Bono recently revealed that Apple forcing U2’s album Songs of Innocence on every iPhone user in the world might have actually been more painful for him than it was for listeners.
While U2 has been one of the biggest bands in the world for decades, its lead singer confessed during an interview on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast that he finds most of their music mortifying. “I’ve been in the car when one of our songs has come on the radio and I’ve been the color of, as we say in Dublin, scarlet,” he said. “I’m just so embarrassed.” But he added that there’s still some salvageable hits within their extensive discography. “The one that I can listen to the most is ‘Miss Sarajevo’ with Luciano Pavarotti. Genuine, most of the other ones make me cringe a little bit,” he said, admitting that he’s “probably proudest” of the song “Vertigo.”
And it’s not just the tracklist that he regrets, Bono said he was also seriously against the band’s name when they first came up with it. Ultimately, their first manager Paul McGuinness convinced the singer to keep it, calling it “great” and insisting that it would “look good on a t-shirt, a letter and a number.” But, apparently, the name still hasn’t grown on him. “I didn’t realize that The Beatles was a bad pun, either,” he said. “In our head, it was like the spy plane, U-boat. It was futuristic…It turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence—no, I don’t like that name. I still don’t really like the name.” He added, “I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot, and maybe that’s the place to be as an artist—you know, right at the edge of your level of embarrassment.”
Bono’s musical regrets aren’t just limited to his band, but also his own singing ability. “I only became a singer, like, recently,” he said. “Maybe it hasn’t happened yet for some people’s ears and I understand that.” He even recalled a time the late singer Robert Palmer told U2’s bassist Adam Clayton in the ’80s, “God, would you ever tell your singer to just take down the keys a little bit? He’d do himself a favor, his voice a favor, and he’d do us all a favor who have to listen to him.” Bono agreed with that assessment, explaining, “I was thinking out of my body. I wasn’t thinking about singing. I didn’t really think about changing keys. Did we ever change a key?”
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