The single for “Numb” is kind of an odd duck. As opposed to the traditional vinyl, cassette, or CD single with audio tracks, the single for “Numb” was released as a VHS cassette. The “A-side” is the promotional video for “Numb,” which we discussed last week. As you might expect, there are also “B-sides,” or […]
Read More
Whenever I get involved in a conversation about U2 with anyone who is of a certain age, I cam predict, almost verbatim, how the conversation is going to go. The gist is that the other person will say that they like U2’s older stuff, but that the band got too weird in the 1990s. I […]
Read More
I don’t mind experimental art. Heck, I even like the Passengers album, but sometimes a little avant-garde goes a long way. Such is the case with U2’s video for “Until the End of the World,” directed by Richie Smyth. I know that Smyth is capable of making good videos because he was one of the […]
Read More
When I was younger, I used to think that music videos were a natural offshoot of being a musician. I imagined that all one had to do to make a successful music video was to show up, strike a pose or two, and that was the end of it. When I was a little older, […]
Read More
In addition to the main video for “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” which we examined last week, there was a secondary video for the song that saw very little airplay. In fact, I have never seen it on MTV or any other channel that plays music videos…the only place that I have ever seen […]
Read More
Through writing these articles, I have come to realize something about myself: I like videos with meaning that relates to the song that the video is for. Put another way, videos that have a correlation with the lyrics from the song. To that end, I am going to make the declaration that the first video […]
Read More
When last we met, I promised to write today about Phil Joanou’s video for U2’s song “One.” You might recognize the name Phil Joanou from U2’s past, as he was the director of the film Rattle and Hum, as well as a few of the videos that came off of that album. Despite the fact […]
Read More
Last week, we began to break down the long and complicated history of the promo videos for one of U2’s most famous songs, “One.” This week we continue that story by talking about Mark Pellington’s version(s) of the video. This was actually the first video sent to MTV for the promotion of the song, which […]
Read More
I spend a lot of time on Facebook in some of the various U2 groups, where people like to post pictures and images of the band, including stills from the group’s various videos. One of the videos that I see the most of is this video for “One,” famously known as the video where the […]
Read More
The second promo video from U2’s album of reinvention, Achtung baby, was for “Mysterious Ways.” This song seems to be one of U2’s most well-known songs in the United States, even if the person who loves the song doesn’t know that it is by U2. I’ve known several people who professed to love this song […]
Read More
