It's the weekend. No Rebecca Black jokes, I promise.
In the ongoing interest of deeply personal and potentially embarrassing confessions, here's one that's bound to disappoint someone: I can't stand U2. There. I said it. Now, I should clarify I don't loathe them to the degree with which I detest Bon Jovi but it does run deep. Maybe it's not even U2, but what they've come to be in our shared pop culture lexicon - Bono with his stupid yellow sunglasses. I pretty much picture him posturing and mugging for the camera at all times. South Park hit the nail on the head. They weren't always like this, though. I do appreciate their early work when they had passion and something to prove - Sunday Bloody Sunday is fantastic, as is Where The Streets Have No Name. I guess it's somewhere right around the Popmart tour that I just lose the connection. There's justifiable egocentrism and then there's ego for ego's sake. When musicians begin meeting with heads of state we might have crossed a line. But really, this is coming across as far to damning. What the preamble is aiming to do is set up the fact that, while I am no big fan of the band, there is one particular song that not only is a massive guilty pleasure for me but seemingly a mere footnote in the band's canon. This brings us down the winding path of personal recollection, though, so strap in while I shovel the nostalgia out of the way to explain just why 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me' is such a fantastic song.
As I've written about to an embarrassing degree, I was brought up in the heady days of the 90s before the propagation of the internet, when irony was just becoming a thing that Gen X-ers were beginning to wield as a self defense mechanism. What this meant for my adolescent self was that if it was in the main stream of pop culture, especially marketed to me, I was in. Hook, line and sinker. Maybe I was too young to know better. Sure, I can look back now and say Batman Forever was where the original run of the series began to go downhill, but as a young male with a predilection for comics and (lets be honest) anything Batman related, this was mega. Around this time I had just begun to explore the world of music and MTV, via the gospel of my older brother. To connect the dots in the most blatant manner, what we end up with here is the Batman Forever Soundtrack. Yeah. Like I said, embarrassing if honest confessions. But what's of particular curiousty to my own understanding of the world is how chicken-and-egg this soundtrack was for my musical tastes. It's a veritable slice of mise en scene for the mid 90s music scene. Look who made (inexplicable) contributions to the compilation: U2, Brandy, Method Man (lolwut?), Nick Cave (again, what?) The Offspring, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey and Seal. Now, how many of those artists do you think of and then say to yourself "Yeah, Batman would totally listen to that!" All of them, right? Me too. It's a like an anthropologist could dig this up in 100 years and say "Huh, what a mess of a pop culture they had. Must've been before advertisers really went nuts and homogenized and niche-marketed everything in Hollywood..." From glam rock to hip hop to punk to emo, all these genres are things I still cling to today. So I ask myself was this the reason or an indicator? Strange.
I say all this with withering scorn and all the self-aggrandizing hindsight and yet I still love at most of those acts. In particular, though, is the U2 contribution. It's in that sweet spot where the band was just edging up to the line of ego-driven arena rock. To wit, the song is about, according to Bono himself, being a rock star in a massively popular band. Okay, while I can swallow that, it's still a fantastic song. The structure and layout of the song show a deft use of dynamics, as it opens with a buzzsaw riff that displays why The Edge is such a respected guitarist. Despite the name, he can create really unique sounds and scenes with his instrument. The verses are looping acoustic guitars accompanying Bono's crooning, and it's here where I can still see the appeal of the band. He has a fantastic voice and absolutely knows how to phrase his vocals. There are a series of solitary notes The Edge picks when the chorus begins that just set such a distinct tone that feels iconic. Bono wails the title to the track over some evocative chords and the song's cycle begins again. It's a little by the numbers but given the fact it was relegated to a sub-par popcorn movie soundtrack, I can forgive that. What I think hooks me is the tone and mood of the song. It's mysterious and glam rock at it's best. So why do I have such a schizophrenic view of it? I guess it would be that I can't admit to myself that I really like the song, yet can't stand the band. Everyone has one of those, I'm sure. For me, it's this.
I though perhaps it was the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia tainting my appreciation for the song, but 99 cents later I listened to it and...it still holds up. The video is deliciously mid-90s cheese, all animated clips of the band playing interspersed with movie footage, but I would watch the Masters if I knew that Batman would start fighting with the Riddler on the 18th hole. Still, I find myself contesting my own appreciation of this fantastic song from a detested band. No one wants to confront the fact that all their assumptions and opinions may be wrong and that's what this song represents on some level. It suggests that maybe U2 is okay and I'm too harsh on them. This is certainly one of the most negative posts I've written and I think it stems from this cognitive dissonance. Regardless of my internal strife that derives from a near 20-year old song, you should listen to it, just to see what all my fuss is about.
In the ongoing interest of deeply personal and potentially embarrassing confessions, here's one that's bound to disappoint someone: I can't stand U2. There. I said it. Now, I should clarify I don't loathe them to the degree with which I detest Bon Jovi but it does run deep. Maybe it's not even U2, but what they've come to be in our shared pop culture lexicon - Bono with his stupid yellow sunglasses. I pretty much picture him posturing and mugging for the camera at all times. South Park hit the nail on the head. They weren't always like this, though. I do appreciate their early work when they had passion and something to prove - Sunday Bloody Sunday is fantastic, as is Where The Streets Have No Name. I guess it's somewhere right around the Popmart tour that I just lose the connection. There's justifiable egocentrism and then there's ego for ego's sake. When musicians begin meeting with heads of state we might have crossed a line. But really, this is coming across as far to damning. What the preamble is aiming to do is set up the fact that, while I am no big fan of the band, there is one particular song that not only is a massive guilty pleasure for me but seemingly a mere footnote in the band's canon. This brings us down the winding path of personal recollection, though, so strap in while I shovel the nostalgia out of the way to explain just why 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me' is such a fantastic song.
