Tears over lunch

How do you win over a Wembley crowd in 10 minutes?

Well, this is how U2 won me over.

With an emotionally charged song, peppered with nudges to musical legends (Lou Reed, Rolling Stones), physically bonding with members of the audience regardless of the rest of the crowd (because, let’s face it, it could have been any of us) and by savouring every single minute of the present moment (it was, if I’m not mistaken, one of U2’s first BIG concert). They were undoubtedly intimidated, but they knew the only way to overcome this intimidation was to silence out the rest of their lives and focus in on the moment.

At the beginning of “Bad”, they were playing to a lukewarm audience who knew little if anything about them. It was an unusual song to pick: not really up tempo or cheerful. A tale of desperation, of being at one’s wit’s end but finding a way out of a tunnel without using an easy exit. Doing the work to get out of a particular situation.

By the end of this now epic song (always an amazing one to see live even though I wonder how Bono can pour himself out emotionally every single time they play this song), U2 had the crowd of 90,000 (it was surely sold out) in the palm of their hand.

With its 3 acts, this performance of “Bad” was just like a movie. You can ACTUALLY tell when the audience just went from lukewarm to rooting for them.

That, my friends, is performance art. 💙💙💙