american nerd survey

U2: Threat or Menace?

Dave Indish: Definitely a threat. I don't trust people with only one name (Bono), or those who answer to ridiculous nicknames far into middle age (The Edge). Plus I think Bono is a mammoth, self-important asshole who needs constant affirmation that he's a good person, when in reality he's just a rich guy who throws his money around to make people think he gives a rat's ass about the poor.

Mark Kalar: The thing that sucks about U2 is that you get the feeling they might have one last great album in them. If you put the best songs from all the post-Achtung records on one album, you’d have a pretty damn good collection of songs. And really, most bands would kill to have Pop as their low point (only 7 million albums sold and not a single Grammy award, or even a Nobel Prize nomination that year), especially out of 11 albums. Sure, …Atomic Bomb has its problems, but at least half of it is awesome. Which I think hold true for all their more recent albums. For my money, there is no other artist who has been as consistently good as U2 over a comparable period of time. There are no true stinkers (see: Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young), they’ve never sunk into adult contemporary mediocrity like some of their 80s college radio peers (see: REM, Red Hot Chili Peppers), they haven’t had to resort to “come back” albums (see: The Cure, Depeche Mode), there have been no distracting side projects (well, unless you consider Bono’s mission to save Africa) they’ve just always been there, for nearly 30 years, cranking out music ranging from great to at least pretty good. They are threat, menace, trouble, plague, peril, hot potato and thin ice all wrapped into one. They want to save the world because it’s already theirs.

Keith Pille: Let me put it this way: there's a lot about the 2006 incarnation of U2 that gets on my nerves-- anyone exposed on that level will be a little annoying. And I can't say that How to Dismantle... did anything for me at all.

But Achtung Baby hit me at the perfect time to leave a gigantic, textured-guitar hole in my brain way back in the day, so I feel like I owe some sort of lifetime debt to the Edge for opening my horizons to the world beyond Guns N Roses (I'm willing to stipulate that Achtung might not have sounded so revolutionary if you didn't live in rural Nebraska). And yeah, there's no question that U2's best work is behind them, but you have to hand it to them for doing a better job of aging gracefully in the spotlight than most people do. They're not a vital group anymore... but time's been kinder to them than it has to, say, Paul McCartney.

Of course, if we're talking about the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady, the answer is both threat and menace. A 50-year-old airframe that still sees everyday use? That's one bad mofo plane design.

Don Pizarro: To be honest, I tuned out after The Joshua Tree.

Simon Riordan: Menace to global corporate conglomerates and Lite Radio stations everywhere.

Jonathan Shipley: Both. U2 is a threat to become more popular than Weird Al's movie "UHF" and also, U2 is a menace to the great UB40.

Clint Weathers: Back when, threat!  Now, mere menace and only then to people who listen to "lite rock for the workplace."