Venue: National Stadium, Singapore
Date: 1st December 2019
Promoter: Live Nation Singapore
Review by: Anna F.
Special Thanks: The Live Nation Singapore team
Photos by Alvin H.
As the lights dimmed and The Waterboys’ “The Whole Of The Moon” was heard, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. creeped out from the shadows and onto the stage to kick off the iconic intro to “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. With Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton in tow, the legendary stadium pros put on a spectacle of epic proportions, a “rock and roll transcendence” if you will, and it all started with Bono busting out the classic lines of the anthemic anti-violence opener.
“It only took us four decades to get here and 24 hours to get us back,” Bono shared as they got acquainted with the audience before them for the second night in a row. Performing all the songs off The Joshua Tree in the order of its tracklist, as well as some of the hits they couldn’t exclude without having fans up in arms, like “One”, “Where the Streets Have No Name”, and “Vertigo”, the quartet ripped the roof off the place.
Weighing in at a whopping 22 tons, the stage set featured the largest un-obscured and highest resolution LED video screen (almost 8k) ever used in a touring show. Consisting 1,040 individual video panels, with over 11 million pixels, it took eight hours to construct.
Apart from the silhouettes of the Irishmen most of the people in the stadium could see, there was also the stunning curation of authentic scenes of Americana, including vast landscapes of the Death Valley desert that provided for the unmistakable album cover’s artwork. At one point the live visual of the band performing “Red Hill Mining Town” was juxtaposed with a Salvation Army brass band filling the right half of the screen, their trumpets and horns providing for a rich texture and depth to the piece.
The extravagant production also featured a visual montage of trailblazing women accompanied by “Ultra Violet (Light My Way)”. It even included the Singapore Women’s Mount Everest Team, golden girl, Patricia Chan, as well as war heroine Elizabeth Choy.
A departure from the conventional sound system used for most music performances, this one made great strides towards the improvement of the overall distribution of sound. Each venue was painstakingly and acoustically mapped to allow for the equal dispersion of sound to every seat in the house, even to the nosebleed sections.
The frontman definitely stole the show, with his almost-divine proclamations. He also showed off his chops on the harmonica during tunes like “Trip Through Your Wires” and “Running to Stand Still”, while The Edge took over keyboard duties at times. “He doesn’t have a name. Just a definitive article, and a noun. He comes from the future. He says it’s better there. His name is The Edge,” the singer bellowed as the guitarist made his guitar weep, as he fuzzed, looped and picked away, with Adam and Larry keeping the fiery machine chugging.
Gathered on World AIDS Day, Bono spoke at length about the everyday heroes still working to eliminate the virus that has wreaked so much havoc in so many people’s lives. And with that, they segued perfectly into David Bowie’s “Heroes”, with a stadium full of glistening flashlights.
You would imagine that hearing U2’s iconic hits live wouldn’t be that big of a deal. They do make an appearance on every radio station’s playlist often enough. But it was. Overall, the experience was more like a spiritual trip through both calm yet meandering and rocky waters than a rock concert, from the absolute clarity of the sound system which made it feel like you had Bono in your ear sometimes, to the mind-blowing visual embellishments, all the elements of their performance was so well executed that it was difficult to believe that it was real.
When a band of this stature finds themselves revisiting the touring circuit for yet another go-around, it could be very easy for them to get complacent and lazy. But U2 isn’t your average band. They aren’t here to put on a lacklustre performance, or to stinge on the bells and whistles which take a show to another level; they’re here to give you an experience of a lifetime.
And seeing the Irish rock and roll monoliths live was undoubtedly even better than the real thing.