The U2 Reader

Collects more than seventy U2 articles, interviews, and reviews spanning 1978-2002, arranged by theme including the early days, stardom, experiment and backlash, touring, albums, video and film, politics, spirituality, and business matters, and includes comments from old friends and from peers such as Billy Corgan, Moby, and Salman Rushdie.

The Irish rock band U2, and especially its frontman Bono, are among the most effective activists ever. U2 has convinced wealthy governments to forgive tens of billions of dollars in loans while spreading its activist messages to billions of people, helping save millions of lives. So how did four boys from one of the poorest countries in the West achieve this? Who and what influenced them? What strategies did they use to succeed as much as they did as activists, and how did those strategies change over time? In particular, how did lead singer Bono make the leap into superstar lobbying? And, with so much attention on him, how has he handled critics who have taken to task his work on behalf of developing countries? In The World and U2: One Band’s Remaking of Global Activism, Alan McPherson trains a historian’s eye on the evolution and influence of the band’s activism from its formation in 1976 to its most recent album and concert tour. Throughout its nearly four decades, the band has held up a mirror to the increasing selfishness in the world while at the same time working to fill the void left by those who have abandoned the world’s poor to their plight. From raising awareness about war and human rights in the 1980s to engaging in direct action in the 1990s to moving mountains of cash for the planet’s poorest in the twenty-first century, the band, and especially Bono, have both raised the bar and set the example for other celebrity activists. But it is also a success that has brought a greater scrutiny to bear on U2’s activism and initiated a healthy debate about the merits of Western development aid. The World and U2: One Band’s Remaking of Global Activism tells this story of U2’s successful storming of the world’s philanthropic stage. It will enchant the band’s fans, engage its critics, and offer lessons—and warnings—to activists seeking to change things for the better.

U2 and the Religious Impulse examines indications in U2's music and performances that the band work at conscious and subconscious levels as artists who focus on matters of the spirit, religious traditions, and a life guided by both belief and doubt. U2 is known for a career of stirring songs, landmark performances and for its interest in connecting with fans to reach a higher power to accomplish greater purposes. Its success as a rock band is unparalleled in the history of rock 'n' roll's greatest acts. In addition to all the thrills one would expect from entertainers at this level, U2 surprises many listeners who examine its lyrics and concert themes by having a depth of interest in matters of human existence more typically found in literature, philosophy and theology. The multi-disciplinary perspectives presented here account for the durability of U2's art and offer informed explanations as to why many fans of popular music who seek a connection with a higher power find U2 to be a kindred spirit. This study will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies and musicology, interested in religion and popular music, as well as religion and popular culture more broadly.

Is it possible to be a committed Christian and a rock superstar? Can political activists make good music? Do hugely successful rock bands really care about AIDS and poverty in Africa, or is it just another image-enhancing schtick? U2 and Philosophy ponders these and other seeming dichotomies in the career of the Irish supergroup. For over two decades, U2 has been one of the biggest acts in rock music. They’ve produced over a dozen platinum and multiplatinum records and won 15 Grammy Awards. Critics everywhere have praised the band’s thoughtful, complex lyrics and the artistry of their music. At the same time, Bono, the group’s lead singer, has dedicated himself to political and social causes, blurring the line between rock star and respected statesman. Offering fresh insight into the band’s music and activism, these thought-provoking essays allows fans to discover philosophy through the eyes of U2, and rediscover U2 through the eyes of philosophers.

Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll? features new writing in the growing field of U2 studies. In keeping with U2's own efforts to remove barriers that have long prevented dialogue for understanding and improving the human experience, this collection of essays covers such disciplines as literature, music, philosophy, and theology.

Putting the New Materialist figure of diffraction to use in a set of readings – in which cultural texts are materially read against their contents and their themes, against their readers or against other texts – this volume proposes a criticalintervention into the practice of reading itself. In this book, reading and reading methodology are probed for their materiality and re-considered as being inevitably suspended between, or diffracted with, both matter and discourse. The history of literary and cultural reading, including poststructuralism and critical theory, is revisited in a new light and opened-up for a future in which the world and reading are no longer regarded as conveniently separate spheres, but recognized as deeply entangled and intertwined. Diffractive Reading ultimately represents a new reading of reading itself: firstly by critiquing the distanced perspective of critical paradigms such as translation and intertextuality, in which texts encountered, processed or otherwise subdued; secondly, showing how all literary and cultural readings represent different ‘agential cuts’ in the world-text-reader constellation, which is always both discursive and material; and thirdly, the volume materializes, dynamizes and politicizes the activity of reading by drawing attention to reading’s intervention in, and (co)creation of, the world in which we live.

U2’s success and significance are due, in large part, to finding inventive, creative solutions for overcoming obstacles and moving past conventional boundaries. As it has embraced change and transformation over and over again, its fans and critics have come to value and expect this element of U2. These new essays from the disciplines of organizational communication, music theory, literary studies, religion, and cultural studies offer perspectives on several ways U2’s dynamic of change has been a constant theme throughout its career. These essays came from the U2 Conference 2013 exploring the music, work, and influence of U2, and to further the scholarship on U2.