Hawksmoor wrote:I rather like U2, but I'm truly surprised that Elvis does. I'd have thought they were the antithesis of of everything he appears to like in popular music. Still, there you go - learn something new every day.
I haven't read the piece, but my guess is that EC
respects U2 for combining reasonably intelligent and adventurous music with enormous popularity and staying power. Recall that EC came of age in an era when popular music really mattered, being a key element in defining the voice, style, identity and concerns of its times. (Think The Beatles and Dylan as archetypes). This was an era before the infinite fragmentation of niche-marketing and the cramming of pop into narrower and narrower formulae and stylistic boxes: a time when someone like Glen Campbell would get airplay on rock stations, and when
everyone was aware of, and excitedly following, what the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Beach Boys, etc., were doing, and where they would go next.
That's the model of which U2 and Nirvana were the last exemplars. And only U2 has managed to survive and remain relevant over the long haul. "The last of the rock stars," as Bono self-indulgently sang of himself on
All That You Can't Leave Behind. I don't love U2 but I love the fact that they have refused to surrender on that model of popular music, refused to take the easy way out of being "alternative" and therefore uninterested in the mainstream. Like the great rock and roll acts of the 60s, they strove to
define the mainstream. It's probably their success in achieving that ambition - one Elvis once shared - and what it represents, as much as their music, that earns EC's respect and admiration.