Growing up, I didn’t really question why this band would be played along side Nirvana, Bush, Soundgarden, Linkin Park, etc. because my radio station of choice was not just grunge, but also “adult alternative.” So it would play pop shit, too, sometimes.
But I still, to this day, often find U2 listed among grunge artists, or their songs get played on grunge playlists. The fuck? How is this shit grunge? It doesn’t fit in any way! It doesn’t have the sound, it doesn’t have the style, shit it doesn’t even have the same emotional resonance. It’s happy and hopeful.
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They have never been considered grunge by anybody. They released the album Achtung Baby in 1991, which recieved much critical acclaim, but so did a lot of other non-grunge bands. Just because a band released popular music in the early 1990s, doesn’t mean they are grunge.
Achtung Baby was extremely polished and not grunge.
Joshua Tree and Boy were rougher but not grunge.
U2 has crossed between levels of rock (I’m only counting their good albums) but has never come close to grunge.
I have never heard of U2 being considered Grunge. If anything they were Pop.
They first broke during the New Wave era, and were considered one of the quintessential New Wave superstars, along with The Cars, Talking Heads, Duran Duran, Flock of Seagulls, etc.
Eh. I’d give them Alternative Rock. The thing that would likely classify them as pop is that they were so famous for a part of their career.
Who the fuck considers U2 to be grunge? Kenny G?
People who think Kenny G is too edgy.
Prob U2.
“Look at us kids, were cool grunge music just like that Nirvana band on the shirt you’re wearing!”
“How do you do, fellow grunge bands?”
Is this post an attempt to disprove the title “no stupid questions”?
They are absolutely not and I find it sus you make this bizarre claim without providing a single example.
Link and shame them. I will fight every one of their authors in a 1v1 dual to the death
in Helldivers 2
I was listening to a satellite radio station that is supposed to be exclusively grunge. It’s usually fine, except when Tom Morello is guest DJing. It was just the normal programming tho, and suddenly Mysterious Ways starts playing. I was annoyed by this.
No. They are firmly commercial rock / pop.
Narrator:
It’s not
They’re not. They’re basically the one band out of the Echo & The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Flock Of Seagulls mini-genre that really broke into the mainstream.
I call it non-progressive pop, or also corporate treadmill music. Because the harmony never gets anywhere or do anything interesting, but always feel like it’s moving
I’m sorry, what??? I’m just as perplexed as you are, where are you seeing this and can you drop a link?
Genre identifiers are mostly nonsense anyway. U2 have been many things over the years. ‘Boy’ is a very different album from ‘Zootopia’.
I don’t think they are nonsense, but they better fit the work rather than the artist. Artists shift genres all the time.
Did you misspell garbage?
Haha what the fuck I never knew they were called grunge. Ayy lmao
Also, how the fuck are Biffy Clyro always in metal magazines, on Kerrang TV, and at metal festivals? They’re basically the same thing as Idlewild. Is it because the singer got a tattoo?
It’s spelled “gringe”
Possibly the same way Fallout Boy and System of a down can be grouped. There is a phenomenon in music ‘similarity’ systems (remember Pandora?) that, because the process of actually analyzing music and classifying it is work, tries to offload the work to elsewhere, and often what really happens is things get grouped not by qualitative similarities like mood, rhythmic complexity, tone etc. but by the quantitative and easy ‘these two were liked by the same group of people, aged X~Y, so they must be similar.’
