“The greatest tunesmith out of the UK”: The artist Bono called the best since Paul McCartney
Any artist truly devoted to their craft prioritises authenticity over widespread popularity. While reaching the heights of bands like Led Zeppelin is undoubtedly appealing, staying true to one’s artistic vision often takes precedence over catering to the demands of a massive audience. Though Bono himself has never lacked for followers, he once declared that this particular music giant was the greatest since the era of The Beatles.
Then again, Bono already had a collection of fantastic tunes to his name to put him in the same conversation as John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Despite coming off as incredibly pretentious at times, there’s no way someone can ignore a song like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and not come away from it believing that music can move mountains if it has enough heart behind it.
That also comes from having a certain vision behind what your band is supposed to be. The whole ethos behind U2 was about trying anything and seeing where it goes, and even if it was a horrible mistake like becoming musical Big Brother on Songs of Innocence or becoming a techno version of themselves on Pop, it was worth it to see them take chances that didn’t always come back to The Joshua Tree.
Although the Irish legends managed to toe the line between sincerity and irony during the Achtung Baby era, there was already new blood on the British rock scene when Oasis came roaring in. As much as people liked to chastise them for being a carbon copy of what The Beatles had done, it didn’t matter to Bono when they had the tunes to back them up on their first album, Definitely Maybe.
For a new generation of kids, this was like the first time watching a band like Sex Pistols tear through the country, and it was enough to win over Bono in no time. Outside of being a fantastic group with that same punk-rock attitude, the melodies that Noel Gallagher crafted with the band were good enough to be put alongside The Beatles as far as the U2 frontman was concerned.
When talking about touring with Noel Gallagher during his solo career, Bono felt that he was among the best composers he had ever seen, saying, “Noel worships at the shrine of unreachable melodies and untouchable attitudes. He is the greatest tunesmith out of the UK since Paul McCartney. Songs are like a collection of guns or knives to him. ‘They can get you out of a spot of bother if you’re stuck…what have you got?.’”
Even though Noel would happily place himself in that upper echelon of great artists, he admitted that U2 was one of the best bands that he had ever heard as well. Outside of sneaky callbacks to certain U2 songs like taking the ‘Is this rock and roll’ section of their live set for ‘Rock and Roll Star’, he still claimed that The Joshua Tree is one album that he would have killed to have written.
And it’s not like he has forgotten about innovating, either, eventually moving past Oasis in his solo career and into different electronic textures on albums like Who Built the Moon. Because if there’s one thing that both Bono and ‘The Chief’ have learned throughout their time together, it’s all about staying present as a songwriter and chasing down the right melody until it’s a masterpiece.
