U2 360° Tour: Surprise Ending
Jul, 4 2011
U2 has been on the road for almost three years and is nearing the end of their record breaking 360° Tour. Recently, the band beat out The Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge Tour as the highest-attended tour of all time, selling over seven million tickets.
Last night, U2 made their triumphant return to Nashville to play in Music City for the first time since 1981. The show had its share of special Nashville moments, including a rendition of "The Wanderer", a rarely-performed song from Zooropa that originally featured guest vocals from Johnny Cash.
After a rousing two hour long show, and an encore including Batman Forever soundtrack hit "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," the band began to exit the stage. However, a man in the audience caught frontman Bono's eye.
The resulting incident, caught on tape here, is one of the best concert moments I have witnessed. The man, who happened to be blind, nervously strummed "All I Want Is You," dedicated to his wife, while Bono sang along. Halfway through, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen joined in, and the audience was treated to an extra song. At the end, the ever-charitable Bono gifted the man with his guitar.
If you haven't seen the show yet, you have until the end of July. Check out the tour dates here.
-Erin O.
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U2 Prep Up To Four New Albums
Aug, 25 2010
Last year Bono admitted he was disappointed with sales of No Line On the Horizon, which has proved to be U2’s lowest-selling album for more than a decade. In the meantime they’ve embarked on the world’s highest-grossing tour, but that hasn’t persuaded them to abandon the studio. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Bono revealed the band has plenty of new music ready to go: “We have Songs of Ascent, which is the meditative work that was meant to complement No Line On The Horizon. We've got a rock album. We also have a club-sounding album. And then we have the Spider Man stuff."
Choosing what to release isn’t going to be easy. “We're not as 21st century as we think we are,” he admitted. “We'd be putting out more new songs online, involving our audience in the choice, if we were really modern. [Instead] we're just sitting here arguing about them, except no one else knows about them.”
That modern method certainly suits Kanye West: he’s planning to release a track every week online between now and Christmas, and with four albums-worth of material, it’s certainly a tactic U2 could employ if they wished. However, it seems more likely that U2 fans will have to wait until the band selects their favorites for release in the traditional way.
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U2 And The Artificial Horizon
Mar, 22 2010
U2 is planning to release an extremely limited edition album, Artificial Horizon. Released on three disks of purple vinyl, the release will feature 13 of the band’s songs remixed by illustrious peers including Trent Reznor, Snow Patrol and several DJs and producers.
It’s not the first time the band has offered such a rare release; in 1995 they released Melon: Remixes for Propaganda which was eagerly snapped up by fans and which spawned myriad bootlegs. Fifteen years on, and with the U2 bubble showing no signs of bursting – in spite of vociferous detractors claiming to the contrary -- it seems likely that Artificial Horizon will enjoy the same ‘must have’ vibe.
Fans who are keen to dip into their pockets for this new release will have to find a weighty $35 for the 60 minutes of music, though U2.com members will enjoy a $5 discount. The vinyl will be pressed on May 14 after which no further orders will be taken.
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U2 Biggest Earners In 2009
Mar, 1 2010
Billboard have revealed their list of the Top 40 earners in music in 2009, and it demonstrates just how little CD sales contribute to the modern music star’s overall pay packet. Nobody sold more CDs in 2009 than Michael Jackson, but the late singer is placed at No.20 in the chart with an estimated overall take of $17.3m, three-quarters of which came from physical album sales and the rest from ringtones and a portion of the profits from the This Is It movie. Large tours earned more cash for all nineteen artists above Jacko than his CD sales managed; Dutch violinist André Rieu sold only 59,000 CDs, but earned over $19m in ticket sales.
At No.1, with a total almost twice that of Bruce Springsteen in second place, is Irish rock behemoth U2. Their 360° world tour is the most expensive ever held, with daily costs reaching an estimated $750,000 due to its gigantic claw-like stage. But that is the key to the tour’s massive income, because it allows for a perfect view from all around each stadium and therefore much higher capacities for each concert. Last year U2 earned $108m according to Billboard’s calculations; they sold 5m albums too, but that income is negligible in comparison to the profits from the tour.
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U2 Play Glasto At Last
Nov, 24 2009
It’s taken 26 years, but finally U2 has been booked to play Glastonbury. The massive open air music festival has become an annual institution in Britain and is one of the most hotly anticipated events of the year. 2010 marks the 26th anniversary of the first Glasto, and all the tickets already sold out in 24 hours despite there being no confirmed headliner at the time of sale. Festival organizer Michael Eavis is thrilled to have U2 on board, saying:“At last, the biggest band in the world are going to play the best festival in the world.” However others remain unconvinced that U2’s musical leviathan will be able to lumber into such a different environment with ease. Record Of The Day Editor and self-confessed U2 fan Nicola Slade admitted that: "They are not going to be able to do their usual U2 spectacular that people have come to expect from them… I think it will be a difficult audience because it is not their core contingent." The band will be breaking from their American tour in order to headline on the Pyramid stage on the Friday night, and the performance will mark their only appearance in the UK during 2010. Whatever the reception in store for them, U2 manager Paul McGuiness admitted that the band were excited about their forthcoming booking; an excitement which is likely to be shared by many -- though perhaps not all -- of the festival attendees.
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Two Billion Watch U2 in Berlin
Nov, 8 2009
U2 were embroiled in a little controversy this week when giant walls were erected around their free show in Germany's capital Berlin, which was supposed to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. MTV, who organized the show as part of their Europe Music Awards ceremony, said the wall was necessary for the safety and security of the 10,000 gig-goers lucky enough to grab a free ticket. The event was watched by a further two billion people on television worldwide, as U2 were presented with a Best Live Act award before their 20-minute set. During "Sunday Bloody Sunday" Jay-Z was welcomed on-stage, and the crowd was led on a singalong of Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up." The big winner at the awards ceremony was Jay's wife Beyoncé, who won Best Song (for "Halo"), and Best Female and Best Video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)." In her acceptance speech she thanked her hubby: "There is one person I want to thank, and that is Jay — for putting a ring on it!" Local favorites Tokio Hotel also performed, as did Shakira, Leona Lewis and the Foo Fighters.
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U2
Jul, 31 2009
Just a week after announcing a donation of €5million ($7million) towards music education for children in Ireland, local heroes U2 have faced protests in their hometown of Dublin because of the disruption caused by their massive tour entourage. About 80 people joined a picket near Croke Park stadium because of the sheer volume of trucks required to transport U2’s unique claw-like stage. “The stage was to come down overnight and 94 trucks were to go in and out, one every three and a half minutes, right through narrow roads and both sides of the stadium,” Mrs Barbara Ward, of the Croke Park Area Residents’ Alliance told Ireland On-Line. “People would have been awake all night. We decided to stand up and protest and the drivers never tried to pass us.” The size of the tour was also criticized by David Byrne, who said “Those stadium shows may possibly be the most extravagant and expensive (production-wise) ever: $40 million to build the stage and, having done the math, we estimate 200 semi trucks crisscrossing Europe for the duration. It could be professional envy speaking here, but it sure looks like, well, overkill, and just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all.” The somewhere-between 94 and 200 trucks (oh, and the band) are now behind schedule as they head for Sweden, where the next dates on their world tour are due to be held this weekend.
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U2
Jul, 23 2009
Thirty years of stadium gigs and other rock star trappings haven’t made the middle-aged men of U2 forget what it was like to be struggling young musicians near Dublin, Ireland. In recognition of the help they received as kids, the rock superheroes have bestowed a gift on the county town of their youth: the not inconsiderable sum of €5million ($7million) towards music education. Schoolchildren in Dublin will now have the chance to learn a musical instrument or take vocal tuition as a result of the new Music Network scheme, made possible by the multi-million donation from the band. Guitarist The Edge, or David Evans to his teachers, said of the donation: "Being around music at a young age was important for us and we were lucky to have it at school. We had been looking for some time for a way to get involved in an initiative in music education in Ireland.” The scheme is due to be supported further by a €2m injection of cash from the Ireland Fund, and will allow music teachers to provide local tuition at affordable prices to school age children. For those who wish to see the local boys in action, U2 will be playing three nights at Dublin’s Croke Park stadium from July 24.
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U2
Sep, 5 2008
The new U2 album may have been delayed to the start of next year, but if you believe what Bono's been saying, it's going to be well worth waiting for. So far he's used phrases like "best ever" and "priceless" to describe the musical genius currently being committed to tape, also suggesting that the next album will see a stellar stylistic shift of the magnitude of that which took the band from The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby. Four album tracks were leaked earlier this year, though they failed to make too big an impression, but if Bono thinks it's gonna be good, who are we to argue? We'll be able to decide for ourselves in the New Year.
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U2
Jul, 25 2008
It's a great time to be a U2 fan: a special deluxe version of The Joshua Tree was released late last year, and this week sees the arrival of expanded and remastered double-disc versions of U2's first three albums, Boy, October and War. These reissues will contain previously unreleased tracks and demos from the recording sessions of the time, live tracks and remixes. Then in September, fans can look forward to a special reissue of 1983 live album Under a Blood Red Sky, before U2's hotly anticipated new album drops in November. Their 12th studio album, still untitled, will be produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, the team that manned the desk for some of U2's most acclaimed works, including Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind.
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