12 December 1991
I remember Hot Press in the early ’90s carrying angry letters from die-hard U2 fans, mostly in North America, on how Achtung Baby and Zooropa were a travesty of U2 by U2. On ‘Mysterious Ways’, for instance, those strobe-lit dance beats and synth washes combine with Adam’s mildly funky bassline to sound almost like fun. In the video Bono wears a frilly shirt. This sort of frivolity was clearly infra dig to their fundamentalist wing.
However, if you ask me, they were all a bit hasty with their judgement. Dance beats and arty foofaraw aside, ‘Mysterious Ways’ is a song that could easily have fitted on The Joshua Tree or even The Unforgettable Fire. You have more of Bono’s blustery, gurning lyrics about moons and waves and the like. (In Bono-land, women are moons and waves and spirits rather than actual people.) The Edge still uses effects and pedals to cover up his basic guitar drudgery. And for all the novelty of dance beats and funk-adjacent basslines, Larry and Adam play them like they’re learning to speak a foreign language, which in a sense they are. So, despite the glittery tinsel around its neck ‘Mysterious Ways’ is still just big dumb stadium rock. Meet the new U2, same as the old U2.
