The past few years have not been particularly kind to U2. Sure, the the Dublin quartet’s live show has remained a blockbuster—their Innocence + Experience Tour raked in $133.6 million, making it the third-highest grossing tour of 2015—but creatively and critically, U2 have been floundering. Their 12th studio album, 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, elicited a reaction every bit as tame as the record’s staid, slate-gray cover art. A follow-up came five years later, invading iPhones the world over with no warning. Largely deemed the musical equivalent of malware, 2014’s Songs of Innocence was a misstep, and its fumbled rollout made it even easier to mock Bono’s messiah complex and his band’s lack of self-awareness. They misjudged the moment in a very public way, appearing out of touch.
That critique extends beyond the delivery system. The gestation of Songs of Innocence was famously troubled, marked by fits and starts that stretched over a few years. What they ended up with was a batch of overcooked attempts at radio success, mostly produced by Danger Mouse. It reeked of desperation: a long-in-the-tooth act hopes to freshen up their sound, so they look to a younger but proven producer—in this case, someone who hadn’t been on “the cutting edge” for about a decade.
Now it looks as though the members of U2 are embracing the band’s legacy, and by extension its age, in a way that they haven’t before, and are poised to earn their first W in a while because of it. On Monday, they announced a 2017 tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their defining document, 1987’s The Joshua Tree. On the surface, this might not seem all that notable—older bands have been indulging in these sorts of album anniversary tours at a steady clip for years now—but coming from U2, this move speaks volumes.
Bono and co. have historically never been comfortable with the idea of becoming a nostalgia act. In a 2015 episode of the New York Times’ Popcast, critic Jon Pareles noted that, years ago, the band was bothered that they didn’t have a hit single from No Line on the Horizon to storm the stage with. “They don’t want to be an oldies act,” he said. “U2 really still wants to be engaged with now. Their fans might be happier if they played all oldies, but U2—it rubs them the wrong way to do that.”
Unsurprisingly, U2 are trying not to label the upcoming trek as a nostalgia grab. Speaking to Rolling Stone recently, the Edge said, “I think what’s important for us is that it’s not really about nostalgia. There’s an element of nostalgia that we can’t avoid, but it’s not motivated by a desire to look backwards. It’s almost like this album has come full circle and we’re back there again.” When the Edge says “back there,” he’s referring to the cultural and political climate that pervaded the U.S. and England when The Joshua Tree was written in the mid-’80s—meaning the stifling conservatism that thrived under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He added, “It just felt like, ‘Wow, these songs have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn’t have three years ago, four years ago.’”
Let’s grant the Edge that point: In the wake of Brexit and the rise of President-elect Cheeto, there are some parallels between then and now, and it’s possible that audiences across Europe and North America will experience new epiphanies when they’re once again confronted with The Joshua Tree’s bleeding-heart anthems. The spiritual questing of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” might ring especially true in a time when little seems certain, the violence of “Bullet the Blue Sky” and “Exit” might come eerily close to our endless news cycle, and the twilit magic of “With or Without You” should remain intact.
But the Edge is also correct that there’s no avoiding nostalgia when a band dusts off a 30-year-old set of songs. As such, this tour announcement feels like it’s coming from a U2 that’s ready to put their work behind glass, as so many of their peers did far earlier. (You could say this campaign really began with 2011’s From the Sky Down, a documentary that examined the making of 1991’s Achtung Baby, but reviving a classic record for the stage represents an extra level of commitment.) They’re at least in part accepting their status as a legacy band, as an act whose peak is behind them and whose fans do want to hear the greatest hits.
And there’s no shame in that, certainly not when a band’s peak was as powerful and dominant as U2’s was. Their fifth album, The Joshua Tree went on to sell more than 25 million copies worldwide, anointing U2 the Most Important Band in the World in the process. Its singles drew crowds to a Los Angeles intersection for a rooftop concert, and inspired sing-alongs on the streets of Las Vegas, and footage of both turned into iconic music videos. Before they fell victim to their own pomposity, U2 were a genuinely exciting band that moved listeners. Maybe this tour, which is scheduled to run from May into August, can remind people of that. (Still, U2 aren’t doing themselves any favors with their choice of opening acts: Mumford & Sons, the Lumineers, OneRepublic, and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Maybe they’re making a case for their own influence on the anthemic, broad-strokes pop-rock of today, but they’re also drawing a direct line from themselves to some of the festival circuit’s blandest regulars.)
No matter how lucrative this Joshua Tree retread will be—and it will be extremely lucrative—U2 aren’t going to remain in the past. They’re still going to release new music, and they’re still going to try and score hits, even if they know the odds are against them. The successor to Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, has been talked about for the past two years and it’s apparently still on the way. According to the Edge’s chat with Rolling Stone, the new full-length is nearly done; the band is simply taking a breather from the project to make sure the songs have a place in our current political atmosphere. But even if they don’t, U2 will have an older album at the ready—one that, at this point, their fans will most likely prefer.