U2's "Invisible" Pretty Good Song

Hey maybe U2 don’t suck

Ready, indeed, eager to put the last nail in the U2 coffin, “Invisible” has bought them a little more time. Not great but at least a good song, it sounds like a normal rock band playing like, you know a pop song. A pretty verse builds to an iffy bridge but a strong chorus. And while the fear is initially that “Invisble” will be more hectoring by Bono, it is actually just a lost love song and that’s fine by me.

Available for free on ITunes as we speak for the next 24 hours, with every download Bank Of America will give a buck to U2’s “Red” charity in aid of AIDs, the snippet during the superbowl looked terrible but without having to watch the aging badly lads, it clocks in nicely . With a squiggly symth line and very doctored Danger Mouse-y drums as backdrop and Bono crooning “It’s like the room just cleared of smoke, I don’t even want the heart you broke” which might be the simplest line Bono has written in 12 years, it is unassuming but sweet.

Oh yeah, the lyrics. Bono can’t help himself, first he conflates and then he inflates, everything becomes too big and pretty soon he has both his body and his soul involved, and it hurts the last line of the chorus. But the verses, man is that a strong tune. “I don’t even think about you that much unless I stop to think at all” now that’s a truly ordinary love. I really like the verses. Bono is in good voice, the song is simple enough for him to calm down for a change.

Better than anything on Horizon it is such a sturdier power popper that even the overwrought guitars to the bridge can’t sink it and Bono sounds, dare I say it, restrained. Like, by his standards. For sure, this isn’t the disaster “Ordinary Love”. If you can get past the overwhelmed and over weaned disproportionate sense of occasion that comes with the territory, the song itself is sharp in the corners and sweet in the middle.

Personally, I’m shocked. A good U2 song. Wow. If the rest is this good it will be their best album since All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Maybe Rolling Stone can give it 6 stars out of 5. Damn, there goes the obituary till another day.

Grade: B+