It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.
BonoRead
What I like about pop music, and why I'm still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.
Interpretation
Pop music evolves to resonate with the collective experiences of society, becoming a shared cultural treasure.
Bono's quote expresses the idea that pop music, despite its commercial nature, eventually reflects the stories and emotions of the people, creating a sense of community and shared experience. He views pop music as more than just entertainment; it serves as a modern folk music that captures the essence of a generation's feelings, struggles, and joys.
In practice
You could use this quote when discussing the cultural impact of music at a community event.
It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.
Perspective is the cure for depression.
At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.
It's much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won't keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don't know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we've got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, 'Is this it? Are we still relevant?'
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.
Some kids went to the movies for escape. We found it with jazz. This is where we got religion. It was a kind of raw spiritual anarchy.
I don't know if it's changing already with 'Joanne,' but my intention is to bring people together that don't know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That's what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.
I know people said I wasn't selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you're talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.
The major rock instruments and classical instruments were designed for performance, for sharing the music with an audience, and then later people put microphones on them and recorded them. But for electronic music, the opposite was true - they're designed in laboratories, and later, we tried to put them on stage.
I never saw myself as a folk singer.
I'd bite off the Beatles, or anybody else. It's all one world, one planet and one groove. You're supposed to learn from each other, blend from each other, and it moves around like that.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.