Why U2 is better than R.E.M.

March 12, 11:22 AMIndie Music ExaminerNeal Rogers

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What you are about to read will attest to how and why U2 is a more important band than R.E.M., a group that, in many ways has occupied a similar space, over a similar span of time, as U2.

Both began as four-pieces in the late 70s — one Irish, one American — and both left their own indelible stamp on popular music.

Out of respect for R.E.M., a band I have very much admired, as well as out of respect for my established colleague on the other end of this discussion, I’ll refrain from dismissing the significant contributions R.E.M. has made to rock music over the past 30 years.

I won’t need to.

Instead, I’ll simply remind you of the journey U2 has taken, and the journey they’ve taken us all on along the way. I’ll start with my own. 

With songs like 'Where the Streets Have No Name' and 'With or Without You' ... U2 created a cinematic masterpiece that still stands as one of the finest rock albums of all time.

I truly grew up with U2. My first impression of the band was their video for “Sunday Bloody Sunday” a live performance filmed at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater that fell into rotation on MTV. That was 1984, when I was in the sixth grade. Though I haven’t seen the video in years, that image — of Bono waving a white “surrender” flag in the mist, pouring his heart into a song about an attack on Irish citizens during a civil rights protest — lasts to this day.

The image of Bono’s ridiculous mullet from that era also lasts to this day, but hey, we all have fashion mistakes in our past. Just ask R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe about the face paint he used to wear. Oh wait, he still does. (And I said I wasn’t going to take the low road…)

Another key memory of mine was U2’s performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert, when Bono descended from the stage during The Unforgettable Fire’s “Bad” — still one of their crowning musical achievements — and rescued a fan from the surging crowd, bringing her to safety behind the security barriers. It was a revealing moment, proving that the singer’s actions matched his conscientious lyrics.

When their landmark album The Joshua Tree exploded in the spring of 1987, I was a high school freshman. With songs like “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” and the album’s hidden gem, “Running To Stand Still,” U2 created a cinematic masterpiece that still stands as one the finest rock albums of all time, its influence impossible to overstate. (I think The Joshua Tree might be the only recording I have owned in vinyl, cassette and compact disc format.)

In the process U2 was rightfully elevated to superstar status.

Around this time I also became an R.E.M. fan. Their late-80s albums — Life's Rich Pageant, Document and Green — were hugely influential on a teenaged version of myself, and songs like “Fall On Me,” “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” were instrumental in my appreciation of alternative music.

However instead of the quaint, intentionally abstract lyrics Michael Stipe brought to the equation, Bono constructed hymns about love, loss, hope and faith — songs that filled stadiums and left little room for misinterpretation.

And though U2 has become synonymous with Bono’s humanitarian efforts over the years, there’s little dispute that the band’s finest songs are its simplest, and most personal: “With or Without You,” about relationship limbo; “Bad,” about a friend’s heroin addiction; “All I Want is You,” about the supremacy of true love; “One,” about acceptance, even if it is reluctant; and “Sweetest Thing,” an elegant tune Bono wrote as an apology to his wife for forgetting her birthday during The Joshua Tree sessions

While I tend to focus on the message, musically U2 and R.E.M. are incomparable. With his rich, layered guitar work, The Edge has gradually become recognized as one of the finest guitarists of his era. When was the last time you heard anyone speak of R.E.M.’s musicianship in those terms?

R.E.M.’s finest work, Automatic for the People, was released just 11 months after U2’s groundbreaking 1991 release Achtung Baby. Those were formative university years for me, and I saw both bands perform during that era. R.E.M. was good; U2 was life affirming.

There’s a key difference in the trajectories each band has taken since. Achtung Baby was another milestone for U2, while Automatic for the People marked the zenith for R.E.M. The Athens, Georgia, band simply never found that creative space again. Their follow-up, Monster, was so-so, and while their 1996 record New Adventures in Hi-Fi showed glimpses of the band’s brilliance, when I think of the discs that followed — Up, Reveal, Around the Sun and Accelerate — I feel sad, both for the band’s inability to live up to its potential, and for its followers, of which I once was.

That’s not to say U2 didn’t produce a few “lemons” along the way. Following Achtung Baby, U2 swung and missed throughout the 90s. There was the electro/techno failure of Zooropa, the disappointing Passengers side project with producer Brian Eno (a collection of songs written for imaginary movies), and the misunderstood sequencing and sampling on the 1997 record Pop. Bono’s continuing oddball personas, including The Fly and MacPhisto, the devil/rock star, were equally off-putting, and by the late-90s, I’d given up on the band that I’d grown up with.

So why I am including the lowest creative period of U2’s 33 years together as a band in their defense?

Because they rebounded, and because I later realized that the band had, with those dubious releases, been ahead of their time. In the mid-90s I wasn’t a fan of electronic music. Today I am. Looking back, I appreciate the trails U2 attempted to blaze.

To my surprise — and to the surprise of millions around the world — U2 came back with a vengeance in 2000 with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, a testament to their roots that contained the breakout hit “Beautiful Day,” as well as soulful tracks “Stuck in a Moment” and “In a Little While.”

The world’s greatest band had gone back to basics and created what Rolling Stone called the band’s third masterpiece, alongside Joshua and Achtung.

And just like those two seminal albums, the songs from All That You Can’t Leave Behind mark a distinct point in time of my life. I was in my late-20s, toiling around the dot-com universe in San Francisco, trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. I welcomed the band back like a long-lost friend — we hadn’t connected since college, to be exact.

In 2001 I went to see U2 on their Elevation Tour. I saw them twice actually. And of the hundreds of concerts I’ve seen, I can attest that they were, hands down, the two best performances I have ever witnessed.

The band’s latest, No Line on the Horizon, came out just last week and is on a par with their 2004 release, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb — both are good, not great, with a few five-star songs sandwiched between forgettable efforts. Once again, Bono is exploring themes of the human experience.

U2’s influence on today’s music is impossible to measure. However just as Bono has never hidden his affinity for John Lennon — the leader of the original quartet from the UK to take over the world — Coldplay’s Chris Martin hasn’t been shy about his aspiration to one day ascend to Bono’s throne.

Coldplay brought in longtime U2 producer Brian Eno for their latest, 2008’s Grammy Award winning Viva La Vida, and Martin told The Irish Times that he always views his band’s albums “in terms of U2 albums.”

“Viva La Vida is our Unforgettable Fire, in that it’s less straightforward, more oblique,” Martin told journalist Brian Boyd. “It's about sex and death and love and fear and travel and illness. There’s light and there’s dark.”

And though it’s far from a barometer of quality, it’s worth note that U2 has won 22 Grammy Awards and sold over 150 million records, more than any band.

Bono also told Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt that, “at the heart of U2 is the idea that the problems we face in the world start and end with the human spirit,” adding, “And our music, I would like to think, reminds people what the human spirit is capable of.”

Who can really say the same about R.E.M.? Well, the Pop Music Examiner can:
Read the Pop Music Examiner's defense of R.E.M.

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