Leonard Cohen & U2 - Tower of Song

The Seeker of Good Songs

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I really enjoyed "I'm Your Man", both the music and the candid interviews with Cohen. The artists at the SOH were great. Unfortunately U2 ruined the movie-- and I say this as someone who does not hate U2. All the performances of Cohen's songs were lively, heartfelt, and unique. You really felt the singers were spilling their guts. Then, at the end, U2 show up in New York for a glitzy video right out of their Berlin era. It wasn't even a performance. They were lipsynching. It was insulting to the rest of the artists in the movie, not least Cohen himself, and for the first time I really felt the oppressive weight of the international megacorporation known as U2.
 
Rufus, Jarvis, Antony, Nick Cave - all superb. The rest were either a bit dull (sometimes only Cohen's steely inner depth can make his own songs seem more than just a drawl) or simply misjudged.

U2 topped it, though. In a film that should have been a tibute to Cohen, Bono tries to steal the show yet again in his own imitable style ("Let's get serious here"). Honestly, I hate the man. He's a walking, talking ego, proven only by his need to pop up practically everywhere. If proof were ever needed that Bono lost what little he had at least 10 years ago, one need only look at the absolutely risible trainwreck of a hamfisted, pseudo-political, "Aren't we in touch with the common man" video for "The Saints Are Coming" (Which is, by the way, another lesson that only the doubly soulless duo of U2 and Greenday could teach - how to make a bad song terrible).
 
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