When love leaves town

Like their New Labour fans and counterparts, U2 should take the hint of a dwindling support
    • The Guardian,
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Poetically, as the New ­Labour era draws to an ­inglorious close under Gordon Brown, that regime's rock band of choice, the supposedly godlike U2, are having a just about comparable ­career wobble. In both cases, power and influence are ebbing away, and once loyal admirers are suddenly restive and disconnected. Brown is said to have sought the advice of Tony Blair; I wouldn't be surprised to hear that U2's singer-cum-propagandist Bono had done the same (and given Blair's depressing failings, he would surely clear his schedule and take the call in an instant).

In U2's case, this isn't necessarily the stuff of a terminal crisis, but you never know. Their last single, the unfortunately titled Magnificent, sold a mere 4,000 copies in its first week and crept into the charts at a miserable number 42, their worst performance since 1982. At the time of writing, No Line on the Horizon – a record largely praised to the skies, though it is actually not much cop – sits in 29th place on the UK albums rankings, and has reportedly sold fewer copies than the latest effort by those popular but not exactly titanic dance music veterans the Prodigy. U2's run of vast concerts this summer has largely sold out, and thanks to the inevitable renditions of their hits, will doubtless be feverishly received, but that isn't really the point: these are proud men, and a life as an oldies act is surely no life at all.

U2 have long been so ubiquitous that their music has threatened to lose all meaning – for me, it happened in around 1988 – but of late, they have truly excelled themselves. Some questions: when Bono is photographed going to church in New York with Blair, what does that do the idea of rock as The Other? Did the BBC marking the release of the album by apparently handing the group the keys to the entire network only compound the problem? Most interestingly, is their slide heartening proof that, after years of handwringing about music becoming so pan-generational and pro-establishment it had lost all meaning, there may actually be a point where the great unwashed realise a group stands for absolutely nothing, and recoil? If so, watch out Coldplay.

As you may have divined, what you have just read is informed by a certain schadenfreude. It would be churlish to deny that U2 have sometimes made music that has been interesting – and occasionally irresistible – but if I were pushing the argument in the pub, I'd cite the alien test: the idea that if ­extraterrestrials arrived and demanded to be turned on to rock'n'roll, the ­necessary list of songs that come close to the Platonic ideal would not have a single one of theirs on it. To understand why, one only need to watch the great carry-on that occurs every time U2 release an album and Bono issues his latest painful soundbites: they are guilty of the great rock crime of trying that little bit too hard.

So what next? Should they wish, the three members of the group of whom the public may only be dimly aware surely have enough money to retire, or start new projects. In Bono's case, though his halo deservedly slipped when they were caught shifting money to the Netherlands to avoid Irish taxes, his brand of heavily compromised philanthropy would surely fill up his diary from now to the next century. There again, U2 are nothing if not wily: they have crawled out of disgrace in the past, and they will doubtless do so again.

Here, for what it's worth, is my advice, based on a career option cruelly denied to politicians: breaking up, letting the dust clear, and then announcing your reformation. They should pencil it in for 2019, prepare the offshore accounts, and plan for the mother of all nostalgic celebrations; Gordon and Tony, should they still be around, will surely be down the front.

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