U2 goes MAGA at FedEx Field

So this was a night of big promises, big songs and a big video screen. Three stories high, 50 yards wide and warped like the wave on a Coca-Cola can, it was used best during "With or Without You" as it held a single panoramic shot of a colossal, sun-baked canyon. Whenever the Edge answered Bono's refrain -- "And you give yourself away" -- with his sparkling guitar line, it was as if the music were echoing off those giant cliff sides, and it might have raised every tiny hair on the back of your neck. And the Edge still makes his riffs bounce and chime in the direction of heaven, the same way Bono still leans into a big note like he's opening a heavy door, the same way Larry Mullen Jr. still drums with a military-grade snap, the same way bassist Adam Clayton still appears to be enjoying the easiest job in rock-and-roll. Just as the tour promises, it's the same old songs.

That made the concert's non-"Joshua Tree" material -- which flanked the album's 11 cuts -- feel more consequential. The band was making choices, and as it marched from the "blood-red sky" of "New Year's Day" to "all the colors" of "Beautiful Day," its youthful exhortations burned warmer than its grown-up group hugs. The show's most exquisite moment came almost straightaway during "Sunday Bloody Sunday," an anthem from 1983 that throws a riddle at the war machine: "How long must we sing this song?" When Bono tweaked the line "I won't heed the battle call," by rearranging the melody and tailoring it to the occasion, he was tacitly renewing a pacifist vow.

Photo by © Kyle Gustafson/The Washington Post

Not that his speechifying was anywhere near as subtle. He addressed the importance of ending global poverty, fighting for women's rights, solving the world's refugee crisis, and stopping AIDS -- important causes, all -- and he thanked Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Republican Rep. Kay Granger (Tex.), Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Washington, and Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank. At one point, he played clips of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan giving similar speeches, presumably to expose us to that higher common ground he had promised earlier, but maybe only reminding us how a two-party system has rotted our democracy.

Still, Bono seems to believe that our planet's busted systems can and will be repaired, which makes it hard to decide whether he's a visionary, a saint, a power-groupie or a fool. His vague, bipartisan, ambiently patriotic rah-rah onstage Tuesday didn't help clarify any of that. After singing "Pride (In the Name of Love)," U2's eternally exhilarating eulogy for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he wondered out loud, "Maybe the dream is just telling us to wake up."

The music certainly wasn't telling us to wake up. It was as beautiful, righteous, wide-open and inviting as it was in 1987. The kind of music that makes you feel like you've done a good deed simply by diving into it. This is the problem that U2 doesn't want to -- and probably can't -- solve. Comfort doesn't bring change.

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Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/u2-goes-maga-at-fedex-field/2017/06/21/b27e706a-568c-11e7-a204-ad706461fa4f_story.html?utm_term=.eb90ee451361