achtungbaby.net

Rockers upstage Mariah and Kanye at forty-eighth annual awards show

U2 upstaged major nominees Mariah Carey and Kanye West last night at the forty-eighth annual Grammy Awards, winning five awards, including Song and Album of the Year.

“If you think this is gonna go to our head — too late,” joked the band’s singer Bono after accepting the award for Song of the Year for “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own.” Both the song and the album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, Bono said, were dedicated to his late father, whom he thanked “for giving me the voice and a bit of attitude to use it.” The band also won awards for Best Rock Song, Best Rock Album and Rock Performance by a Duo or Group, and colleague Steve Lillywhite was honored as Producer of the Year. Read the rest of this entry »

The concerns: troubled relationships, self-worth and identity. After struggling for years with issues of social responsibility and conscience…the new songs deal with disappointment and deceit — how love, yes, can take you higher and also tear you apart.

ONE

Is it getting better, or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you, now you got someone to blame?
You say one love, one life, when it’s one need in the night.
One love, we get to share it
Leaves you baby if you don’t care for it.

Did I disappoint you or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love and you want me to go without.
Well, it’s too late tonight to drag the past out into the light.
We’re one, but we’re not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other… one

Have you come here for forgiveness,
Have you come to raise the dead
Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head
Did I ask too much, more than a lot
You gave me nothing, now it’s all I got.
We’re one, but we’re not the same.
Well, we hurt each other, then we do it again.

You say love is a temple, love a higher law
Love is a temple, love the higher law.
You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl
And I can’t be holding on to what you got, when all you got is hurt.

One love, one blood, one life, you got to do what you should.
One life with each other: sisters, brothers.
One life, but we’re not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other.
One, one.

Love is blindness, I dont want to see
Wont you wrap the night around me?
Oh, my heart, love is blindness.In a parked car, in a crowded street
You see your love made complete.
Thread is ripping, the knot is slipping
Love is blindness.

From U2.com. It still sends chills down my spine whenever I watch it.

Beautiful Super Bowl

U2′s half-time performance at the US Super Bowl became a moving tribute to those who lost their lives on September 11th.

The band performed Beautiful Day, MLK and Where The Streets Have No Name.

As Beautiful Day wound down and MLK opened, a giant screen scrolled the names of victims in the attacks, introducing the opening chords of ‘Where the Streets Have No Name.’

The names reflected in overlapping patterns across the stands, which were dark save for countless camera flashes.
Read the rest of this entry »

Only 14 months ago, U2 reapplied for the job of world’s best rock band, writes Edna Gunderson in an in-depth interview for USA Today.

The Dublin quartet nailed that position with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, landed a big promotion with three Grammys for single Beautiful Day and got a raise with the Elevation 2001 Tour.

Pink slips? Red ink? Try gold mine. After topping charts in 32 countries, 10th album All That has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, 3.1 million domestically. The record-breaking tour, which ended Sunday in Miami, grossed an estimated $160 million, half of that in U.S. receipts.

In a downsizing industry, U2′s upswing contradicts rock doomsayers and confounds even the band members. Bono recalls pre-release jitters and characterizes last year’s cocky championship bid as a tease.
Read the rest of this entry »