News about my favorite things. Will try to post the good and bad things that happened in my life. You can comment my posts in Portuguese and English. Thanks. PS: You can check my links: Linktree, Bluesky & Mastodon
Out today. New music video from U2 feature Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia. Documentary Short Film.
Love the video. Real video, real story. Go check it out.
U2 - Yours Eternally ft. Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia (Documentary Short Film)
8,459 views • Feb 24, 2026
https://youtu.be/p92NzxFmseo?si=SB5CJeLdvQI7oiW0
For four years Ukraine has been resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion. Soldiers of the Khartiya Corps are among the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who conduct daily military operations to defend their country against the invading Russian army. This film contains footage from a documentary about Ukrainian soldiers fighting for freedom.
Credits:
Director: Ilya Mikhaylus
Producer: Pyotr Verzilov
Executive Producers (Original Documentary Production): Maksym Serdiuk, Artem Hryhorian (KNIFE! Films)
Editors: Ilya Mikhaylus, Yaroslav Korotkov, Kyrylo Postnikov, Julietta Martirosyan
Cinematographers: Ilya Mikhaylus, Yaroslav Korotkov, Pavlo Itkin, Stepan Pavlyuk, Sasha Tuz, Alla Savytska, Kyrylo Postnikov, Katya Gimro
Special Thanks to Art Action Foundation - John Caldwell & Nadya Tolokonnikova
This film would not be possible without soldiers from the 2nd “Khartiya” Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine, Corps Commander Colonel Ihor Obolenskiy and Vsevolod Kozhemyako.
#U2 #YoursEternally #DaysOfAshEP
Hope you will love this awesome lyric "U2 - Yours Eternally ft. Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia (Documentary Short Film)".
U2 - Yours Eternally ft. Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia
Don't sleep
Don't even think about it
No need
Maybe a little bit
Still dream
About waking up free
As we can be
Forget
Whatever doesn't fit
Regret
Regret none of it
Don't bet
On getting rid of me
Yours eternally
Dearest friends or whatever
We are calling ourselves these days
My current location
I cannot disclose
Geographically
It's nowhere that I’ve been before
But emotionally
We’re on the same road
If you have the chance to laugh
Laugh at me
If you have the chance to hope
It's a duty
Don't sleep
Don't even think about it
No need
Maybe a little bit
Still dream
About waking up free
As we can be
Forget
Whatever doesn't fit
Regret
Regret none of it
Don't bet
On getting rid of me
Yours eternally
As your so called companion
The worst jokes and the greatest times
You got me high
And the stars got me home
Your faith in me was blinding
Yours is the song that I’ve always sung
You are not lost out there because
You are not alone
If you have a chance to reach
Reach for me
In the chaos of the earth
We’ll find beauty
All this time we’ve been chasing dust
A soldier’s song a sailor’s lust
For the glory of a world
That we can’t yet see
Don't sleep
Don't even think about it
No need
Maybe a little bit
Still dream
About waking up free
As we can be
Forget
Whatever doesn't fit
Regret
Regret none of it
Don't bet
On getting rid of me
Yours eternally
Here it is the new U2 video made in Las Vegas.
A video out on the 25 shows Opening day of the 'U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere’ - Opening September 29, 2023'.
U2 - Atomic City
187,135 views - Sep 29, 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNMsGVwUXc0
'U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere', a first-of-its-kind live music experience will see the world's biggest rock band launch the world's most cutting edge venue, Sphere at The Venetian in Las Vegas.
Hope you will love this awesome lyric "U2 - Atomic City".
U2 - Atomic City
Come all you stars, falling out of the sky
Come all you angels, forgetting to fly
Come all who feel we’re not on our own
All U.F.Os, come on your way home
Alone, that’s no way to be carrying on
C’mon
Are we betting on a future that’s long gone
in luck or in song
You just have to be right one more time than your wrong
Atomic City
Atomic City… (Atomic)
I’m free... where you are is where I’ll be
I’m free... so unexpectedly
Come all who serve above and below
Come all believers and all who don’t know
Come quick, Come soon, comme ci comme ça
Let me dive into your eyes and blah blah blah
Guitar shaped pool with strings
Etcetera
Sinatra swings
A choir sings
Love is God and God is Love
And if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough
Atomic City
Atomic City …..
(Atomic sun for everyone … for everyone)
God doesn’t play dice
But he likes roulette
The wheel has not stopped spinning yet
I’m free... where you are is where I’ll be
I’m free... so unexpectedly
I’m free… I see what’s in front of me
And your freedom is contagious
What you’ve got I wanna be
I’m free.. it took me my whole life
I got the keys to the cages
I’m ready for bright light
I’m free… I came here for the fight
I’m front row in Las Vegas
And there’s a big one on tonight
2 awesome videos.
I already knew this band "Eva Under fire" with the "Heroin(e)" video. Saw the band on instagram stories a while ago.
Now I saw this cover of "With or Without You" by U2. And is freaking awesome. I love it.
Eva Under Fire - With or Without You (U2 Cover) (Official Video)
57,234 views •Sep 30, 2022
https://youtu.be/iA4UbALfEOg
Eva Under Fire - Heroin(e) (Official Music Video from Sno Babies)
1,081,111 views •Sep 18, 2020
https://youtu.be/smnkcKe52Ic
Hope you will love this awesome lyric "Heroin(e)".
Eva Under Fire - Heroin(e) (Official Music Video from Sno Babies)
I'm not your heroine
(Heroine, heroine)
I'm not the person you knew yesterday
I've been used, abused along the way
This is the side of me you pierced with pain
These are the hands that couldn't hold your shame
I tried to hold on 'til I realized
I can't save you, no
I can't change you now
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I can't save you
Now break these chains yourself
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I'm not your heroinе
You tried to make me takе your pain away
You tried enlisting me to be your saving grace
I'm not responsible for your mistakes
There's nothing I can do and you're to blame
I tried to hold on, slipping far this time
I tried to hold on 'til I realized
I can't save you, no
I can't change you now
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I can't save you
Now break these chains yourself
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I tried a million ways
I tried to save the day
I tried a thousand more to try to walk away
I tried, I tried
I tried, I tried
I tried, I tried
I can't save you, no
I can't change you now
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I can't save you, no
I can't change you now
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I can't save you
Now break these chains yourself
Save your own skin
I'm not your heroine
I tried, I tried
I tried, I tried
I tried, I tried
Here it is the amazing #EURO2020 Opening Ceremony virtual performance by Martin Garrix, Bono & The Edge
Love this virtual video.
Relive the #EURO2020 Opening Ceremony virtual performance by Martin Garrix, Bono & The Edge
Watch the virtual performance of the #EURO2020 official song ‘We Are The People’ with Martin Garrix, Bono & The Edge at the Opening Ceremony in Rome on June 11! Where were you watching?
#EUROHyped #WeAreThePeople
Turn on subtitles for the official lyrics! 💬
Martin Garrix got together with Bono & The Edge to do this video to the (UEFA EURO 2020)
Love this video.
Martin Garrix feat. Bono & The Edge - We Are The People [UEFA EURO 2020 Song] (Official Video)
I can finally share my new song We Are The People featuring Bono & The Edge from U2, which is the official song for this year’s UEFA EURO 2020 football tournament! ⚽🏆
Turn on subtitles for the official lyrics! 💬
A very special thank you to all the people who let us come into their world and direct them for a minute. Your energy really made this video something special!
Hope you will love this awesome lyric.
Martin Garrix Feat. Bono & The Edge - We Are The People (UEFA EURO 2020 Song) (Official Video)
We’re A Million Volts In A Pool Of Light,
Electricity In The Room Tonight
Born From Fire, Sparks Flying From The Sun
Hey, I Hardly Know You, Can I Confess,
I Feel Your Heart Beating In My Chest
If You Come With Me, Tonight Is Gonna Be The One
Cause You’ve Faith And No Fear For The Fight
You Pull Hope From Defeat In The Night
There’s An Image Of You In My Mind
Could Be Mad But You Might Just Be Right
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
Out Of The Ruins Of Hate And War
Army Of Lovers Never Seen Before
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
We Are The People Of The Open Hand
Streets Of Dublin To Notre Dame
We’ll Build It Better Than We Did Before
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
Broken Bells And A Broken Church
A Heart That Hurts Is A Heart That Works
From A Broken Place That’s Where The Victory’s Won
Cause You’ve Faith And No Fear For The Fight
You Pull Hope From Defeat In The Night
There’s An Image Of You In My Mind
Could Be Mad But You Might Just Be Right
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
Out Of The Ruins Of Hate And War
Army Of Lovers Never Seen Before
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
We Are The People Of The Open Hand
Streets Of Dublin To Notre Dame
We’ll Build It Better Than We Did Before
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For
Mon, September 17, 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal @ Altice Arena
The tour of U2 is: "eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour".
It was my 15th U2 show.
I arrived at the Altice Arena around 19:00 of Monday.
I had a VIP Package Gold Hot ticket.
I went to a 2nd row in the first balcony on sector 15 right in front of the big stage, almost at the end of the stage. Amazing view of all the show.
This time I got to see the big screen, all the story. On the first show I missed all the things happening on the screen. But this time I saw everything. Main stage, the catwalk, the E-Stage, the 2 red zones where Adam and Edge went there on 1 song. and I even saw when Bono left the stage at the end. He passed to the entrance just below me.
U2, played for 132 minutes. Played 23 songs.
U2 were amazing. I notice Bono lost his voice a few times. What I can say is that he needs a big rest after this tour. But they did everything for us, to the fans, to Lisbon, Portugal. They tried to speak portuguese a few times. Always cool to hear.
Even in the big screen the story was in portuguese.
Well you can check all the details of the show in the setlist below. Including 1 song they changed on the 2 days.
- It's a Beautiful World (Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds song)
- Zooropa (extended intro with Charlie Chaplin speech from "The Great Dictator")
Inside Screen
01. The Blackout
02. Lights of Home (St. Peter's String Version) 03. I Will Follow
04. All Because Of You 05. Beautiful Day 06. The Ocean 07. Iris (Hold Me Close) 08. Cedarwood Road 09. Sunday Bloody Sunday (i+e semi-acoustic version) 10. Until the End of the World (with "Lord of the Files" and "Introduction" snippets)
E-Stage - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (Gavin Friday Remix) 11. Elevation (Influx Remix) 12. Vertigo (with "It's Only Rock'n'Roll (But I Like It)" snippet) 13. Even Better Than the Real Thing (Fish Out of Water Remix; no guitar solo in intro) 14. Acrobat (with "Hall of Mirror” snippet) 15. You're the Best Thing About Me (full band acoustic) 16. Summer of Love (Bono and The Edge only) 17. Pride (In the Name of Love) 18. Get Out of Your Own Way 19. New Year's Day (reworked version, no final verse) 20. City of Blinding Lights
Encore - Women of the World (Jim O’Rourke song) 21. One 22. Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way 23. 13 (There Is a Light)
- This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) (Talking Heads song)
In bold are the videos I made.
Videos of U2 (19 videos):
U2-I Will Follow, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/8uRKisH7Kyg
And the video:
U2-Beautiful Day, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/c3GKo52MlTI
And the video:
U2-The Ocean + Iris (Hold Me Close), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/dho8w1sDfEc
And the video:
U2-Cedarwood Road, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/O_Wkh0cYWk0
And the video:
U2-Sunday Bloody Sunday, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/JhNmCJB6_Vg
And the video:
U2-Until The End Of The World, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/Xa1YYziujKk
And the video:
U2-Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (Cartoon), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/nugIyQVUJHw
And the video:
U2-Elevation, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/6_IVLtbtT04
And the video:
U2-Vertigo, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/pAYbngIkNq0
And the video:
U2-Even Better Than the Real Thing, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/mvdWXggnkmY
And the video:
U2-Acrobat, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/1XQJV0SEMbo
And the video:
U2-You're The Best Thing About Me, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/OqZIlMc8wS0
And the video:
U2-Summer Of Love + Pride (In The Name Of Love), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/6beWSWC8aFI
And the video:
U2-Get Out Of Your Own Way, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/bQBnMH25884
And the video:
U2-New Year's Day, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/Zwnvz2Sc-IE
And the video:
U2-City Of Blinding Lights, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/qeVZKy0gbec
And the video:
U2-Women Of The World (Video) + One, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/laBbo6QQbDw
And the video:
U2-Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/XJwAF32dBH0
And the video:
U2-13 (There Is a Light), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-17 HD
https://youtu.be/iJ9VR-k8210
And the video:
Sun, September 16, 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal @ Altice Arena
The tour of U2 is: "eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour".
It was my 14th U2 show.
I arrived at the Altice Arena around 13:00 of Friday, 2 days before of the Sunday show. Got a number in the queue, 35. Lovely number.
On Sunday after a night without sleep, talked a lot with some fans during the night on the beginning of the queue and even the security that were with us all night so we were safe.
Very hot day. Around 30 degrees. We were in the shadow almost all day but 3 hours before we get inside the Arena we had to go queue near the entrance on the sun. Hot afternoon for sure.
Around 18h45 we got inside and I went to Edge side on the left of the catwalk. Some of my friends were also there on front row.
U2, played for 132 minutes. Played 23 songs.
U2 were amazing. I notice Bono lost his voice a few times. What I can say is that he needs a big rest after this tour. But they did everything for us, to the fans, to Lisbon, Portugal. They tried to speak portuguese a few times. Always cool to hear.
Well you can check all the details of the show in the setlist below.
- It's a Beautiful World (Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds song)
- Zooropa (extended intro with Charlie Chaplin speech from "The Great Dictator")
Inside Screen
01. The Blackout
02. Lights of Home (St. Peter's String Version) 03. I Will Follow
04. Red Flag Day 05. Beautiful Day 06. The Ocean 07. Iris (Hold Me Close)
08. Cedarwood Road 09. Sunday Bloody Sunday (i+e semi-acoustic version)
10. Until the End of the World (with "Lord of the Files" and "Introduction" snippets)
E-Stage
- Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (Gavin Friday Remix)
11. Elevation (Influx Remix Intro)
12. Vertigo (with "Rebel Rebel" snippet)
13. Even Better Than the Real Thing (Fish Out of Water Remix; no guitar solo in intro)
14. Acrobat (with "Hall of Mirror” snippet) 15. You're the Best Thing About Me (full band acoustic)
16. Summer of Love (Bono and The Edge only) 17. Pride (In the Name of Love) 18. Get Out of Your Own Way 19. New Year's Day (reworked version, no final verse) 20. City of Blinding Lights
Encore
- Women of the World (Jim O’Rourke song) 21. One 22. Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way 23. 13 (There Is a Light)
- This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) (Talking Heads song)
In bold are the videos I made.
Videos of U2 (13 videos):
U2-I Will Follow, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/UF_NRUhxL1g
And the video:
U2-Beautiful Day, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/-uD5heZYLMk
And the video:
U2-The Ocean, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/9AWXtuJg-Rk
And the video:
U2-Iris (Hold Me Close), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/GLfpseQTCmc
And the video:
U2-Sunday Bloody Sunday, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/-HA7gX2Dr5Y
And the video:
U2-You're the Best Thing About Me, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/mNMu5lGuJdg
And the video:
U2-Pride (In The Name Of Love), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/rviPCv0_uWA
And the video:
U2-Get Out of Your Own Way, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/QwZpdJ-Qe14
And the video:
U2-New Year's Day, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/IkfjZyxpxRo
And the video:
U2-City of Blinding Lights, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/9gut3v0eF1Y
And the video:
U2-One, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/tI58ctUiKRY
And the video:
U2-Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way, Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/qyNIAgBjtBU
And the video:
U2-13 (There Is a Light), Altice Arena, Lisbon, PT, 2018-09-16 HD
https://youtu.be/AbUL3daIkPE
And the video:
A Beck Remix video of the amazing "Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way" by U2.
#U2eiTour #U2SongsofExperience U2 Experience and Innocence tour is here.
U2 - Love is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way (Beck Remix)
Directed by David Mushegain
Hope you will love this awesome lyric.
U2 - Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way
So young to be the words of your own song
I know the rage in you is strong
Write a world where we can belong
To each other and sing it like no other
Oh, if I could hear myself when I say
(Oh love) love is bigger than anything in its way
The door is open to go through
If I could I would come, too
But the path is made by you
As you're walking start singing and stop talking
Oh, if I could hear myself when I say
(Oh love) love is bigger than anything in its way
If the moonlight caught you crying on Killiney Bay
Oh, sing your song
Let your song be sung
If you listen you can hear the silence say
"When you think you're done
You've just begun"
Love is bigger than anything in its way
Love is bigger than anything in its way
Love is bigger than anything in its way
#U2eiTour #U2SongsofExperience U2 Experience and Innocence tour almost here.
U2 - Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way
Directed by David Mushegain
Hope you will love this awesome lyric.
U2 - Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way
The door is open to go through
If I could I would come, too
But the path is made by you
As you're walking start singing and stop talking
Oh, if I could hear myself when I say
(Oh love) love is bigger than anything in its way
So young to be the words of your own song
I know the rage in you is strong
Write a world where we can belong
To each other and sing it like no other
Oh, if I could hear myself when I say
(Oh love) love is bigger than anything in its way
If the moonlight caught you crying on Killiney Bay
Oh, sing your song
Let your song be sung
If you listen you can hear the silence say
"When you think you're done
You've just begun"
Love is bigger than anything in its way
Love is bigger than anything in its way
Love is bigger than anything in its way
A Few Words from the Directors ‘Broken Fingaz Crew’:
“The video addresses the current political situation: 2017 for us was the year fascists worldwide felt confident enough to raise their heads again, encouraged by Trump and other world leaders, who use people's fear to build more walls and segregation.
The song is both a personal letter and a clarion cry to the global situation, and in the same way, we've combined our psychedelic pop style with political imagery; shot entirely analogue, using paper cut and stop motion animation techniques”.
Editor: Adam Albo
Hope you will love this awesome lyric.
U2 - Get Out Of Your Own Way
Get out of your own way, hey, hey
Get out of your own way, hey, hey
Love hurts
Now you're the girl who's left with no words
Your heart's a balloon, but then it bursts
It doesn't take a cannon, just a pin
Your skin's not covering
And resistance
Love has got to fight for its existence
The enemy has armies for assistance
The amorist, the glamorous, the kiss
A fist, listen to this, oh
Get out of your own way, oh, I
Get out of your own way, oh, I
I could sing it to you all night, all night
If I could, I'd make it alright, alright
Nothing's stopping you except what's inside
I can help you, but it's your fight, your fight
Fight back
Don't take it lyin' down, you got to bite back
The face of liberty's starting to crack
She had a plan up until she got smacked in the mouth
And it all went south
Like freedom
The slaves are lookin' for someone to lead them
The master's lookin' for someone to need him
The promised land is there for those who need it most
And Lincoln's ghost said...
Get out of your own way, oh, I
Get out of your own way, oh, I
I could sing it to you all night, all night
If I could, I'd make it alright, alright
Nothing's stopping you except what's inside
I can help you, but it's your fight, your fight
Get out of your own way
Get out of your own way
Get out of your own way
Get out of your own way
Get out of your own way
The amazing new video from U2 is here (6 PM). Today just a special day, also the birth (9:40 PM) of my 4th niece Sara from my brother and her wife.
So I dedicate this song and this amazing video to Sara and to my brother and his wife.
U2 - You’re The Best Thing About Me (Official Video)
Hope you will love this awesome lyric.
U2 - You're The Best Thing About Me
When you look so good, the pain in your face doesn't show
When you look so good and baby, you don't even know
When the world is ours but the world is not your kind of thing
Full of shooting stars, brighter as they're vanishing
Oh you've seen enough to know it's children who teach
You're still free enough to wake up on a bed or a beach
You're the best thing about me
The best thing that ever happened a boy
You're the best thing about me
I'm the kind of trouble that you enjoy
You're the best thing about me
The best things are easy to destroy
You're the best thing about me
The best thing about me
I been crying out, "How bad can a good time be?"
Shooting off my mouth, that's another great thing about me
I have everything but I feel like nothing at all
There's no risky thing for a man who's determined to fall
You're the best thing about me
The best thing that ever happened a boy
You're the best thing about me
I'm the kind of trouble that you enjoy
You're the best thing about me
The best things are easy to destroy
You're the best thing about me
Why am I
Why am I walking away?
Walking away
Why am I walking away?
I can see it all so clearly
I can see what you can't see
I can see you love her loudly
When she needs you quietly
You're the best thing about me
The best things are easy to destroy
You're the best thing about me
Why am I
Why am I walking away?
Walking away
Why am I walking away?
Today, U2 have debuted a new song to the world, the lead single from forthcoming album Songs of Experience.
The single, You're the Best Thing About Me, follows The Blackout, a treat shared with fans last week on Facebook. You're the Best Thing About Me is available on streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal, and there is a lyric video on YouTube:
This song is produced by Ryan Tedder, Steve Lillywhite, and Jacknife Lee. Its cover art is a photograph of Edge's daughter Sian, taken by long-time U2 collaborator Anton Corbijn.
U2.com have confirmed that this song is the lead single for Songs of Experience, the companion album to 2014's Songs of Innocence. They state that details about the album's release date and preorders are coming soon, and that it will be available on CD, vinyl, and download.
They also indicate that You're the Best Thing About Me will form part of U2's performance on The Tonight Show on Thursday. As we noted in our report on yesterday's Buffalo show, U2 will be playing two songs on The Tonight Show.
On U2's current tour, each show is a feat of engineering, construction, and precision–and there can be no mistakes. The cornerstone of the production is the world's largest mobile video screen. Popular Mechanics had exclusive access to the band's stadium shows in New Jersey.
DAY 4: 9:45 p.m.
Four songs in. The people at the barricades had to come to the stadium on two separate occasions to secure this spot. The diehards. The people whose backs are lists of old U2 tour dates; the people draped in Irish flags. They came to MetLife Stadium last night, when everything was barely set up—the spotlights yet to be tested, the sound mix yet to be perfected—just to get a number inscribed on their wrists in permanent marker. And they came back today—doors opened at 5 p.m., but they were here long before that, because that is who they are—and presented their markings, the lower the better, to an employee of Live Nation, the massive touring company, and were walked in to grab a choice position at the 20-yard-line barricades directly in front of the drum kit. U2 started the show on the 45-yard line, but four songs in they're taking center stage for the main event: The Joshua Tree, their first huge record, is 30 years old and on this tour they're playing it in full. The diehards are ready to lose their minds. Their numbered hands are poised to clap, and make raised fists, and wave cellphones into the jet stream of the biggest touring band in the world.
Workers prepare the stadium before the first show. Philip Montgomery
But the screen makes everyone equal. The screen means it doesn't matter where you sit. U2 has always been about equal rights for all.
The screen is 196 feet wide and 45 feet tall. It fills the end zone and red zone of the north end of the field, blotting out entire sections of stands. It's the most advanced touring screen in the world, built specifically for U2: 11.4 million pixels of almost unnerving 8K clarity. It's nearly all carbon fiber, light and strong—so much carbon fiber that a spool of it the width of a sidewalk would be four miles long. U2 wanted it even bigger, but they realized anything wider wouldn't fit in the football stadiums where they would play. Football stadiums.
As the band plays the first ethereal chords and pounding bass drum that start the first song of the album, "Where the Streets Have No Name," the screen explodes with light: soaring black-and-white footage of the empty two-lanes of the American West.
It's a glorious moment. The diehards suddenly find themselves stuck in the front row of a movie theater—still not a bad spot, in this theater—while the people in the cheap seats (which are not cheap at all) experience a stunning panorama. Equal rights for all.
Eric Geiger, the band's chief LED engineer, wearing all black and a headset over the top of his ball cap, is at the front of the audiovisual booth, at the edge of the singing and swaying people on the floor of the stadium, 40 yards back from the stage. Rather than bask in the glow of the movie, he's scouring the 2,418-inch flat screen for anything that looks off. A full terabyte of data runs across the screen every minute, and it all has to be perfect.
Thirty seconds into the song, a voice cuts through Geiger's headset, hard to hear over the humming organ and rabid guitar riffs. It's another crew member positioned out in the crowd. He thinks he's noticed something—stage right, high over Bono's right shoulder. Geiger's eyes scan from the outside of the stage. He sees it now, too. Some kind of data glitch. It's not big, but it's not right. A flicker, not even a millisecond long, two or three times now. And if it gets worse, it could potentially shut down an entire section of the screen, ruining the first song of the album.
Geiger gets on the radio. Backstage, screen tech Maarten Deschacht is responsible for the right half of the screen. He grabs a limp pile of nylon webbing hanging from a truss and glances upward toward the faulty panel, his hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. From the back of the screen he can't see exactly which one it is. The harness swirls into shape around his body as he pulls straps up his legs and over his shoulders, dipping and shimmying to get it to settle in the right places. You want to get it right when you're going to be suspended 40 feet in the air.
You want to get it right, period. Not only for the fans—but for the fans, sure. And not only for the band—but of course for the band, who is playing. You want to get it right because this is what you've worked for. Hours and hours over months and months. Planning. Practice. Preparation. It was all for these next few seconds. To do a job like this right—or any job, really, be it the big sale, the 50-meter freestyle, the hit song in front of 55,000 people—you have to love the preparation itself, too. It's just that if Deschacht messes this up, that's what everyone will remember.
Before night two, screen techs replace faulty panels in the massive video screen. Philip Montgomery
Geiger is in his ear telling him where to go. Telling him to get up there before the fans have a chance to notice.
The chatter on the radio hasn't gotten past Rocko Reedy, the stage manager, who's come over to watch Deschacht climb. If it's happening on his stage, Rocko makes sure it's done right. He makes sure Deschacht is wearing a yo-yo, also known as a fall arrester—even though Deschacht will be hooked between a tower of steel trussing and a grid of carbon fiber, interlocking couplings, and cabling, so if he fell, the damage would be done long before he hit the floor.
Rocko is not the kind of guy who worries, but somewhere in the back of his mind is 1997's PopMart Tour, the first time U2 played with an LED screen bigger than God's imagination. At RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., it poured rain and the screen went haywire. Rocko and the crew spent days going through tens of thousands of individual pieces, applying silicone waterproofing by hand. They had to cancel a show.
In three days, this screen needs to be in Cleveland. A week after that, London.
Tools hang from Deschacht's harness. In each hand, a metal hook, for gripping. He starts his climb. It's a practiced dance, a three-step: Hook, feet, hands, hook, feet, hands, he crawls up the back of the giant screen. He's careful not to bang a knee into a support strut or knock the waves of wiring that flow out of one panel and into another. His boots keep finding higher rungs, a round pressure on the soft instep of his foot. Rocko watches him get smaller. The strut in Deschacht's hand reverberates with the roaring sound of the crowd.
There are 55,000 people in the house tonight. They've come to the stadium, a few miles outside of New York City in northern New Jersey, from the Hudson Valley, from the five boroughs, from urban and rural Jersey. From Philly. People from points east fought post-work traffic through tunnels or across bridges and paid $30 to park in lots as vast and indistinguishable as the meadowlands around the stadium. Fans from Manhattan and Queens and Brooklyn paid $11 to ride New Jersey Transit trains out of Penn Station and made the god-awful transfer in Secaucus, where everybody gets off one train and onto another, the whole time able to see MetLife Stadium, so large it seems to be an arm's length away even though it's still a ten-minute ride and another ten-minute walk just to get started going through security. The people on the floor paid $70 to make that slog, just to be here in this house with this band, its spectacle, and these songs. If there is one way to fail them, it's to break the magic of the show with a flickering screen, so that the sing-a-longs and the cheering catch in people's throats and, for a second, the roar stops.
Deschacht keeps climbing.
He still doesn't know what he's dealing with. It's 40 feet up in the air before he reaches the problem area. He moves his metal safety hooks, getting them in position to let him work, and tugs each one. No give. Satisfied, he straightens his legs and leans back—an unnerving feeling, pulling away from the wall. The harness straps pull taut under his thighs, digging into legs not used to sitting. Less than a minute after getting the first radio call, he's ready to work.
Geiger hustles from the AV booth, an upstream salmon through the crowd, to the rear of the stage—he's standing at the base of the screen, on the band's side (out of the audience's view). He looks up under the brim of his hat at the towering light show above him. Eighteen panels have the flicker. If it were more he'd worry it was a power problem, but this looks like a data cable. Maybe the bass shook one loose. Then Geiger does something incredibly low-tech: He reaches his arm under the screen directly beneath the problem area, so that from high above, Deschacht sees Geiger's white arm standing out amongst the black carbon fiber. He shuffles to his left, aligning with Geiger's arm. Deschacht is in front of the 16th of 100 columns of panels. He and Geiger both look at maps of the screen, and come to the same conclusion: It has to be the connection from panel F16 to F17. The only thing to do is replace the cable. The panel will go black for five seconds, maybe three if he's fast.
Bono sings, "It's all I can do . . ." and the song's final notes fade. Deschacht has one shot. Geiger's on the radio, watching the screen. "3, 2, 1 . . ."
The song ends, the screen goes black. Deschacht yanks the connection between the two panels, removes the cord, and rushes connectors into accepting ports. The band bursts into "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The screen roars into life. No flicker, not a single dark LED.
It worked.
DAY 5: 11:15 a.m.
The next morning, a woman stands at the loading-dock security gate. She's wearing a maroon Eastpak backpack and carrying a lunch bag. She has removed her lanyard, which is strung with badges and a BIC lighter, and taken her cigarettes out of her back pocket. But the guard balks at a long cylindrical item: a camping chair. He doesn't seem to think it's dangerous. He just seems skeptical.
Joe O, who has known the band since they were teens, mixes live sound Philip Montgomery
"You've gotta get comfy if you're going to stay here all night," she says, dropping the lanyard and cigarettes in a plastic bowl. Her black tee says, "Steel Crew." She's a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 632. She walks through, takes back her bags, badges, cigarettes, and chair, and heads inside. Most of the IA will be working until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.
Six hours before doors open, it's 79 degrees and feels hotter. MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and New York Jets, is a 2.1-million-square-foot paean to shared experience, written in concrete, steel, and cinder block. It can hold 28,000 cars and 90,000 people. Discounting NFL games, in six of the last seven years, its events—international soccer matches, Beyoncé, Monster Jam—made more money than any stadium in the world. And it belongs to Local 632—they work every stage show that comes through, under the direction of the touring crew. And they're starting to trickle in. They know exactly when to arrive, they know exactly what they need to carry in to help them survive the next 30 hours.
Yellow vest, sunglasses, red hard hat.
Leather loop with hard hat and claw hammer.
Three boxes Girl Scout shortbread cookies.
64-ounce bottle French Vanilla Coffee-Mate.
One guy brings a red-white-and-blue cooler, about as big as one person might want to carry.
"What kind of drinks?" asks a security guard wearing aviator sunglasses.
"What kind of drinks?" the guy says. "I don't drink alcohol."
"I'm not worried about you drinking alcohol," says Aviators. "I'm worried about me drinking alcohol." He lets the guy through.
Then Chak Lawson arrives. A veteran guy. But the guard takes one look at his badge and Lawson gets the freeze-out. Lawson is a thickset guy with short brown hair that's gelled up in the front so it crests like a wave that drips perspiration down his forehead. His mother was a roadie for Little Richard and Chuck Berry; his birth certificate is an IA union card. He's been in for 19 years. But he's wearing a yellow triangular local staff badge, and what he needs is a purple triangular local staff badge. Yellow was for yesterday's show. Lawson steps out of the security line and starts anxiously swiping at his phone, trying to find someone already inside to bring him out the right badge. He's agitated, and at first it's hard to understand why. He's expecting to be working for the next day and half straight. What's a few extra minutes waiting for a pass?
But a few extra minutes is everything. Within any given show on a tour, the size of the audience is limited by the number of seats and the amount of space taken up by the stage. To get more people (or money), you've got to book more shows. And to book more shows, you've got to minimize the amount of time between them. While a few minutes here and there doesn't seem like much, when each show is a weeklong production, it adds up.
Lucky for Lawson, his coworkers start to arrive by the dozen, and they understand, like he does, why he has to get inside now: There's a job to be done. The larger the gathering crowd of Lawson's compadres insisting that his purple pass is just inside, the harder it is for security to keep him out. After all, they've been here five days in a row now. It took two days to build out the steel that supports the stage, another day to build the stage, and yesterday they put on a show. Local 632 does lights, rigging, heavy lifting—everything but perform.
Now they're overwhelming the security booth.
Radio, screwdriver, awl.
Green tool belt, black claw hammer, camo Oakland Raiders bucket hat.
Pink whale-shaped bubble machine.
Gold aviators.
Lawson gets in.
At 196 feet wide, the screen nearly spans the width of MetLife's football field. Philip Montgomery
DAY 5: 2:00 p.m.
Jimmy Villani's office is almost at the end of the concourse—the only thing past here is catering, and that's six floors up. Jimmy is the foreman for the local IA. To put on a show at MetLife, you go through him, and this office, which is the size of a walk-in closet. Its walls are white cinder block. No windows. There's a desk and a table covered with stacks of papers, hard hats, pill bottles, tape, a newspaper. A picture of the first Joshua Tree Tour, from 1987, is taped to the wall. Jimmy's got himself a chair but it's unclear if he ever sits down—he's got an energy to him, and as he says, his job is to always be thinking, imagining problems, playing the angles in his head. Fixing little problems as they arrive.
Rocko Reedy walks in. The stage manager. "Here's Rocko!" Jimmy says. "Come in here, man!" Jimmy has a strong Jersey accent, but he always sounds a bit out of breath, which softens it.
Rocko's got a windburned face and long blond hair, like a surfer who refuses to come in. They call him the King of Gaffer Tape. He goes through about 20 miles of fluorescent yellow tape each tour, using it to mark routing backstage, label loading areas, and draw lanes for road cases to get to the trucks.
"Shirts," Rocko says. "Who do I count those with?"
"Bring them in here and count them with Crawford," Jimmy says, motioning to the room next door. "Crawford!" Crawford materializes, and Jimmy has him pull a rainbow stack of shirts from a stash and go next door with Rocko. There are 12 departments of union guys—lighting, carpentry, sound, and on and on—and each wears a different color so they're easy to spot, especially during load-out, when 180 International Alliance people will be working.
Another knock. "Come in," Jimmy barks. Now it's his little brother, Joey, the union's business manager.
"He was just saying dressing-room crew comes in at 9," Joey says, more staid than his brother. "Now, I didn't have that. Those people may be on the show." They'd had the dressing-room guys scheduled to come in at 10:30.
Jimmy just laughs. "Listen, listen, listen. Who—"
"Rocko," Joey says. "He's next door."
Jimmy and Joey are from Cliffside Park, New Jersey, and all their guys are locals. Rocko got his start in Chicago, and his team is a polyglot band of specialists. It's a diverse crew running this show. But there's an underlying sameness to the way they all view, assess, and solve problems. A lot of the IA guys also work movies and TV shows that film in New York. When MetLife was built—maybe eight miles from his house—Jimmy would still sometimes take gigs in New York City. Cliffside Park is just south of the George Washington Bridge, a major traffic bottleneck that crosses the Hudson River from New Jersey into Manhattan. "That's what got me to stop the movies," he says. "I used to hate—on the way home, I can see where I live on the top of the cliffs there, but I couldn't get there. So no more."
In the pursuit of perfection, every inefficiency becomes a problem to be solved. Stagehands, roadies—maybe they get into this line of work because they're fans. Jimmy certainly keeps mementos from all kinds of past gigs, including from U2's first American tour, when he worked their show at the Palladium, a legendary New York City venue. He can still name the opening acts. But like any job, once they're in it, it becomes a thing of discipline. A craft. Fandom alone will not sustain excellence.
Jimmy heads next door, right as MetLife runs a fire-alarm test. The tone on the PA is deafening, but Jimmy and Rocko negotiate, unfazed. They might not even need words. Jimmy's going to pull a few people from the show and call a few people in early. Simple. Next problem.
DAY 5: 2:30 p.m.
Maarten Deschacht, the screen tech who scaled the screen last night, stands on the stage, staring upward, saluting the screen to block out the afternoon sun. Today, another screen tech, Justin Welch, wears the harness, hanging through a hole of missing panels. The cable was enough to get them through the show last night, but when they couldn't re-create the problem this afternoon, they decided to replace the panels with two of the 24 spares they take to every tour date.
Deschacht stretches both hands upward, squinting, to receive the frame that held the damaged panels. He grabs it in both arms and makes his way off the stage, high-stepping over low stage lights. Welch muscles the replacement into place, completing the facade. He seats the cables, double-checking that everything is as it should be. They will not have the same problem two shows in a row.
Satisfied, he collects his tools and descends. Slipping the harness off his Harley-Davidson T-shirt, he plops down on a closed box of cabling and packs a lip of tobacco, empty Coke bottle in hand.
Deschacht types at a small laptop in front of the indistinguishable faces of video machines. He has to tell the screen's software that they replaced panels F16 and F17 so that the new panels know where they are. Four massive processors as tall as men take it all in. Each can handle only a small portion of the screen. This bank powers stage right.
The screen is designed for in situ adjustments. Geiger, the engineer, helped make sure it would actually work on the road. He made sure the company that made the screen, PRG, added brightly colored handles to the panels so he could communicate to new crews in each stadium what he needed them to do. The carbon-fiber tubing that holds it up also braces it against the wind, and collapses into itself, nearly flat, for easy travel. A conventional screen this size would pack into seven semitrucks. This one packs into four, shaving $225,000 off the tour's bottom line.
After updating the panel configuration, Deschacht closes the laptop and flips the breakers, shutting the screen down. They'll turn it on again at 4:30 to run some tests. Then they'll test it again before The Lumineers, the opening act, get on stage—then again right after they get off. After that, they'll keep their harnesses handy.
As Deschacht and Welch meander out from behind the screen, Rocko's voice booms out of the sound system. The King of Gaffer Tape leads a band who plays music for an afternoon sound check. They do this at every stadium, a touring band with no fans.
A voice from the AV booth, unamplified, strains to counter Rocko's.
"Sam."
"Saaaaammmm."
Joe O'Herlihy is yelling at Sam O'Sullivan, U2's drum tech—the drummer in Rocko's sound-check band—who bangs away at the drums, beginning to really feel it. Joe O concentrates on the drum sound and adjusts one fader, which slides under his touch, smooth, with just enough resistance to make sure it settles down where he wants it. Hemming the sound. In just two hours, the diehards with their numbered wristbands will start to pour in. These are the final adjustments to the stadium sound.
The Edge's guitar tech, Dallas Schoo, in his cavern under the stage. Philip Montgomery
Joe O looks like he hasn't shaved his great white beard since he met U2 at a Cork College music festival when they were all teenagers. He and two assistants work in front of a mixing board the size of a deli counter, an organized chaos of hundreds of blinking and flashing buttons, glowing screens, rows of faders and dials to adjust the input of 150 individual microphones. Joe O's guys spent months before the tour poring over every song the band might play, every sound from every video. Before every show, they look over stadium schematics, searching for trouble areas: glass scoreboards that could reflect sound, prevailing winds, stadium designs that could mess with cable lengths. Once they're in the venue, they get Rocko's band to pluck out some notes so they can adjust the faders, fine-tune, update the presets. They tune the stadium by ear—the crowd is human, so the tuners should be human.
Satisfied with the instruments, Joe O dismisses Rocko and the band, and they rush off the stage to get to other work. Joe O stays in the booth. He cues up a prerecorded bit the band plans to use tonight.
John F. Kennedy's voice echoes through the stadium: "We shall be as a city upon a hill . . ."
Joe O plays it again.
"We shall be as a city upon a hill—"
"—a city upon a hill."
Joe O makes minute adjustments each time.
"—the eyes of all people are upon us . . ."
A few last adjustments and Joe O makes a call on his mic. "Okay," he says. "Presets are set for 'Presidents.' "
DAY 5: 4:15 p.m.
A golf cart careens out the loading-dock ramp and into the security area. There's a kennel rigged to its back, and a dog inside barks incessantly. MetLife has its own bomb-sniffing dogs. So do the New Jersey State Police, who have a precinct on the campus and a control center inside the stadium. Their SWAT team is pulling in in black SUVs. The long guns—intimidating black rifles at the ready. Most of the time law enforcement wants to be subtle, but the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, was scarcely more than a month ago.
This is the last respite before the fans arrive. Tucked behind semitrailers humming with diesel generators, outside but sheltered, a young woman runs the three washers and three dryers the band takes on the road. She appears to be flirting with a rigger. Three crew members sit on a concrete wall just inside the loading-dock gate, paying the dogs and the forks and the long guns no mind. Each is having a smoke, looking at his phone.
DAY 5: 6:40 p.m.
The video team chooses feeds. Philip Montgomery
Rocko has a collection of guitars he'll never sell, gifts from bands he's put on stage, signed—at Rocko's request—with vulgar, atrocious salutations. Today is The Lumineers' last show with U2. They're not going to Cleveland. They've given Rocko a guitar, which he brings to their dressing room so they can share a last moment before they take the stage and he enters the chute of nonstop stage managing, set changing, and load-out. "Dearest Rocko," one band member has written, "Please eat sh*t and promptly thereafter die."
Outside, the diehards are at their chosen spots and fans are starting to fill the stands. When Rocko ushers The Lumineers onstage at 7 p.m., the arena is at maybe one-third capacity. Throughout the venue, in matching uniforms, no more than 30 feet away from one another, security guards line the barricades. As the band works through a 12-song set, men and women in orange shirts wander the field, looking for anyone too rowdy, or too green from the beer or the heat. Dozens of sets of eyes look out from beneath the stiff brims of Stetsons—state police officers, their sharp uniforms slightly undermined by orange-and-blue earplugs.
Not 45 seconds after The Lumineers' last note fades, stagehands start pushing down road cases. A minute and a half in, the band's bass drum, with its casually imperfect spray-painted "The Lumineers," gets walked off. Phil Andriopoulos is the IA forklift operator. Five lifts: one to move a piano and four for heavy candelabra set dressing. In the waning moments of The Lumineers' set he tucked a cup of coffee into some nook or cranny of the stadium wall, put on his sunglasses, cracked a Lipton Brisk, and moved the forklift into position almost directly below the end of stage left. Now he raises the fork and pivots the lift so its body is perpendicular to the ramp. It's basically the width of the corridor; the fork extends over the ramp like a center fielder trying to snag a foul ball. Stagehands roll The Lumineers' piano right up to the edge. Andriopoulos extends the arms, comes up under the piano, pivots, and lowers it down. Fewer than five minutes have elapsed. In fewer than 20, their gear is gone.
A stagehand stands on the network of steel that supports the stage, screen, and speakers. Philip Montgomery
Now the fans really pour in. The back of the floor has food stands and beer stands and a merch booth and they all grow tentacles of people. The crowd massed against the barriers starts to expand backward. In the middle of the pack, Willie Williams dances like a father at a neighborhood barbecue. Williams has sat down with the band to design every U2 stage since 1982.
Before U2 walks out, Williams shimmies up the stairs of the AV booth. He scoots past Smasher Desmedt, who mixes the video for the screen, live, from a portfolio of feeds sent to his workstation, and dances next to Alex Murphy, the man coordinating the show's spotlights. Williams and Murphy spent four weeks of dark nights in Barcelona with an empty stadium and stage, planning all the movements of lights. The spotlights that track the musicians are operated remotely by techs with joysticks. "Stay with them all night long," Murphy tells whatever local crew he's working with. "It's like you're trying to assassinate him." When the stage lights go dark, operators switch to night vision.
Williams floats around during a concert, watching the crowd, moving among them to feel their energy. It's how he knows if the show works. But tonight he'll start up here, dead center in a folding chair. Best seat in the house.
And then, at the precise right moment, U2's drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., walks downstage to the drum kit. Everything is perfectly choreographed: He sits down, puts in his in-ear monitor, and grabs his sticks. Mullen's famous drum-corps staccato that begins "Sunday Bloody Sunday" cuts through the stadium. The crowd screams as the haunting guitar lick crashes over them. When they hear an unseen Bono sing, "I can't believe the news today . . ." they absolutely lose it.
Joe O mixes the sound live. All the work at sound check was just a baseline. It's colder now, so the air is different, and there's been a major change in the stadium's acoustics: Hard plastic seats have been replaced with soft human bodies.
The screen looms dark behind the band. Smasher will shortly join Joe O in the AV booth's live mix of the show. He has his own set of faders, but his inputs are the cameras dotted across the stage and stadium. A bank of monitors shine on him. Some show prerecorded videos; others give him live footage. His eyes will dart between the screens, picking the most compelling footage. For two hours, he'll find the moments, add special effects, stitch together 200 linear feet of video—but not yet.
At the end of the second song, with the screen dark and stage lights minimal, Bono pauses to offer a benediction: "Our prayer this evening is that we have one of those epic nights. That we all remember, hold on to. That we let go of the useless and offer ourselves to be useful. That's our prayer," he says. "Simple enough."
At this moment, almost everyone in the stadium is working. The band is playing. Smasher is making final prep for video and Joe O is mixing sound. Security patrols the stands and Rocko patrols the backstage. The local IA who were rolled off the show and called in early are in U2's dressing room, pulling down temporary walls and taking couches out to waiting trucks. Bono asks Willie Williams to kill the spotlights—not that the audience has any idea who "Willie" is—and says, "Let's see if the stars come out this summer night." The audience obliges him. MetLife Stadium fills with thousands of lit cellphones. It looks like a bowl of night sky.
As the next song comes to an end, the four band members stand together at the very front of the stage, right at the 45-yard line, and look out over the crowd. A blood-orange light starts to glow at their backs. One by one they turn and walk upstage. The light gets brighter. When they assemble at center stage, four tiny silhouettes under the black outline of a giant Joshua tree, the entire screen glows red as a new sun on the horizon—every inch perfect—and The Edge starts to play.
DAY 5: 11:45 p.m.
Two hours and 10 minutes after the show began, the show ends. A MetLife electrician throws on the stadium lights. Security guards in orange push the last of the fans out to the crowded parking lots and waiting trains, which will take them home to their houses and apartments and sleeping kids and babysitters who need a ride home. Directly behind the guards, stagehands descend on the field in hard hats and a spectrum of colored shirts.
Then the forklifts come. The joints of the white plastic tiles that have been laid down to protect the field pop as they speed through. They push across the field, somehow missing scurrying reflective vests, until they are arrayed in front of the stage in militaristic formation: three stage left, three stage right, one each in front and rear of the AV booth. And they wait. On the stage, roadies snap shut large plastic Pelican cases and roll them away on casters. The main stage, which turns out to have been the second of two levels of scaffolding and catwalks, collapses under union supervision. The screen's rows and columns drop in segments as the lowest panels are removed and clear like the bottom rows of a game of Tetris. Stagehands begin to push the heaviest items to the front of what's left of the stage. Suddenly, one of the forklifts jumps forward, fork extended, and the stage presents a piece of itself, neatly packed—a box of steel trussing. The forklift speeds off to the loading dock. Then another lift darts in.
Another. Another. Another.
This skeleton supports the screen's 1,100 interlocking LED panels. After each show, the
panels' locking mechanism also anchors them to special pallets, allowing the screen to
travel to three continents. Philip Montgomery
Alex Murphy hustles through row after row of low stage lights, disconnecting them from their mounts.
An audio tech impatiently pushes the button to lower an enormous set of hanging speakers, just high enough to slide a dolly underneath. The speakers roll out in stacks of four, nearly six feet high.
On the stadium floor two camera operators disassemble a camera boom, chucking loose bolts into a rock climber's chalk bag.
At the loading dock, road cases arrive in a constant stream. Rocko has done up the floor with fluorescent yellow lane markings. He's a human interchange, recognizing cases on sight and directing pushers to the appropriate lane.
One forklift is positioned at the end of the row of loading-dock bays. It's completely stationary—except for its fork. Pushers bring stackable road cases; it stacks them; and they wrangle them onto trucks.
Inside the wall-less steel skeleton of the AV booth, workers struggle to push boxes of video equipment up a single step to a waiting forklift.
The stage dissolves into boxes packed with varying lengths of steel pipe.
Out of the maelstrom comes Chak Lawson, looking cheery, hair still in place. "Now the hard part starts," he says. Thirteen hours into his shift.
DAY 6: 3:00 a.m.
The production equipment is all on the road. It took four hours to pack up 30 trucks. The road crew showers in MetLife's home locker rooms and makes its way out of the stadium. These last few hundred yards, to the line of silver buses—already warmed up—might be the most exhausting of the day.
People pack in, and with a familiar diesel grumble the buses start to move. There is some chatting, but nothing too deep after a 15-hour shift. Mostly, people sit and drink a beer, something to relax a bit and come down. VH1 Classic is a favorite on the TVs. Rocko just eats some food from the lounge at the front of his bus, grabs a bottle of water, and heads for a bunk in the back. Sometimes, at home, it's too quiet to sleep. He's too used to the rattle and hum of an engine.
DAY 6: 6:00 p.m.
The local International Alliance outlasts the roadies at MetLife, breaking down steel, but now the steel trucks are loaded and gone, Local 632 have cleared out, and all that's left is the result of a perfect show: a still meadowland of fake grass, a forest of empty seats.
At FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, the roadies and the Cleveland locals have almost finished their load-in, but they're on a break. Thunderstorm. The AV booth is ready, the speakers are hung, and the screen is up, but no one works when there's lightning in the vicinity. But the lightning will pass and the rain will end, and if it doesn't, they've got all kinds of backup plans.
Wed, July 26, 2017 in Paris, France @ Stade De France
I went to Dublin and Paris to see 3 amazing shows by U2 (Saturday on Dublin and then Tuesday and Wednesday in Paris) from the "The Joshua Tree Tour 2017".
Celebrating 30 Years of "The Joshua Tree".
"The Joshua Tree transformed U2 into superstars. U2 is celebrating the album’s thirtieth anniversary with a world tour. The original album tackled weighty real-world topics. Bono and company want to connect the music to right now — to global anxieties about, immigration, human rights, and governmental regimes."
"But The Joshua Tree transformed U2 into superstars, with hit singles “With or Without You,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Where the Streets Have No Name”. It was their first album to hit No. 1 on the U.S. album chart. U2 found themselves on the cover of Time magazine. A Grammy was awarded to the music video for “Streets,” shot on top of a Los Angeles liquor store. And when it was all said and done, The Joshua Tree sold more than 25,000,000 copies worldwide, was awarded the Grammy for Album of the Year, and contributed to U2 entering the discussion for greatest rock band ever. When Rolling Stone Magazine compiled its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, five U2 albums were listed, with The Joshua Tree ranked No. 27 (U2’s highest presence on the list)."
"In 2017, U2 is celebrating the album’s thirtieth anniversary with a world tour that spans 33 shows for an estimated 1.7 million fans. But these Dubliners have no desire to present The Joshua Tree tour as a museum piece. Bono and company want to connect the music to right now — to global anxieties about labor, immigration, human rights, governmental regimes, and the environment."
Saw them 12 times before in other places, my Country and even other Countries.
Before "U2", played "Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds", they played 53 minutes.
Noel the member of the band "Oasis" (1991–2009).
U2, played for 128 minutes. Played 23 songs.
They were awesome live doing this stadium show. Amazing sound.
1st show I was Pitch 1 on the right corner of the VIP area just on front row.
2nd show I was 1st row corner of the B Stage (Tree Stage) with Larry Mullen drums just ahead of me.
3rd show I was on the stands with a Gold Hot Ticket from VIP Nation.
U2 played their second night in the French capital. On all three of their European stadium tours in the 2000s–10s, they have done at least two dates in Paris; the last stadium tour to feature just one night there was Popmart on 6 September 1997.
There were a few changes to the set from night one. A Sort of Homecoming made its second appearance on the current leg, replacing Bad in third. Mysterious Ways returned to the encore after missing three gigs. Little Things was absent from the set, missing the opportunity to be played at four shows in a row—its best run of consecutive concerts thus remains three. The closer was instead I Will Follow, its sixth performance of the tour and first outside North America.
01. Sunday Bloody Sunday 02. New Year's Day 03. A Sort Of Homecoming 04. Pride (In The Name Of Love) 05. Where The Streets Have No Name / California (There Is No End To Love) (Snippet) 06. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Stand By Me (Snippet) 07. With Or Without You 08. Bullet The Blue Sky 09. Running To Stand Still 10. Red Hill Mining Town 11. In God's Country 12. Trip Through Your Wires 13. One Tree Hill 14. Exit / Wise Blood (Snippet) / Eeny Meeny Miny Moe (Snippet) 15. Mothers Of The Disappeared
Encore(s): 16. Miss Sarajevo 17. Beautiful Day / Starman (Snippet) 18. Elevation 19. Vertigo / It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It) (Snippet) 20. Mysterious Ways 21. Ultra Violet (Light My Way) 22. One / Hear Us Coming (snippet) 23. I will follow
In bold are the videos I made.
Videos of U2 (24 videos of 23 songs):
U2-Sunday Bloody Sunday, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/xVIlc1UgyPU
And the video:
U2-New Year's Day, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/GuxIpLJ1NTE
And the video:
U2-A Sort Of Homecoming, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/9_y6D0O1awo
And the video:
U2-Pride (In The Name Of Love), Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/KbOe3FcXloY
And the video:
U2-Where the Streets Have No Name + California(TINETL)(Sn),StadeDeFrance,Paris,France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/S_dYcXkZCeY
And the video:
U2-I Still Haven't Found What I'm LookingFor+StandByMe(Sn),Stade De France,Paris,France,2017-07-26HD
https://youtu.be/sJCkSOKm9Ns
And the video:
U2-With Or Without You, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/E1kcsR33wPo
And the video:
U2-Bullet The Blue Sky, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/Z1hcts_ZGxc
And the video:
U2-Running To Stand Still, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/eGJjMlWx044
And the video:
U2-Red Hill Mining Town, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/SUoOwIzj8Ts
And the video:
U2-In God's Country, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/3qrQq6_Jcto
And the video:
U2-Trip Through Your Wires, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/edo0jKNlli0
And the video:
U2-One Tree Hill, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/12LSkbFvx7Q
And the video:
U2-Exit + Wise Blood (Sn) + Eeny Meeny Miny Moe (Snippet), StadeDeFrance,Paris,France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/JdUClqtyJxQ
And the video:
U2-Mothers Of The Disappeared, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/Mn0nfz0eoXU
And the video:
U2-Miss Sarajevo, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/P6Ak8hp7wSA
And the video:
U2-Beautiful Day + Starman (Snippet), Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/Vu7uQtkr-As
And the video:
U2-Elevation, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/6uRHwHi_Q0I
And the video:
U2-Vertigo + It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (ButILikeIt)(Snippet),StadeDeFrance,Paris,France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/JgxwHD40qps
And the video:
U2-Mysterious Ways, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/7GZYBVRaEO0
And the video:
U2-Ultra Violet (Light My Way), Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/xb5VaNeIF0Y
And the video:
U2-One + Hear Us Coming (Snippet) (...), Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/DVuSwzCUxik
And the video:
U2-One + Hear Us Coming (Snippet) (End), Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/96UN6yBteEQ
And the video:
U2-I Will Follow, Stade De France, Paris, France, 2017-07-26 HD
https://youtu.be/LNOzoijcGCs
And the video:
