love?" does not constitute writing a song lyric. It's merely regurgitating a cliche, without metaphor or color or anything.
Again, from "Crumbs From Your Table": "Where you live should not decide/ whether you live or whether you die." Yeah, that's nice, but it's a bromide, not a lyric. Who's going to disagree with the sentiment? That does not make it an imaginative or even worthwhile piece of lyric, though. Bono needs some new material.
In truth, U2 is played out as a creative force. They've long since shot their load. Their last real album was Achtung Baby in 1991. That's been fourteen years and several albums ago. It's been thin gruel since then, and only getting thinner on this album. They have nothing left to say lyrically or musically. They're going through the motions.
Really, you can't fault them. People are still lining up by the millions to buy their records and tell them how great they still are. It's hard to let that go.
Still, I'd rather have seen them quit while they were ahead, like Jerry Seinfeld. Letting it go right there, they'd surely and rightly be considered one of the greatest acts in rock history. Instead, they're going down the path of the Rolling Stones, watering down the classic legacy with decades of mediocre, forgettable Steel Wheels junk until we risk forgetting how great they once were.
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