Dear U2

, I like you guys. When I was growing up, discovering different kinds of music, there you were with your home movies in the desert, showing us Joshua Trees, playing on the roof of buildings, singing about War. 

You did something truly amazing with Achtung Baby and the related Zoo TV tour. You deconstructed the rock album, and deconstructed the stadium tour. You took elements of the subculture and pushed it into the mainstream. Even though many of the ideas about culturejamming were already made into music by groups like Negativland, you were the ones that told the world about it. In that tour, that deconstruction of a stadium rock show, you talked about politics, you talked about globalisation, mass media, the corporatisation of culture, mashups, technology, communication - all the things that hadn’t yet entered the vernacular, you were there, talking about it in Zoo TV. It was analysed as if it was not just a performance - it was a piece of performance art.

And that’s the thing really. It was art. It meant something, it stood for something. It made people feel. It pushed the state of the art forward. It mattered. It was innovative.

And because of that, it was risky. It was the kind of move that a band with the stature of U2 at the time could pull. You were much younger, you had less to lose. This 360 tour? You look bored. You’re paying the mortgages. It means nothing. It’s rock music largesse. It’s sad to see a group that was so innovative and promising simply phone in their performance.

Although - after deconstructing stadium rock, what do you do for an encore? U2 have been spending nearly the past 20 years trying to figure that out. I’ve lost interest in their failures.