Consider him unimpressed. Bono opened up about his thoughts on the state of music today, and it isn’t all positive.
“I think music has gotten very girly,” the U2 frontman told Rolling Stone in an interview published on Wednesday, December 27. “And there are some good things about that, but hip-hop is the only place for young male anger at the moment — and that’s not good. When I was 16, I had a lot of anger in me. You need to find a place for guitars, whether it is with a drum machine — I don’t care. The moment something becomes preserved, it is f—king over. You might as well put it in formaldehyde.”
The topic of today’s music came up after the 57-year-old rocker dished about what his kids — Jordan, 28, Eve, 26, and Elijah, 18 — are listening to these days. “[Elijah] believes that a rock ‘n’ roll revolution is around the corner,” noted the musician.
“In the end, what is rock ‘n’ roll?” he asked. “Rage is at the heart of it. Some great rock ‘n’ roll tends to have that, which is why The Who were such a great band. Or Pearl Jam. Eddie [Vedder] has that rage.”
As for his award-winning band’s own sound? Bono believes that the group’s current tunes — U2 just released their 14th studio album, Songs of Experience, on December 1 — are more friendly for streaming.
“We’re back to the ’50s now, where the focus is on songs rather than albums,” he explained. “U2 makes albums, so how do we survive? By making songs better. And having, I hope, the humility to accept that we need to rediscover songwriting.”
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