Review Summary: it's fine
The first song U2 released from
Songs of Experience was a faux-live recording of track 11, "The Blackout". It was a far cry from their previous album. Its abrasive guitars, end time lyrics, and climactic build up as the song marched towards its conclusion made it seem as if U2 was stepping up to confront today’s political climate. Remember,
Songs of Experience was supposed to be released around December of last year, and it would have been had Donald Trump lost the U.S. presidential election. For all the saccharine, inoffensive niceties of the previous
Songs of Innocence, it seemed as if Brexit and the election of Donald Trump had lit a fire under U2 and that in the making was an explicitly political, properly pissed off U2 album that the world wanted and needed.
That is not what we got with
Songs of Experience. Like its older sibling that came three years before,
Songs of Experience is saccharine, inoffensive, and just fine. And this turns out to be
Experience’s most offensive flaw. This sounds like an album made by men that aren’t particularly affected by the world's troubles. Men who make millions off concerts honoring their politically conscious
Joshua Tree. Men who then park those millions in low-tax countries so that they can build $79 million mansions in Malibu for themselves. No wonder they weren't overtly political in this album. They knew that no one would take them seriously.
Now, in no way am I saying that
Experience is a terrible album, nor am I downplaying the tremendous amount of good U2 has done.
Experience is fine, just like
Songs of Innocence was before it. It's just nothing more than that. I will argue that it’s worse than
Songs of Innocence, however. For all of its flaws,
Innocence had a handful of memorable songs worthy of being placed alongside U2 classics, "Every Breaking Wave" and "Song For Someone" to name a couple.
In contrast,
Songs of Experience has many of the flaws of its predecessor but without the backbone of great songs supporting it. Many of the high points of
Experience aren’t close to what they were in
Innocence. "Lights of Home" starts out promising enough but it gets held back by repetitiveness and a useless minute-long lyrical call back to
Innocence’s "Iris". The second single, "Get Out of Your Own Way", is fairly enjoyable but nothing close to the quality of "Every Breaking Wave" or "Beautiful Day", the rhythm and feel of which "Get Out of Your Own Way" is derivative of.
Furthermore, the album showcases U2’s recent baffling tendency to ruin perfectly good songs for no apparent reason. Remember my opening paragraph when I described the faux-live version of "The Blackout" and its earth-shattering guitars? That power is no where to be found in the album version. The guitars are relegated firmly to the background, resulting in the album version’s impact and quality getting diminished dramatically. Imagine "Vertigo" with a significantly quieter guitar riff and you get what happened with "The Blackout". There was no reason for U2 to do this; they essentially created a good song and then decided to make it worse. And somehow, they did this twice. On their 2009 U2 360 Tour, they would sometimes play songs that they were working on for their next albums, one of which was "Glastonbury". Although "Glastonbury" was never officially released, the band Xiren made a cover of the song, giving us a solid idea of what a finished version would sound like. "Glastonbury" was already a solid song. All U2 had to do was change the lyrics to fit
Songs of Experience’s themes. Instead, U2 reworked "Glastonbury" into "American Soul", which, in addition to joining Bono’s ever-growing hall of lyrical iniquities (what the ***’s a refu-Jesus?), is just not as good as what they had before.
With all of that though, there are still some good songs here. "You’re the Best Thing About Me", "Get Out of Your Own Way", and "Summer of Love" are fun and catchy pop-rock tunes worthy of multiple listens, and "The Little Things That Give You Away" is a soaring ballad that’s aided by The Edge’s great guitar work. The unquestioned high-point for me though was the last song on the album, "13 (There is a Light)". Like some of the other songs on the album, "13" references a song found on
Songs of Innocence, in this case, "Song For Someone". U2 has had a history of fantastic album closers, and "13" is no exception. The pacing of the song is perfect, the lyrics and vocals are emotive, and the instrumentation is outstanding. A great way to end the album.
But perhaps listening to "13" embodies my experience with this album more than anything else. I listened to this album in full on release day, December 1. By the time I reached "13" on the track list, I had skipped through a fair bit of songs and I wasn’t expecting much out of the closer. "13" captivated me. I listened to it several times. It had me in tears. This was the lyric that struck me – “I know the world is done. But you don’t have to be.” This lyric was what elevated "13" to an instant classic for me. This was Bono acknowledging the helplessness that people feel as they watch their world burn down. This was Bono telling the Syrian refugees, the Manchester bombing survivors, the Las Vegas shooting victims, that you can’t change what has happened to you. What you’ve experienced will always be a part of you. It will always haunt you. It will never leave you. But your life doesn't have to be defined by tragedy. You can still find happiness in your life and heal your wounds. You can still walk on. This was what made me tear up during "13".
And then I actually googled the lyrics for this review and found out that I misheard them. The actual lyrics were “I know the world is
dumb. But you don’t have to be.” God damn it. I should’ve known that U2 isn’t capable of genius anymore.
