Irish rock band, one of the most popular since the late eighties. Led by Paul Hewson (1960), better known as Bono, it is formed by the guitarist David Evans (1961), known as The Edge, Adam Clayton (1960) and Larry Mullen Jr. The four future members of U2 met at school in 1977, where they formed a group called Feedback, which began doing versions of the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones. The name of the group was changed to The Hype before they adopted the name of U2 and won a young talent competition in Limerick at the end of March 1978, when they met their manager, Paul McGuiness. Their first single, Out of control (1979), was a hit in the Irish charts, They began to be considered one of the most promising bands on the Irish scene, circumstances that led them to sign with Island and release their first album, Boy, in 1980, produced by Steve Lillywhite. The album took them to the top 20 in the charts, but their consecration came with War, in 1983, which catapulted them definitively to fame. The album contained songs that are now classics such as Sunday, Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day, which reached the top 20 as singles. After that came an American tour with the smell of the crowds, from which a mini-album and a video were extracted. As early as 1984, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois produced the group’s new work, The unforgettable fire, which marked a change in direction for U2 towards an A.O.R. (Adult Oriented Rock). The group entered with force in the American lists thanks to the single Pride. Since then they have had a rising career, especially since the publication of The Joshua Tree in 1987 and the double live Rattle and hum in 1988, which had a great impact. To enter the new decade, U2 released Achtung Baby (1991), which marked a new turn in the group’s career. After two years of study, divided between Dublin and Berlin, their new songs were better elaborated in their recording, with the addition of electronics and certain airs of Hip-Hop and Dance. Zooropa, from 1993, continued the same line started in their previous work and was very well received by the fans, who filled the stadiums all over the world. At the beginning of March 1997, the group released Pop, with a first single called Discotheque that showed the intentions of U2 to take up again the rock of the seventies and the dance music of that time, as they would confess. After this album, U2 carried out one of their most ambitious projects in the form of a tour. It was called Pop Mart and it was really spectacular: large stages and giant video screens. After this long tour, the next album by the Irish group was a compilation called U2-Best of 1980-1990, which included the best songs from their first ten years. During the last years of the nineties, the band went through a creative bad patch, but U2’s experience and good musical work found a well-deserved recognition at the Grammy 2000 awards ceremony, where the Irish group became one of the big winners of the gala with three statuettes: best song (Beautiful day), best performance and best rock group. A year later, the band led by Bono received four new Grammy awards for their work All that you can’t leave behind: best rock album, best single (Walk-on), best pop group and best pop performance.in November 2002 a compilation was released with 17 tracks, two of them unreleased, with which the Irish group took stock of its last musical decade: The best of 1990-2000. In November 2004, preceded by a major advertising campaign (including false news about the theft of the demo and its dissemination on the Internet, or about a surprise concert in the streets of New York), e presented the new album of the band, How to dismantle an atomic bomb, an album stronger than the previous ones and in which there were also songs dedicated to hot topics of the moment, such as AIDS in Africa or the drama of Jerusalem.this work received a total of seven Grammy Awards, two in 2005 for his song Vertigo and five in 2006 for the album and the song Sometimes you can make it on your own. On March 14, 2005, the group had the honor of entering the Hall of Fame of Rock and Roll in New York, in an act that had a master of ceremonies to Bruce Springsteen.In December of the same year. Amnesty International chose U2 as “Ambassador of Conscience 2005” for “being, without a doubt, the group that has done the most public for the cause of human rights”. In addition, Time magazine chose Bono (along with Bill Gates and his wife Melinda) as the 2005 figure of the year for having “seduced, pressured and morally extorted the rulers of rich countries to the point of forcing them to forgive $40 billion in debt from poor countries.
Discography
1980 – Boy
1981 – October
1983 – War
1984 – The Unforgettable Fire
1987 – The Joshua Tree
1988 – Rattle and Hum
1991 – Achtung Baby
1993 – Zooropa
1997 – Pop
2000 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind
2004 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
2009 – No Line on the Horizon
2014 – Songs of Innocence
2017 – Songs of Experience
