U2 Explains Its New Sound

Pop, U2’s long-awaited next album–and the band’s first in almost four years–guarantees a new sound. Lead singer and songwriter Bono, his trademark long hair now closely shorn, reveals to the L.A. Times that the album is actually a melding of two distinct musical directions. “We liked the tendency in England toward pop songwriting in the [traditional] way […]

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THE RISE OF U2

The astounding popularity of the rock group U2 raises this question: How has an Irish band that sings of the strife in Northern Ireland (“Sunday Bloody Sunday”) and the horrors of heroin addiction (“Running to Stand Still”) been able to achieve the same iconlike status enjoyed by Bruce Springsteen? Evidence of the group’s dominance is […]

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U2: The Joshua Tree

It’s a little unsettling how implacably serious these four young Dubliners have become in a relatively short period of time. The darkness of their costumes, the grimness of their faces and the bleak majesty of the desert terrain in which they are photographed on the cover of their new album announce a mood that is […]

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Over the Edge

With their finest LP U2 stands and delivers More than any other rock band, U2 is associated with rock’s revived social consciousness. Whether it is as a result of, or in spite of, their professed Christian beliefs, U2 is one band that gives a damn. And their latest album, The Joshua Tree, delivers even deeper into […]

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At Home in Dublin

(Dublin, Ireland) — It’s raining downtown, but that doesn’t discourage shoppers along Grafton Street, one of the city’s busiest commercial areas. Dubliners appear so used to the rain that most of them don’t even carry umbrellas. Quips one merchant, “If you let the rain bother you here, you’ll live your life indoors.” The shoppers are […]

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