<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t\u2019s nearly nine years since U2 released a collection of original material, 2017\u2019s Songs of Experience. They\u2019ve hardly been idle since: two tours, two films, a 40-date residency at the Las Vegas Sphere<\/a>, nearly three hours of stripped-down re-recordings of old material on Songs of Surrender, plus Bono\u2019s autobiography, which spawned a solo tour, a stint on Broadway and another<\/em> film. An impressive workload by any standards.<\/p>\n Still, you could take the gap between original albums \u2013 the longest in U2\u2019s history \u2013 as evidence of a problem that\u2019s bedevilled the band for nearly 20 years: where do U2<\/a> fit into the current musical landscape?<\/p>\n The obvious answer is to acquiesce to the \u201cheritage rock\u201d label, rest on the laurels of their back catalogue and rake it in touring the hits. Clearly that doesn\u2019t appeal, as evidenced by Bono and The Edge explaining that a 2017 tour playing 1987\u2019s The Joshua Tree in full was not about nostalgia. So what else? They\u2019ve tried everything, from reaffirming their experimental credentials on No Line on the Horizon<\/a> to trying to play 21st-century pop at its own game \u2013 AutoTune on the vocals, hitmaker Ryan Tedder in the producer\u2019s chair, a mooted but unrealised collaboration with David Guetta, a doomed attempt to engage with the era\u2019s new means of distribution in their disastrous hook-up with Apple<\/a> \u2013 without ever really recapturing the success or the spirit of their late 80s\/early 90s imperial phase.<\/p>\n