I often place Rattle and Hum‘s unique B-sides (i.e. new songs, not remixes or live versions) into two categories in my head. There’s one category for covers, which we’ve been visiting these last couple of weeks, and another for wholly original creations. U2 doesn’t do a whole lot of covers, so they tend to be something […]
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Last week, I wrote about how the “All I Want is You” single was the first time I ever bought a U2 single, and how much I loved the first B-side, U2’s cover of “Unchained Melody.” Well, of course, as a kid, I played the single for my mom…she agreed with me that the cover […]
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David Barry’s film Dream Out Loud, a movie that sets out to examine the relationship U2 fans have “with the band, the music and each other,” was completed in April 2018. But prior to the wide release of the DVD this fall, fans have only had a few opportunities to see the movie in its entirety: premier […]
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It’s fortunate that there are fifty-two weeks in a year–there are three U2 albums celebrating significant anniversaries this year, and my plan is to cover all three of them until they are exhausted, including all B-sides, outtakes, and any other related cuts that U2 might have recorded. Today, that means that we are talking about […]
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There are several “legendary” pieces of music from U2 that we fans might never get to hear, no matter how long we wait, whether patiently or impatiently, or what we might do. I’m thinking of things like the very early song “Concentration Cramp,” the complete soundtrack that Bono and Edge wrote for that stage production […]
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U2 has recorded a handful of instrumentals over the years–mostly, but not exclusively, in the early years. Today’s topic is very nearly one of those instrumental tracks, but for a very few lines of singing. That’s enough by itself to make this song noteworthy in U2’s catalog. What makes it special, though, and almost entirely […]
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Today, Billboard released its list of the highest paid musicians of 2017, which yielded results both surprising and unsurprising. You can decide which of those adjectives applies to the following fact: only 7 of the 50 are women. Lady Gaga was the sole female artist to make it into the Top 10 (#6). Taylor Swift–somewhat […]
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I’ve written in the past about U2’s relationship with Patti Smith, but I barely scratched the surface of this particular song in that article. It seemed like the appropriate time to give U2’s cover of “Dancing Barefoot” a platform all to itself, since it was a B-side from the Rattle and Hum album that’s celebrating […]
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I’ve been bouncing around for the past few weeks…moving between Zooropa, Rattle and Hum, and War, all of which are celebrating noteworthy anniversaries this year. Today, I’m focusing once again on Rattle and Hum, or rather one of its B-sides. From the Angel of Harlem single, it’s “A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel.”
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UNCASVILLE, Conn. — What better way to celebrate American independence than with an Irish band on Native American sovereign ground. U2 closed out its North American “Songs of Experience + Innocence” tour with a two-hour performance at Mohegan Sun Arena on Tuesday night. Even with the little ironies of time and circumstance, the celebration made […]
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