Posted on 12/15/2022 6:18:21 PM PST by Rummyfan
There are a few pop stars whose work I can’t help liking in spite of myself – their song-writing, that is. I’d be happy never to see the faces or hear the voices of Mick Hucknall or Chris Martin again, but the moment ‘Stars’ or ‘Trouble’ starts, I’m mesmerised – only to wonder crossly the minute the song ends: ‘Why couldn’t they have given it to someone with a decent voice?’ Think about it: dancers have choreographers and actors have scriptwriters, so why should we assume songwriters can sing? Bono’s another. I love some of his songs (‘One’, as performed by Johnny Cash, and ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, by the Pet Shop Boys), but when faced with the awful actuality of his yowling, I remember what Prince once said about him: ‘You know what I’d do with a voice like that? Become a janitor.’
Surrender comes in at a whopping 563 pages, and I was already beginning to feel quite enervated by the time I’d read the press release informing us that Bono is an ‘artist and activist’ who has written an ‘honest and irreverent, intimate and profound’ book – which we’re lucky he got around to, considering his ‘more than 20 years of activism, dedicated to the fight against Aids and extreme poverty’. But isn’t having your press release calling your book ‘profound’ rather like giving yourself a nickname? Wait for someone else to do it....
1. Bono has a different heart from the rest of us. (Did you doubt it?) The book starts with him on the surgeon’s table, his special heart having been ‘stressed’. But never mind. ‘We needed extra-strong wire to sew him up – he’s probably at about 130 per cent of lung capacity for his age,’ the awed sawbones tells Mrs Bono.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
Everyone likes what they like. But I never understood why U2 was so big. Just don’t get it.
Cher?
Once upon a time, I respected him. It was several years ago. That’s all.
The Jesuits in my high school made us read it by junior year - 16 years old.
Julie, you are sadly ignorant. Many song writers do not sing well. That doesn’t mean they are not fine musicians or composers. Oh, just by the way, many song singers can’t sing. It’s definitely difficult to tell these days with autotune and related electronic voice modifiers.
Bo oh no!
I read it in 7th grade...12.
something specific about them, their style and the times. It all worked at that moment, to make them famous.
I remember at around the same time, Julia Roberts was considered absolutely beautiful. I see her in those old movies now and wonder - what were we thinking?
It’s his band, so of course, he’s the singer.
I’d put Bob Dylan in this category too. Brilliant songwriter and a lot of singers and bands have done nice covers of his tunes, but his nasal, monotone voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
True, but one with Sonny set her on the road to what she is today.
Who else? Bruce leftist Springsteen, Kanye West, the clown married to Beyonce—and that includes Beyonce—Jenifer Lopez, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Pitbull, and a few others I don’t want to waste my time with. The world is upside down, politics, music, FJB, and Jill. Screwed is what has become of us...
I think anyone wold tel you Bob Dylan is no singer. And he has only gotten worse as he has aged to the point now where his voice is an unintelligible nasal whine.
Just give his album “Nashville Skyline” one listen. Skip the first cut, a duet with Johnny Cash.
I read it when I was six months old.
Mom set up a projector that displayed the pages on the ceiling over my crib.
It seemed pedantic and a little sterile to me.
I saw U2 play a bowling alley in Asbury Park in NJ when they first came to the states.
Never really took to Bono’s minor chord singing. Some good guitar work, if a bit repetitious.
Bob Dylan, J. J. Cale, Leonard Cohen, etc.
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