The U2 song Bono is most proud of: “It’s the way it connects with the crowd”
A great sense of mythology surrounds Bono, making him a hard man to fathom. Alongside iconic songs, it is equally well-known that he flew a hat first class to a charity gig. In a similar dichotomy, he seems like a man full of pride, but then he also happily espouses that he’s “embarrassed” by old U2 songs. Once explaining: “I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot.”
In typical fashion, he then even managed to make this remark into another disjunction by musing: “Maybe that’s the place to be as an artist, right at the edge of your level of pain for embarrassment.” So, somehow, he managed to even turn a humble quip about cringing when delving back into his catalogue into a decree on the pinnacle of artistry – this is the mystery of Bono.
However, he cut through the fog when championing the song that he was “proudest of”, confidently asserting that the 2004 single ‘Vertigo’ is a firm favourite of his. “It’s the way it connects with the crowd,” he told the Award Chatter podcast. Much of the source of pride comes from how his own performance on the track matches the band’s effort. “The band sound incredible,“ he said and happily asserts that this is true of most of their work, but in the early days, he felt his singing wasn’t up to scratch.
The turning point, in his view, came from a sound piece of second-hand advice he received from the pop star Robert Palmer. In the late 1980s, he bumped into U2’s bassist Adam Clayton, and said: “God, would you ever tell your singer to just take down the keys a little bit, he’d do himself a favour, do his voice a favour and he’d do us all a favour who have to listen to him.“
It was following this advice that the Irish singer realised he didn’t have to be a typical frontman of the 1970s era and match bands “like the Ramones”. Instead, he mellowed out his wail a little and found his voice benefitted as a result. In curtailing the “Irish macho” schtick he had honed and shifting keys, he claims he finally became a “singer” in the traditional sense, and with ‘Vertigo’, he was able to let things soar and retain both measure and vigour in equal measure.
He claims that this gives the track an anthemic feel, and he is also happy to pin this on advice the band received from their producer, Steve Lillywhite, who informed them to play the recorded version as though they were in an intimate live venue. This took the band back to their roots, embracing that apparent “embarrassment” now from a position of perfected craft.
The result was not only something Bono remains sincerely proud of, but it was also a massive hit for the group and helped to sustain them into a new polished chapter. However, in one final, fitting twist, there are many fans who would entirely disagree with Bono and proclaim that the early days may well have been the peak.
