U2

[BarryBreensBandage]

My opinion has nothing to do with the fact that your response is avoiding the elephant in the room - 
that you would prefer a 'brit' (your term) to sing a song about Ireland instead of an Irishman.

Say it ain't so?

I'd have preferred James Connolly and Jim Larkin to William Martin Murphy too. Your 'argument' suggests a natural tendency towards ballbaggery.

So who's pro brit now?

[HowAreYeGettinOn]

Wrong, the 'this is not a rebel song' introduction on 'the unforgettable fire' kinda aborted your argument decades before it was born. Nice try though, no doubt you were watchin the muppet show at the time and it wore off.

Bollocks.

Lennon's song is a rebel song specifically about Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972. Look at the lyrics. He is explicitly referring to Bloody Sunday in Derry and saying 'Brits f*ck off out of Northern Ireland'.

U2's is not. It's a non-specific peace song. The lyrics convey a horrification at war and all that comes with it. They sing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' as the chorus, but make no mention of anything to with Derry, and there's no 'taking sides' anywhere in the lyric (and I've been listening to that song for 28 years). They might as well be singing about Croke Park in 1920. Therefore it is not a rewrite of Lennon's.

Don't believe me? Try this from Larry Mullen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Bloody_Sunday) :

"We're into the politics of people, we're not into politics. Like you talk about Northern Ireland, 'Sunday Bloody Sunday,' people sort of think, 'Oh, that time when 13 Catholics were shot by British soldiers'; that's not what the song is about. That's an incident, the most famous incident in Northern Ireland and it's the strongest way of saying, 'How long? How long do we have to put up with this?' I don't care who's who - Catholics, Protestants, whatever. You know people are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we're saying why? What's the point? And you can move that into places like El Salvador and other similar situations - people dying. Let's forget the politics, let's stop shooting each other and sit around the table and talk about it... There are a lot of bands taking sides saying politics is crap, etc. Well, so what! The real battle is people dying, that's the real battle."[9]

[5 Sams]

Bono 52 yesterday...LMJ 50 at halloween past...do these lads want to continue trying to make ground breaking rock music or will they slide into the twilight with an enormous back catalogue and a locka pound in the arse pocket?

Any thoughts??

Although I heard a wee whisper they were camped out in South County Dublin lately working on new material...allegedly

[BennyCake]

U2 have been sliding for over a decade.