60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “One”—U2

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Rob ranks the top five funniest moments in the film ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ to kick things off for this very special U2 edition of '60 Songs.' Later, Rob focuses in on what Bono and U2 meant to music in the ’90s versus their ’80s impact. Writer Annie Zaleski later joins Rob to dive into all things U2. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Annie Zaleski Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to power pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Hello, friends, a quick note to say that after this episode, 60 songs, we'll be. going on a brief restorative hiatus and we'll return in October with the final 16 episodes. We did 14 in a row this time. I was going to do 15, but I got to go to Sweden next week. That's not a euphemism for anything. I got to go to Sweden. But we will return in October where BTW, I will have a great deal more to say about the 60 songs that explain the 90s book,

which if you were not aware, will be released on November 14th. and which is available for pre-order now. I will miss you terribly, but I need to go lie down now for a long time, but we will be back very soon. Okay. Thank you. I can't do this, man. Please don't make me do this. You're not making me. Why am I making myself do this?

I don't want to do this. It's disrespectful. It's perverse. It's like ranking my children. I can't. All right, fine. I got to do it. I'm doing it. Look out. Top five funniest moments from This is Spinal Tap. Here we go. Number five. This is the funniest movie ever made. Yes, this is Spinal Tap. The 1984 fake rock band documentary, the rockumentary, if you will, directed by Rob Reiner.

Spinal Tap, one of England's loudest bands. They've got armadillos in their trousers. The numbers on this amp I'll go to a. 11. It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. What's wrong with being sexy? What's the difference between golf and miniature golf? You can't really dust for vomit. As long as there's sex and drugs I can do without the rock and roll. I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation. You get me. I love this movie. I can't rank jokes from this movie. I refuse. Forget it. The top five funniest moments from This is Spinal Tap are just the first 60 seconds or so of this song in chronological order.

This song is called Big Bottom. That's what I said. Number four. Or so I have read. Holy shit. Funniest movie ever made. It helps if you're familiar with actual rad, but also unintentionally hilarious 70s rock and roll documentaries.

Like Led Zeppelin's, the song remains the same, or the bands of the last waltz, or the who's, the kids are all right, or even the Rolling Stones, give me shelter. the super pompousness, the obliviousness, the heavy sedation, the not sexy, sexistness of this rock star dufous milieu. When it comes to parodies or mockumentaries or whatever, sure, it helps to be

well-versed in what's being mocked. Sure, but that familiarity is not necessary to enjoy this is spinal tap or to rightfully appreciate it as the funniest movie ever made because, and this bears repeating. This song is called Big Bottom. Time for the pre-chorus. Number three, greatest pre-chorus ever written. Simple, beautiful, classic. Oh my God. Time for the chorus. Number two. I would pay $1,000 to sit in a crowded movie theater on a Friday night in 1984 watching This Is Spinal Tap for the first time amid a raucous crowd of deletreement. delighted armadillo trousered, immature dudes. Dudes is a gender neutral term, but yeah, okay, it's mostly dudes.

That's fine. Also watching, this is Spinal Tap for the first time, I would pay $1,000 just to experience this moment, the chorus of Big Bottom for the first time. I can hear my ecstatic, uncontrollable giggling, harmonizing with the ecstatic, uncontrollable giggling of everyone around me. Truly, it's a beautiful day. Truly, this is the moment I'm stuck in and I don't want to get out of it. Truly, I've finally found what I'm looking for.

Number one, can I leave this behind? Yes, that's the single funniest moments in the funniest movie ever made. Meet Spinal Tap on guitar and lead vocals. David St. Hubbins, played by Michael McKean. Tell them your life philosophy, David. I believe virtually everything I read. And I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything. Stupendous on lead guitar, Nigel Tufnell, played by Christopher Gest.

Tell them about that beautiful piano piece you're working on, Nigel. Yeah, well, it's part of a trilogy, really, a musical trilogy that I'm doing in D minor, which I always find is really. really the saddest of all keys, really. I don't know why, but it makes people weep instantly to play a. It may be a good idea in your day-to-day life to avoid the sort of person who can quote every single line of dialogue from the 1984 film. This is Spinal Tap. And I am saying this as very much that sort of person.

Tell them your influences and what this beautiful piano piece is called, Nigel. Very much like, I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach. And it's sort of in between, though. It's really like a mach piece. What do you call this? Well, this piece is called Lick My Love Pump. Incredible. David St. Hubbins and Nigel

are best friends and musical geniuses. Visionaries, like poets. Shelley or Byron, people like that. On bass, Derek Smalls, played by Harry Shearer. Tell them your role in the band, Derek. The two totally distinct types of visionaries. It's like fire and house. nice basically. You see, you know, I feel my role is to, in the band, is to be kind of in the middle

of that, kind of like lukewarm water. Unbelievable. Their drummers keep dying by a bizarre gardening accident or via choking on someone else's vomit or via spontaneous combustion. Don't get me started on Mrs. Spinal Tap. I've already started. Don't let me continue on Mrs. Spinal Tap. When they get lost backstage in Cleveland and they can't find the door to the actual stage and they just wander around going, hello Cleveland, fantastic scene. However, anyone born in Cleveland has heard, hello Cleveland, like 10,000 times. Attention all lead singers of rock bands playing shows in Cleveland, Ohio. You, sir, or madam, are not the first rock star in history to yell, hello Cleveland at a bunch of

Clevelanders from the stage at your show in Cleveland. You are, in fact, the billionth person to do that. The collective groan from the crowd of actual Clevelanders getting hit with their billionth, hello Cleveland will be louder than your band. You know the old cliche of somebody in the crowd yelling, free bird, it's that, but now it's you, the rock star, yelling the dumb cliche at us. You have fantastic tasted movies, but knock it off. This movie, though, this is Spinal Tap is the best, man. When they're listening to excerpts from mean old album reviews, I play this for you already at some point, but I'm sorry.

This is happening again. The review you had on Shark Sandwich, which was merely a two-word review, just said, shit sandwich. Why? They print that. Why, they print that? You can't print that. I'm sorry that just happened again. Focus, Rob, focus, the rock and roll creation scene.

The scene in which Spinal Tap are on stage in Milwaukee, performing their Prague rock many epic rock and roll creation. And David and Nigel and Derek all start off encased in their own giant purple pods. Plastic vertical cocoons and the cocoons open up as they start playing. but Derek's cocoon malfun functions and won't open. So he's trapped in there for the whole song, playing his bass vertically while a roadie with a hammer and a blow torch tries to pry him out. If we are seriously ranking Spinal Tap scenes,

the malfunctioning rock and roll creation pod is top 10 for sure. It's not quite as funny as Stonehenge, but it's a little funnier than the Jazz Odyssey. But we're not actually ranking scenes from This is Spinal Tap because that would be disrespectful and perverse. Okay, this movie doesn't work unless the fake band works for real. This is Spinal Tap. The movie can only be great if Spinal Tap the band are great.

Spinal Tap got some jams, man. Tonight I'm going to rock you tonight. Jam! You're too young and I'm too well hung just glides right by you, don't it? Spinal Tap put out actual albums and actually toured IRL in 1992, in fact, Spinal Tap. Still Michael McKean, Christopher Gast, and Harry Shearer in character as David, Nigel, and Derek. The band put out an album called Break Like the Wind. That's pretty good.

Wikipedia informs me that the title, Break Like the Wind, is a double entendre that combines and confuses the idiom. make like the wind with the idiom breakwind, a euphemism for flatulence. It's very helpful. Thank you, Wikipedia. Now, Spinal Tap are funny on purpose, obviously. Spinal Tap are not technically a self-parody because they are actually a parody. But Spinal Tap nonetheless illuminate one of the sacred commandments of rock and roll, which is to truly laugh at, or laugh with, but usually laugh at, a rock band. You have to love that band. You have to respect them. Or better yet,

revere them. Even your most caustic derision is rooted in sincere affection. That band has to be truly great, truly worthy of both your adulation and your mockery. It's no fun, really,

laughing at a terrible band doing laughably inept shit. That's just empty, ridicule, and contempt. That's just new metal, right? No offense to new metal, not really, but come on. No, the funniest bands in rock history. The funniest bands intentionally and unintentionally. The famous bands with the best senses of humor and the famous bands with no sense of humor whatsoever. These are often among the biggest and best and raddest bands in rock history as well. We mock because we love. We cheer them on

even as we cringe. We scoff at their hubris through genuine tears of joy and catharsis. We are the lukewarm water, pooling at the feet of all their visionary fire and ice, and we genuflect, even in the face of their most catastrophic failures. This is the story of another all-time great rock band, eating another shark sandwich. This is what it sounds like when it works the way it's supposed to. to work. How it's supposed to work is the mega famous Irish rock band, U2, are crammed inside a 35-foot-high mirror ball in the shape of a giant lemon. Rolling Stone says the lemons 35 feet high, a super intense and thorough magazine called Live Design that interviews people about their bonkers, elaborate stage setups.

Live design says the lemons 40 feet high. I'm going with live design. These people know their shit. The short hand for 40 feet, by the way, is 40 with one quote mark after it. You know, the shorthand for 40 inches is 40 with a double quote mark, right? Just in case you're ever sketching the design, for say a Stonehenge replica and a napkin, you don't want to confuse the symbols for feet and inches, lest you end up with a Stonehenge monument on stage that is in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. That tends to understate the hugeness of the object. I'm sorry. Focus. Focus. So a giant mirror ball lemon opens up and whoop, there's U2. Mega famous Irish rock band, U2.

This is not unexpected, U2's presence in the giant mirror ball lemon. We are live in Santiago, Chile on February 11, 1998, and the fellas are performing their usual encore during U2's fabled Pop Mart tour, An extra extra extra extra ludicrous stadium tour to promote the band's ninth album, Pop, released in 1997 to Mild Derision, or at least mild confusion, or anyway only relatively mild acclaim. Not an especially loved U2 album. This song is called Disco Tech. It's the first track on pop.

It's also the first single. No one likes disco tech. anyone who tells you they like disco tech is lying don't fall for it you remember that taylor swift song me me all caps exclamation point the first single offer lover album from 2019 the song super dorky and everyone watched the video for me and was like oh no disco tech is the me of you two singles or i guess chronologically me is the discotheque of taylor swift singles i don't care this U-2 song. I'm sorry. I'm exaggerating for comic effect here, but then again, maybe I'm not. So the giant lemon slowly twirls around while a remix of the U-2 song Lemon is playing,

and it lands on a little second stage. The lemon opens up, whoop, U-2. You-2 are dressed in the red kits for the Chile national football team, who made the knockout stage. of the 1998 World Cup. You two look like none of this is their idea or preference. You two have a stiff, stoic, awkward, almost embarrassed aura to them, standing in the giant mirror ball lemon, before descending the giant mirror ball lemons stairs. First comes guitarist David Evans, known professionally as The Edge. The Edge would be a pretty pompous stage name, if not for the fact that The Edge is one of the raddest guitar players of his generation, or for that matter, any previous or subsequent generation.

So actually, therefore, the Edge is an incredibly cool stage name. The Edge makes the sign of the cross before exiting the Lemon. Then comes bassist Adam Clayton. Then comes drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Larry Mullen, Jr., who had recently told David Letterman on the fabled late show at David Letterman that, quote, there is something quite funny about four patties

walking out of a 40 foot lemon, end quote. He's right. And it is somewhat intentionally funny. I leave it to you, though, whether it's a little bit unintentionally funny as well. And then there is Bono.

That's a super rad guitar riff, actually. first of all. Burner to do burn or to do burn it. That kicks ass. The edge is the best, dude. Okay, fine. I like discotech.

It's just that I don't like disco tech as much as I enjoy performatively hating disco tech. You know how it goes. But yeah, Bono. Born Paul Hewson, international rock star. He is wearing rock star sunglasses and wearing some sort of bubble suit and holding a soccer ball and singing earnestly about how you just can't get enough of that lovey-dovey stuff. And right when that super rad guitar riff kicks in, he kicks the soccer ball into the crowd.

And it's all quite ridiculous and yet also super cool because that's the gig. That's how it's supposed to work. But then there's the time in Oslo, Norway, when the 40-foot lemon didn't open. And it's tremendously important to me. for some reason, that you picture them there. Bono, the Edge, Adam, and Larry stuck in this 40-foot lemon, and they can't get out of it,

in front of roughly 40,000 baffled Norwegians as the perfecto remix of a lemon blairs over the PA, perfecto being the production team of Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne. The Lemon also broke down during shows in Sydney, Australia, and Osaka, Japan, But Oslo is the most famous, the most infamous of the lemon malfunctioned incidents. And this sordid tale endures as a monument to U2's late 90s hubris. And yes, indeed, any reference anywhere to the time U2 got stuck in a 40-foot mirrorball lemon is legally required to refer to this moment as U2's spinal tap moment. You two eventually scampered out of an escape hatch round back of the lemon, perhaps while thinking to themselves, on what day did God create the Pop Mart tour production designer?

And couldn't God have rested on that day, too? The Pop Mart Tour, design and directed by Willie Williams. He's great, actually. He's an industry giant. Everyone is glad God didn't rest on the day he created Willie Williams. The Pop Mart Tour also consisted of a 12-4th. foot wide olive mounted on a 100 foot tall cocktail stick, along with an additional 100-foot-high McDonald's-esque golden arch and a 165-foot-wide video screen consisting of 1 million blue

LED modules and carrying a price tag of $6 million. This tour was announced at a Kmart in Manhattan in the lingerie department. The Kmart and Astorpe. place. If you know it, I loved that Kmart. I used to buy boxes of frosted hot fudge Sunday Pop Tarts at that Kmart during my stress eating years in New York City music journalism. That Kmart finally closed in 2021, but my stress eating era is ongoing. And the Pop Mart tour premiered in, where else, Las Vegas? During that Las Vegas show, according to Willie Williams journals, there was so much dry ice pumped on stage that the edge couldn't see his own feet to hit his guitar pedal. So the edge had to kneel down and fumble around trying to find them. And the edge thought to himself, it has finally

happened. I am Derek Smalls. This is Spinal Tap. You two are one of the biggest bands of the 80s. And unlike most of the biggest bands of the 80s, you two were also one of the biggest bands of the 90s. Even if, by 1997, Bono would be sitting in the lingerie section of a Kmart and saying, I can't quite recall how it got to the idea of taking a supermarket on the road. I remember it making a lot of sense at the time. As I'm sitting here, I'm trying to think what that reason is, end quote. Laugh at him if you want. But the people laughing at Bono, the hardest and loudest, are the ones who love him the most.

Is it getting better? Do you feel the same? And here's why we love him so much. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 104th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we are talking about one by you two from their 1991 album, Akhtung Baby, released in November 1991, just two months or so after Nirvana's Nevermind. to tremendous enthusiasm and acclaim and rapture because it's probably U2's best album and one is probably U2's best song.

Probably not my favorite U2 song, but yeah, probably the best. And it is easier on me when I can blame Bono for things. Yes. And I've gotten in quite a bit of trouble for sassing Bono in public forums, but I wouldn't sass him if I didn't love the way. he delivers the word night. The echo on Bono's voice on that one word, night, the enormousness of it,

but the frailty of it as well. The sense of both grandeur and loneliness, the arrogance of his vulnerability. This is a man who deserves to travel by a 40-foot-tall mirror-ball lemon, if that's what he wants to do, even if he gets stuck in it, and he also forgot why you wanted to do

any of it in the first place. Okay, this comes up from time to time, but it's really the only way for me to convey to you the intensity of my personal and public relationship with the super famous Irish rock band, U-2. Early 2001, I've been out of college for less than a year. My stress-eating years in music journalism have formerly begun. I'm working as an arts writer at an alt-weekly newspaper in Columbus, Ohio, but sometimes I freelance. I write the occasional jovial blurb for another alt-weekly up in Cleveland. Scene Magazine in Cleveland. A newspaper, my mother reads.

Scene magazine in Cleveland assigns me like a 150-word preview blurb of an upcoming U-2 concert. You two played Gund Arena in downtown Cleveland, G-U-N-D Arena. I don't want to talk about it. On May 3, 2001, you two were on their much less derided elevation tour. promoting their rapturously received 2000 comeback album All That you Can't Leave Behind. That's the record with Beautiful Day,

Stuck in a moment you can't get out of, Walk On, etc. Big record. Notably, you two on this night in 2001 at Gundarina and Cleveland played exactly zero songs off pop. Their previous troubled album from 1997 that necessitated a comeback. Didn't even play discotheque.

I don't know what I wrote. All right? what I wrote is lost to history. It doesn't matter. It wasn't that bad. Whatever it was. The essence of what I wrote was like, Oh, you too.

You too's coming to town. Oh, sure. Okay. Whatever. You two. Remember the giant lemon. It got stuck in it. It's like spinal tap.

Oh, big comeback. You too. Duh. Whatever. Go see this if you want, but it's probably sold out. Oh, that's what I wrote. It's fine.

This is not pure. Pulitzer Prize material. This blurb, this is not incisive criticism, but it's fine. Relax. But a few angry scene magazine readers took umbrage with the snarky and dismissive tone of this blurb, and they wrote mean letters to the editor about me. One of those angry readers was my mother. I have to question your criteria for hiring music writers.

It seems that you have one too many young comments. whose heads were still stuck stuck in the Seattle Brunge era and who apparently know squad about good rock music. As a longtime YouTube fan, I have to take issue with Rob Harvill's short-sighted preview of the elevation tour. I was at the concert. It was one of several YouTube concerts I've attended, and I can assure you that the band is better than ever, and Bono is still a rock and roll god. This is my actual mother, Barb Harvilla,

reading her actual letter to the editor, published in Scene Magazine in May 2001. This letter is not lost to history. Oh, sure, this you can still read on the internet. Sure, this is my mother doing a dramatic reading of this letter on the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast, Bansplain, hosted by our dear friend Yassi Salick, in the U-2 episode from 20.

which otherwise consisted of Yasi and I discussing you two in great detail for like four and a half hours. I don't think anyone remembers anything I said in that Bansplain episode. No, they just remember my mom. I suppose we can't expect much from a writer whose favorite bands while growing up included Holland Oates and C. Hammer and yes, even vanilla ice. but it's particularly disturbing to me since I bought Rob's very first concert ticket. At the age of 14, he went to see you two and thought they were, in quotes, the bomb. Not the bomb.

As parents, we do the best we can, but we can't control the direction our kids take when they grow up. This two shall pass. We'll still set a place for Rob at Thanksgiving dinner. Barb Harvilla, Rob's mom. Did I really say the bomb? I don't know if I said the bomb. That doesn't sound like me. That doesn't sound like me even at 14.

That does sound like me. That sounds like me now. I probably did say the bomb. All right. You two are an important band of my family. Strong you two opinions in my families. In the early 80s, my cool uncle Steve, my mom's older brother, he saw U2 in Cleveland at the Agora Ballroom.

U2 were billed as modern music from Ireland. Their debut album from 1980 was called Boy, which contains the first of the roughly 50 U2 songs you are intimately familiar with, even if you have never listened to this band by choice even once in your whole life. That song's called I Will Follow. You know it.

Cool Uncle Steve's a U2 fan now. And a fan for life. So is my cool Uncle Nick. So is my cool Aunt Julie. And so is my mom. You two formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1976, as students at Mount Temple Comprehensive School. They go from their debut album, Boy, in 1980, to October in 1981, to war in 1983. Now one's got Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and New Year's Day.

That's where the shit really starts going down. To the unforgettable fire in 1984, to the big one, the first truly big one, the Joshua, in 1987. You two ain't playing ballrooms no more. It's arenas now. We lived in St. Louis, Missouri for a while, and my mom goes to see you two on October 25,

1987, at the St. Louis Arena. It's a hockey arena. The St. Louis Blues play there. And later, my mom describes it to me. The lights go down. The arena starts out pitch dark, and you two walk out in the dark. And they start their first song,

where the streets have no night. name and slowly the lights come on in different parts of the arena as the song builds up steam and as the edge one of the great guitar players of his or any other generation earns the right to call himself that and i can picture it so vividly right that guitar riff i've heard 300,000 times b do do do do do do do do the crescendoing as the lights slowly go up one of the great album openers in concert openers in rock and roll history, one of the great adrenaline rushes in the accumulated history of mankind, where the streets have no name is truly great because of its simplicity, its audacity, its recklessness, its recklessness, its lack of restraint. This is a stadium anthem, unapologetically.

You two are not playing it cool. You two are not trying to be cool. You two are trying to be great. you two are trying to be the greatest, which means being the hugest. And this is the precise moment when you two become definitely the hugest and very arguably the greatest. Because the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with 14,000 screaming fans in a hockey arena when you're uncool. And I'm not at this show in St. Louis in 1987 because I'm like nine and it's past my bedtime. And I'm still at Hall & Oates, man, apparently. But this is where my awareness of an affinity for U2 starts, right, with a cover of the Joshua Tree, right? The very somber and formal and maximum rock star black and white Joshua Tree cover shot by Anton Corbin, the band flesh to the left.

the somber and majestic expanse of the American West stretching away to the horizon on the right incredibly pretentious and unbelievably awesome album cover I can close my eyes now and so vividly see the Joshua Tree cover and I can also see the Bloom County parody Joshua Tree cover Bloom County the famous rad surrealist comic strip

Opus the Penguin Steve Dallas Bill DeCat you two are already ripe for parody in 1987 but it is parody born of love, of reverence, of awe, or at least of respect. Write one song as fantastic as where the streets have no name, and the world will make fun of you forever, and nothing anybody says about you will ever matter. Bono wrote an autobiography called Surrender, 40 Songs, One Story, came out in 2021, and he says, quote, You two's music was never really rock and roll.

Under its contemporary skin, it's opera. A big music, big emotions, unlocked in the pop music of the day, a tenor out front who won't accept he's a baritone, a small man singing giant songs, wailing, keening, trying to explain the unexplainable, trying to release himself, and anyone who will listen from the prison of a human experience that cannot explain grief.

end quote. Primarily Bono is grieving his mother, Iris, who died after having a brain aneurysm at her own father's funeral in 1974. Bono was only 14 at the time. In his book, he also says, songs are my prayers. Songs are also where I live. If you live in your songs, you want to make sure there's enough room. End quote. There's too much grief and ambition and adrenaline and defiance. powering this band to bother with subtlety or apology or embarrassment at the idea of stadium rock stardom. In 1988, YouTube put out an album and a rockumentary called Rattle and Hum, which has quite a bit of Spinal Tap-style pompousness to it. Both this is Spinal Tap and Rattle and Hum have scenes where the band visits Graceland. Elvis Presley's Graceland. That's all I'm saying. But yeah, there's Bono on stage in a leather vest with no shirt and a cowboy hat and an acoustic guitar that by his own admission he can't play very well, strapped across his back on a steel horse he rides. And Bono's leading you to through a song called Silver and Gold, a song about South Africa under apartheid. And Bono's delivering an earnest and ferocious anti-apartheid speech.

Am I boogunya? I didn't mean to bogea. And then he says something very corny. That becomes, through the primal, spiritual, alchemo power of rock and roll, the coolest thing you can possibly say. Don't say, okay, edge, play the blues in public unless you're Bono. One of the great frontmen of his or any other generation. And he's five foot six, by the way. Bono, he's not a small man, but he's an inch shorter than Tom Cruise.

but don't tell either of them. I said that. Don't say, OK Edge, play the Blues, unless you're Bono talking to the Edge. One of the greatest guitarists of, yeah, you get it. Okay, you two, a proudly gigantic stadium rock band now entering the 90s, when rock bands are not supposed to be proud that they're gigantic. Hugeness, fame, success, adulation, and themia. rock bands ain't supposed to want any of that in the 90s, or at least they're supposed to act like they don't want it.

The hugest rock bands, especially. The 80s had Sting and Axel Rose. The 90s have Eddie Veteran Kirk Cobain. I do not want what I have got. You too in the 90s. Yeah, this is going to go great. And at least at first, it does. I spent like 30% of the late 80s and early 90s

is just driving around with my mom, listening to pop radio as we'd run errands and visit my various cool aunts and uncles. Me riding shotgun is an awkward kid and an embryonic surly teen. It was a huge moment for both of us when mom finally bought a new car, a Toyota Camry. I think it was green. And mom says to me, it's very important. The first song we play in this new car. It can't just be any song. This is important. We have to christen it. then mom put on YouTube's 1991 album Octum Baby

and we listened to the first song Zoo Station as she drove us in her brand new car to Pizza Hut or maybe we just drove past the Pizza Hut that Pizza Hut was definitely involved I do know that we were heading east on Route 18 or maybe I got a free bookie pizza Pizza Hut

I could ask her but I'm not going to bother my mom with this Brian Eno Egghead Super Producer and longtime U-2 co-conspirator Brian Eno described to Rolling Stone in 1991 the vibe around the Octum Baby recording sessions which started in Berlin. He says

buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy, and industrial, all good, and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, raucous, and linear, all bad. it was good if a song took you on a journey or made you think your high-fi was broken. Bad if it reminded you of recording studios or you too.

End quote. Bono's vocals on Zoo Station, overseen by fellow super producer Daniel Lenois are designed to make you think that your new Toyota Camry stereo is broken. 1991. The Berlin Wall has come down. The USSR has collapsed. Nelson Mandela is free. These are not vague, insignificant events to a rock band as sociopolitically ambitious and earnest as you two. They were alive and they waited for this. Right here, right now, there is no other place they'd want to be. Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history. And you two chose amid all this global. momentousness and cautious optimism to make their trashy throwaway dark, sexy, industrial album. You know what the best song in Octum Baby is? Let's start there, actually. The best song in this record is called Acrobat.

This song kicks astounding quantities of ass. Angry-sounding U-2 songs are the best, dude. They are rare and precious jewels of stadium-sized grouchiness. bullet the blue sky Sunday Bloody Sunday my experience of Octum Baby in real time right as a 13 year old as an embryonic surly teen

is that I'm getting super heavy into alternative rock right Pearl Jamms 10 is 1991 so is never mind so is blood sugar sex magic so is REMs out of time while we're talking beloved 80s bands skillfully navigating the 90s

and I'm sitting there at 13 trying to decide if you two this already colossal band my mother loves. Does you two qualify as alternative rock? Are they allies? Or are they the enemy? Are they the rock that alternative rock is an alternative to? And so I'd hear mysterious ways, the first big Octum baby single on the radio amidst alive and smells like teen spirit and give it away in a rusty cage. And comparatively, mysterious ways sounds quite earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, raucous, and linear, but not in a pejorative way necessarily. And yeah, sure, Mysterious Ways is a great song, but it ain't no fucking acrobat. Do you know what the second best song on Octum Baby is? This is my current fixation.

This is my favorite song on the record right now. Holy shit. Okay, Edge. Play the blues. The Fly is the second best song on Octum Baby is. if only for the guitar solo. Is there a musical term for a guitar solo that gloriously goes on for so long

that the song shifts back into the chorus mid-gatar solo? Do you know what I'm saying? I love that shit. I'm suddenly swearing a lot more. Sorry, Mom, the trashiness is infectious. But yeah, this shit is the best. That's the first word of the chorus there.

Bono singing, Lov in an earnestly shaky falsetto. It's very sweet. I love that song. Part of the greatness of Oktun Baby is this emotional volatility. The spectacle of a fundamentally earnest stadium rock band trying very, very, very hard to sound trashy and throw away and hedonistic. And it's not that you two fail to sound debauched. It's that even their debauchery has a soulful, a profoundly spiritual quality.

You know the 33 and a third book series, those rad little books on classic albums, The 33 and a third book on Akhtung Baby, written by a guy named Stephen Cantanzerite, is really great. And really explicitly argues that Akhtung Baby is a concept album about Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden after the fall of man, where the devil will trick them into eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So Stephen argues, for example, that the song, until the end of the world, is about Judas betraying Jesus in another garden after the last. Supper. Vocally, you can always tell when Bono's inherent earnestness starts sneaking into his attempted trashiness when he starts sounding like Leonard Cohen, just a little. There's a little bit. There's Edge, still playing the blues. Octung Baby in late 1991 sounded like the future.

The future of U-2, the future of stadium rock, and also the future of rock and roll with or without the scare quotes. And bonus points, if your revolutionary futuristic, rock album sounds like the future right near the beginning of a new decade. It might sound superficial, but that shit matters, zeitgeist-wise. Far better this album comes out in 1991 versus 1996. And I'll let you decide what it means, zeitgeist-wise, that the most beloved song on U-2's best album of the 90s sounds the most like U-2 in the 80s. Bono's delivery of the word in two there, the way his voice breaks. That's why he's the best. know that Axel Rose from Guns and Roses, Axel Rose loves the U2 song One.

In the YouTube biography, U2 at the end of the world came out in 1995, written by Bill Flanagan. Axel Rose in that book, he says, I think one is one of the greatest songs to have ever been written. I put the song on and just broke down crying. It was such a release. It was really good for me. I was really upset that my ex-wife and I never had a chance because of the damage in our lives. We didn't have a chance, and I hadn't fully accepted that. The song helped me see it. I wanted to write Bono a letter just saying, your record's done a lot for me. Let's gently sidestep the sort of details of Axel Rose's marriage and just focus on the image of Axel crying to a U-2 song. The edge plays the blues, even when the edge only plays like four or five notes.

Remarkable. Octung Baby was not an easy record for you two to make. A lot of false starts, a lot of bickering, a lot of internal division. The distant and super unlikely, but somehow still looming threat of a breakup. Think the Beatles making the white album. Think Spinal Tap post Stonehenge. That YouTube biography from 1995 talks. about Octoom Baby as a battle between the hats and the haircuts. Bono and the edge were the hats.

They wanted innovation, new directions, hip-hop, dance music, electronica. Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. were the haircuts, the rhythm section that wanted to go back to basics. The old divide, the past versus the future, the 80s versus the 90s. And one was the bridge, the turning point, the peace offering, the song everyone could agree on. In the book, Bill Flanagan says, it came to them all together, and it came easily like a gift. My mother, in her quite rude and unnecessary letter to the editor about me,

is correct in stating that she did take me to my first YouTube concert. At Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland on March 26, 1992, promoting Octum Baby, the fabled Zoo TV tour, which had, for its time, an elaborate and super-pricey stage setup designed to bombard the audience with information. Information overload. The cars hanging from the ceiling, the myriad TV screens and jumbotrons, the doctored clip of President George Herbert Walker Bush saying, We will, we will rock you. all the static and noise and bluster. And first of all,

I am quite charmed now by 80s and 90s rock bands playing with the idea of information overload. Right? And they're mostly complaining about television. The proliferation, the perniciousness of cable television.

So many channels. Bruce Springsteen's 57 channels and nothing on. Duran Duran's too much information. All the way back to the Buggles' video. killed the radio star. Here's Bono, somewhere along the zoo TV tour, in a bright, gaudy silver suit doing his adorable televangelist schstick. Television. Television is the worst, most suffocating

form of mass media that will ever exist. I love this shit. I'm overwhelmed by TV. It's so quaint. I'm like, oh man, Bruce, 57 channels. That's so many channels. That's terrible. You can't watch all that. How are you supposed to absorb that much data? It's dehumanizing. Wow, 57. Wow. Anyway, did you hear that Livy rised up baby gronk for clout? Like, I want to just go back in time and log Bruce or Tom York or Bono or whoever onto the internet, right? Just to watch them keel over like one of those fainting goats. Oh, CNN is giving you information overload in 1991. That That's hilarious. Please stand by.

I loved that to TV tour. I bought the T-shirt. My mom probably bought the T-shirt. Black T-shirt, white sort of finger paint, vertical drawing of a face, a star, and then a car. I love that shirt. I got to buy that shirt on the internet.

But what I learned at my first U-2 show was that you-two have a very specific type of song that nobody other than you-two can pull off. And each of those songs has a specific moment, an ecstatic, exultant, genuinely climactic, ultra-rockstar moment that no other band is capable of. This moment. My producer just cut in to say that I'm not allowed to use the word Rizzed ever again. That's fair. That moment on with or without you from the Joshua Tree in 87, which is an echo of this moment.

That moment on bad. from the unforgettable fire in 84, which nicely harmonizes just a few years later with this moment, that moment on all I want is you from Rattle and Hum in 88, and also the reality bite soundtrack. Talk all the trash you want about you too. Why am I addressing you there?

I can talk all the trash I want about you too, right? But you two and you two only are capable of that. moment. The Apex Mountain Power Ballad moment. This moment. Do you mind terribly if I tap in Mary J. Blige just for a second? Am I bugging you? I didn't mean to bug you. I'm just kidding.

I'm guessing you don't mind at all. There's a strong argument that in the 90s at least, U2 peaks on one. I don't think this band's next two albums are going to make Axel Rose cry. Put it that way. Zoo Ropa in 1993, which is relatively hastily assembled. It feels a little bit like Zoo TV tour merchandise.

Zoo Ropa announces itself with the edge mumbling through a song literally called Numb. And this song kicks ass, actually, but it does not immediately broadcast all the ass it intends to kick. And anyway, NUM sounded hilarious on the radio in 1993. Too much is not enough. It's hilarious. by Bono. Great video for Numb, but yeah, no. The most resonant song on Zuropa will sound a little less futuristic and instead give us yet another one of those moments. This moment. That moment from Stay far away so close. That's stay, parentheses, far away,

comma, so close, exclamation point, close parentheses. The ascending baseline right there. The God Adam Clayton. The hats need the haircut. I will not further disparage U2's 1997 album Pop. It's pretty good. It's fine. But nor will I argue that pop is some underappreciated super classic that has one of those moments, right? That's pushing it. Please is a pretty good YouTube song, but no, no, not quite.

You know what pop has? Pop has an inversion of one of those moments. Pop has my favorite super weird U2 song, which just happens to be called Mofo. I don't know, man. Something about Bono. In a trashy throwaway, dark, sexy, industrial, maybe my car radio is broken voice, singing the words, looking for the father of my two little girls. It just does it for me. This is the moment, actually, or the potential that moment. You can imagine Mofo reconfigured is a classic U2 90s via 80s apex mountain power ballad that peaks right about here. That's what he said. This is the stadium rock catharsis moment where with or without you and all I want is you and bad and won all gloriously collide. Instead, mofo is an inversion, a perversion. This was the opening song on the Accursed Pop Mart tour with a giant olive and the giant lemon and whatnot. The tour that the Irish Times will explore in a 2018 article with the headline Pop Mart, were you two making a joke?

or was the joke on them? Is it just that the lyrics on Mofo are so raw that Bono buried them in distortion, an irony, in 1997-style information overload? Go ask him. I'm sure it'll tell you. Nobody enjoys overloading you with information more than Bono does.

But right here, he's still a 14-year-old boy mourning the loss of his mother. Everything else is just to just, What he's singing is the signal. Everything else is just noise. Do not fixate on the 40-foot-tall mirror ball lemon. Tonight, you two are going to rock you tonight. And this is how they're going to rock you. In that Irish Times article ruminating on the giant lemon, the folly of it all, Bono says, I think we did it to ourselves. We thought because there was so much discussion about the biggest tour, the biggest lemon,

the biggest this, the biggest that, way in advance of the tour, we thought we'd have some fun with that. Maybe we shouldn't have. The reason people come to see us in the end is to hear our songs. End quote. Mofo is not the song. Patrons of the Pop Mart Tour came to hear. Tickets were like 50 bucks, by the way. Super expensive. People were pissed. Please stand by. But Mofo sets the ideal tone for the Pop Mart Tour. A celebration of you two at both their cleverest and their stupidest. And it's all designed so this line just passes you by. Now I'm still a child. No one tells me no.

The giant lemon is a perfect example of no one telling Bono no. One is a perfect example of why no one ever will. We are so lucky to get to talk once again with Annie Zaleski, author and critic and famous Ohioan. She's written books on Duran Duran and Lady Gaga. On October 26th, she will publish This Is Christmas song by song, The Story is Behind 100 Holiday Hits. Annie, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me back. Of course. Annie, when I say just you two in the 90s, what's the first thing you think of, the first album song, video tour, anything. Do you think of Akhtung Baby? Do you think a pop? What sums up this band in this decade for you? You know, it's funny. So many things, but I think Akhtun Baby is what I gravitate toward because I think that was what I first saw the videos there. That was kind of like their transitional period. And I just love McFistow, which I'm sure we'll talk about later.

Macfisto is a great place to start. That was my first time seeing them on tour was Zoo TV, was this tour. So that was my first exposure to MacFisto and really my first exposure to Bono's whole deal. Like, when did you get into this band and like, how did you wrap your head around this band in real time? So it's funny. I think I really started getting into them around Octune Baby. Now, my dad was a U-2 fan, so I'll have that caveat. He had Joshua Tree on CD.

He taped war from the library. So there must have been U-2, like, percolated in my house. But I think Actung maybe was definitely like my first U-2 record. I was going to say, like, you're a little younger than me, but broadly, we were both teenagers in the 90s. Like, did you two feel like yours? Did they feel like a 90s band for 90s kids the way, like, Radiohead did? You know, they really did, which is so, like, funny to think about now. but to me probably because they were on MTV all the time.

They were on MTV next to Nirvana and like Pearl Jam and REM and like Bona was wearing leather and like they didn't like look old. They felt very useful. And so they felt like all the bands I liked. They did feel they did look well preserved. They felt well preserved as well. But yeah, it's so weird chronologically to think that Octum Baby comes out two months after Nevermind. You know, and I was going to ask like, did you think of Nirvana and YouTube specifically? as peers, as antagonists.

Do you two count as alternative rock to you? They do. And I think what's so interesting, I actually think I bought, never mind an Octoog baby in the same, like, Columbia House order at one point. So I think that's the Pierce thing. But I think like a lot of 80s bands around that time

or older artists like Bowie and Duran Duran and Tears for Fears, all of those artists were putting out new music, so they didn't feel like 80s bands. to me. They felt very current. They felt very modern. And so I didn't see you two as being some sort of, you know, like seasoned act reinventing themselves. They were just sort of you too on Zoo TV, on MTV. Same deal with REM for me. You know, out of time in 91 was the first REM record I got into. And like, I knew they had a rich prehistory that like people preferred in general, but they felt new to me and therefore they felt new overall. Absolutely. You know,

And REM, the same thing, was out of time, automatic for the people. You know, I obviously love all of their early records, but, you know, the emotional attachment I first had was to all those early 90s records. And so I think that is the generational gap. You know, a lot of people who are older would think that's blasphemy. But yeah, that's just way it is. For us, it's just natural. Exactly.

Is Octoom Baby the best thing they ever did? Like, I think my personal rankings are super boring. Like, it's Octum Baby Joshua Tree then, you know, onward. What's your deal there? See, I'm the weirdo because I actually I love all of the weird U-2, so I think October is still my favorite YouTube record.

I know. And Pop, I do love Pop. Okay. All right. But I think Octune Babies probably, I think overall, I think it's their best record. But I think when I think about

personal favorites, definitely Octune Baby than Pop in October. Let's start with October, actually, which is their second record. Like I think for a lot of people like boy, Bo-Bub-Bah-Boh war, right at the beginning. That's the underloved record from the first three.

It doesn't have like a major Sunday Bloody Sunday or I Will Follow type hit. Like what's it about October for you? You know, I think October, it was a lot moodyer than Boy, for starters. I think the instrumentation, Adam Clayton's bass playing on that record, I think is phenomenal. I think it's just, it's one of like is probably, I think he was actually influenced by all the early 80s post-punk bands. Like John, you know, John Taylor and then. everyone else kind of going. And so, and I think because Bono, like, you know, lost the lyrics to the record.

So it was very searching and it's still, he doesn't have all the answers. He's trying to find all the answers. And so I think on later YouTube records, he was basically saying, I know everything, follow me. And so I think October was almost a little bit humble, I guess, I would say. But yeah. No, I like that a lot. I like the idea of preferring Bono when he is less sure of himself. That makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Okay, so what about Pop? You know, Pop from 97, you know, their last record of the 90s, you know, it's sort of seen now, I think, is pretty chaotic, not quite a failure, but, you know, not Actuong Baby, you know, not a top five record. So what is it about Pop for you? I have always said, and so I, of course, I own this record in 1997. The cassette lived in my car for the cassette. Okay.

The cassette. And I still have, it's probably worth, like, you know, the cassette, you know, resurgence. But I've always said that the songs on this record are really good. The lyrics are really cutting. The lyrics are really moving. Bono was actually kind of revisiting themes. He was, he had talked about early in his career, you know, talking about his mom, talking about kind of death and mortality. And I feel like had they framed these songs in different production and different instrumentation, I feel like people would like this record a lot more. I happen to like synthesizers, so I totally dig this record.

And I get why people don't. But I do think that if it was reframed in a different way, people wouldn't think it was just so ridiculous. Was it framed that way on purpose, you think? Was this you two, like using irony to disguise the excessive sincerity of it? It's a good question. You know, I think that they, the record, maybe. I just I can't get past like the discotheque like video where they're like dressed up basically like the village people and they're like dancing like it's it's hilarious like it's really funny

they were obviously trying to kind of you know take the piss out of pop music and fame and excess and kind of flipping the script a little bit and like if you know the band I think they're funny I do think that YouTube is funny they don't get credit for it but if you have to really be paying attention if you're just taking it a casual YouTube fan and you see what they're doing, you're like, what is going on? Like, you don't have that context. So there's a lot of layers you need to know about to understand where they were coming from on pop. Okay, because I was going to ask you just point blank if they're funny and funny on purpose. And so the discotheque video, I think, is a central point here. Like, is that video

100% intentionally funny? Is it 80% intentionally and an additional 20% that they're not aware of? Like, what's the calculus there in terms of the self-awareness? You know, I think it's probably, I would say, like, 75, 25. And on some level, they knew what they were doing, but then there was that other element. It was very, it was unintentionally hilarious. And I feel like in general that that's kind of a YouTube theme, that you look at some of the stuff, what they talk about or what Bono says. And he's just, you know, and you're like, and he's being very serious. And some of it's like, that's really hilarious.

And you don't realize that's funny. And when he is trying to be funny sometimes, you know, yeah, he keeps going a little bit. And it's, he hits sometimes and he hits not. So their batting average in terms of being successful to, you know, 50, 50. 50. Batting 500 is excellent in most contexts. Yeah. I'm thinking we're just jumping around, but that's fine.

Thinking about one specifically, like it's sort of the most Joshua Tree-like song, an Octum Baby. It's a power ballad. There's not a lot of noise or dance music. It's not experimental the way a lot of the rest of the album is. Are you two just best at their simplest? What I like about that song, when I think you, too, is best, is that when they're being genuine and they're being sincere and they're not trying too hard.

Because you're right, this song is very simple. They're not overthinking it. It's very, you know, it's really beautiful. They're kind of, you know, built around that lovely chord progression edge had. And they're not overthinking it. They're not over laboring it. They're not overproducing it. They're just kind of letting the song kind of have atmosphere and letting you kind of fill in the blanks.

Kind of like we were talking about earlier, they weren't like telling you what to think or telling you this is the way. They were kind of leaving it a little bit more open to interpretation. I think the lore of like the play-by-play of how this record was made, like the arduousness of making this record. Like one's the moment where they get out of their own way. Sorry, I didn't do that on purpose. But like, yeah, they're sort of arguing about which direction. direction to go in, but like one is the song that arrives kind of fully formed and like they, it sort of shows them, not tells them, like you're saying. Absolutely. And, you know, it is very

true that, you know, you two trip themselves up more often than not and so many, you know, throughout their career and that when they were just kind of going for it and, you know, trusting themselves. I mean, I think that's the other thing is that they know how to write songs. They know what they do best. And they were really letting themselves actually do that and not worrying about artifice or worrying about weird costumes or, you know, lemons on stage. They were just kind of letting the music breathe. Yeah. When did you first see them live? I saw them actually in 2001 on the Elevation Tour. With PJ Harvey opening and I skipped the last few days of college to go to that show. Good choice. Excellent choice. I was at that tour as well, but I was covering it and I had to take

pictures and I had to stay in the green room before PJ Harvey. Like we were, sequestered and then my camera didn't work. Like Bono was like this close to me and I was pointing my camera at him like at his crotch and like the camera, it was a camera didn't take any picture. It was a terrible moment for me, honestly. But I'm glad you had a good time. Yeah, I took my dad and we had a really good time and he really enjoyed himself. Yeah.

So was your dad into the 90s, you two? You know, I'm always curious about people who came to them from the Joshua tree or earlier if they were sort of turned off, you know, and had to be brought back. by all that you can't leave behind an elevation. Like, where was your dad on the 90s? You know, I'd have to ask him, but I have a feeling, because I think I actually got, I bought him the record, you know, basically after pop.

So I think that it was a little bit like, that's the kind of the style he wants. And so I think, you know, I don't, I'm sure he was fine with me playing the stuff around the house. I don't remember any strong memories of him being like, this pop is great. Let's play this again, you know. Right.

I think he was more, you know, straightforward, anthemic, you know, U-2 making a statement type thing. So, yeah, I think, you know, he liked them enough and he liked seeing them live, but I don't think he was really seeking out the 90s, you too. Right. You've written really lovely and very passionate defenses

of both Zuropa and pop. Like, where do these albums sit in the canon for you now? You said, like, pop is one of your favorites. Like, do these, are these records super underrated? Do they need to be defended? Or do you think that, like, they're properly understood more, less now in the grand total sweep of you two. So I think fans have really, just from like just talking to

people online, there are a lot more pop and Zeropa fans out there now than I think I realize. I think more that people are coming around. I think the members of you too are not convinced that those records are worth saving. That is frustrates me to no end. Let's put it that way. How do you, where are you getting that? Is that what they're saying or what they're not saying or like they're not reissuing them with the same fervor as, you know, Octum Baby, of course. How are you getting that? A little bit of everything. You know, the reissues are not necessarily coming, lavish ones, when they just did all of the re-recordings, like that whole era, like pop, I think, got one song. And, you know, Zeropa Baby got a couple. And there just wasn't, there wasn't any interest in going back

and revisiting and, you know, buffing it up. And, you know, like I said earlier, making it a little bit reframing it in a different way and seeing what the songs sound like. It's just, it's almost like sort of their little neglected, like, area they want to forget. And I think that's really sad, actually, because I think that people, you know, people aren't embarrassed by that as much as they maybe think they are. And, you know, maybe they're embarrassed by it, but I think fans would actually welcome them, you know, kind of acknowledging. Because I mean, like, I mean, how many bands put out, like, you know, bad religion, I think they had a Prague record. I think they're okay with it now. you know, Al Jorgensen's talking about ministries with sympathy again, you know.

Right, right, right. People are warming to the, you know, these quote unquote embarrassing records of their catalog. So, you know, I think you two, and they're big enough now. It's not going to hurt them, I think, to talk about it. But I agree with you on it being a little sad. Like the old Bono quote, like, we're reapplying for the job of the biggest band in the world. Like what he said around around all that you can't leave behind. Like sort of putting down everything that had come between Akhtung and now, you know,

sort of setting aside that era. Like, do you think you, so you two really underrate themselves in this era now? And it's the band that needs to come around. The fans have come around. The band needs to come around now. It's like the worth of this stuff. I would completely agree with that. And, you know, because it's not like you two were, you know, small in the 90s with pop.

They were playing stadiums around the world. They were playing to significant amounts of people. They were still a big band. They were just sort of a different band and different sound. man when they were really big. And, you know, maybe they were just uncomfortable by that. Or they realized, okay, it's the 2000s now. New metal is huge. Pop music is huge. Like, how are we going to survive and evolve again? So I'm thinking it was probably more in that. But yeah, it is a little bit dismissive of their own work, you know, and it is kind of a bummer.

I wanted to ask you about two songs very specifically. The first is NUM from Zuropa, which I think for a lot of people is the exact moment when, like, they got super weird. Like, Did Numb connect with you immediately or do you appreciate it more in retrospect? Oh, I loved it immediately. Like that, I was totally, you know, I'm sure I heard it on the radio, but like the video, I thought was hilarious. The video is great. I just watched that and the video is genuinely really good.

And see, I think that also speaks to you two's sense of humor when you look at it. So, you know, they have edge. It's basically them all living out their fantasies of like hurting the guitar player on, you know, on film. The feet. Yeah. It's really, really effective. Yeah, it's like hazing. But no, I love that. I remember watching that all the time and just, you know, I think my friends and I were just like totally into it. So I was all in on weird YouTube pretty much right away. Right. And that is probably their single funniest moment as I think of it now, the numb video. The argument that they're humorless or they don't understand how they're funny. Like I think the numb video is is the evidence in favor of them.

I would too. Yeah. The second question is hold. me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me, actually the best YouTube song ever. That's a big question. That is a great song. It really is. It's almost forgotten because it was on a soundtrack and it was sort of in between. It has one of their best videos. The animated video is totally great. The Batman playing in the orchestra. Yes, yes. But I think it is one of their best songs. And because Bono sounds great on that song, you know, for starters. It's kind of like a mix between, you know, Actoon Baby and that everything they were doing after that

and also their rock edge. And it's just, it's kind of, it's dramatic and cinematic. Like, it's, it's exceedingly underrated, I think,

but I love it. It is one of their, I think, probably top 10 songs. It's aged better, too. It's aged excellent. It's a glam rock classic. Exactly.

Yeah. Annie, why don't you two have a blockbuster original Christmas song? Like, they have Christmas Baby, please come home. Like, that's a great cover.

but like a full YouTube Christmas album would sell like 20 million. My mom would buy 20 million copies of that record. Like what's the deal here? It's a big question. You know, I think because I think that they've almost, writing a good original Christmas song is actually very difficult. Of course.

As you kind of look throughout history, what has become standards? You know, Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson, maybe Taylor Swift. So in the modern era, it's very hard to kind of top what happened decades before. So I think this goes back to you too being, you know, afraid of putting out stuff now. That's not perfect.

That's not, doesn't sound like them. I'm not sure if they know exactly how to approach a Christmas song because it's a specific topic too. Like it's like you have an assignment right about Christmas. And, you know, Bono, I don't know if he can like focus on that. And plus they have the Catholicism thing. So it's like, do they do secular Christmas? Do they do religious Christmas?

I would think it might almost like indecision. But I mean, I love the stuff that they have done. But I think that original Christmas music. And I think that they're just, you know, they're so interested in kind of like archiving and excavating their own history. When you kind of, you know, between Bono writing his book and looking back and now the Octum Baby at the sphere,

they're really interested in kind of reframing some elements of their past and doing something like Christmas, you know, is something that I don't think they've, like, pondered to stop doing because they've been looking at their own history, because then you'd basically be looking at, you know, that's a totally different mindset, I think, to get in. But it's an interesting question. I think, you know, I don't know, but they should. They should at least do an original Christmas song. They could do one. I think they could do a great double-sided 45, and it would be awesome. There we go. Record Store Day. Well, maybe. People don't like record store day. Never

mind. But I think I agree with what you're saying that like I think you two are perfectly balanced between like a secular band and a spiritual band. They all they obviously have this very complex and deep and intimate sort of relationship, you know, with religion. But they're not explicitly religious most of the time, but they were very spiritual. I know my mom's a huge YouTube fan and she's really drawn to that element of them. You know, the spiritual side, the Christian side, you know. And that's what that's what always I thought made them sort of the perfect way to like strike that balance. between a Christmas song for everybody, but a Christmas song very specifically, you know, for Christians. Absolutely. And, you know, and looking at that, it is weird that they never did one, you know, and maybe they tried at some point it just didn't work because they do do spiritual very well.

And they have, you know, talking about faith in a way that's not alienating to people. You know, they're really about questioning things and trying to bring people in and, you know, the Catholic way, almost the anti-Catholic way, I think. But yeah, it's weird. Because they would be, on paper, they seem like the perfect candidate. And they just have sort of, you know, never done it.

Maybe they should. Maybe we should put that out in the world that they should try. That's what we're doing right now. That is their entire purpose here. Are you going to this fair? Are you going to Vegas? Do you have any interest in this? You know, as much as I love Octum Baby, I don't know if I can see them without

Larry Mullen Jr., who's not drumming for that. It's really weird. It's so weird. I just, I can't pull the. the trigger for how much money it is, for what that is, because Larry, Larry is, you know, what I love always about you too is that it's the four of them, you know, it's not just, you know, Bono and a bunch of people. It's everyone has their skills. And Larry is, I mean, Larry is like the funny, low key, he's the drummer, you know, he's the funny low key one.

Exactly. And so I'm, I can't do it. If he comes back, I would like to do that, but probably not until he comes back. No, I agree with you completely. Annie, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Annie Zaleski. Thanks to our producers, Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. Thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help and thanks very much to you for listening. And now without further ado, I need you to go listen to One by you two. We'll see you in a little bit.