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To: Danger Mouse
Fr: Corbie Hill
Re: The Letter U and the Numeral 2
Are you there Danger Mouse? It’s me, Corbie.
They tell me you’re producing the next U2 record. Say it ain’t so. Right alongside latter-day Springsteen, Bono Vox and company occupy a niche of maximum exposure and minimum relevance. Sure, maybe you can produce some sense into them – you did a bang-up job with Frank Black on Dark Night of the Soul – but I’m wary and confused. U2 is everything that’s wrong with the music industry, and you, sir, are everything that’s right with it.
 Illustration by Nathan Batson I’ve stuck by you for years, man. I just wanted you to know. And you’re a fantastic talent. Without you, the ’00s would have turned out quite differently. That’s no exaggeration. The story of the ’00s was the story of the democratization of art. We all know what happened. The decade started out with Metallica and Dre at war with Napster and ended with the major labels collapsing inwards and the Billboard charts struggling to keep up with the ever-branching Hydra heads of viral publicity.
You helped knock down a few columns in the temple. I saw you. I saw the way you put product before profit with The Grey Album. I saw how you and Cee-Lo rewrote the book, making Gnarls Barkley a household name with the first web-driven hit single. It was a multi-pronged music-industry insurgency. I’m okay with you collaborating with big names like Ghostface Killah and Damon Albarn, because you have such good taste. Besides, you’re a big name now, too. I dug what you and Beck did on Modern Guilt, by the way. Your claustrophobic production brought him to a place where he wrote insular, vulnerable lyrics that were thrilling and a little frightening. Thank you for that.
But now you’re getting in bed with U2 – a band that capitalizes on cheap sentimentality. I know U2 has potential; I’ve heard The Joshua Tree. What a delicious tune “Bullet the Blue Sky” was. It was what Rage Against the Machine meant to sound like, you know? But that was years ago, my friend.
Pop, the last good album U2 dropped, was too dark for the late ’90s. Its sharp, Jonathan Swift-level cynicism had no place among the idiotic sparkle of Sugar Ray or the cartoonish bullshit of the emergent rap-rock scene. Listening to it now, Pop sounds like a collection of UNKLE b-sides. And hell yeah to that. But U2 ran scared from its own potential and into safe territory. Like if Radiohead had followed up OK Computer with seven or eight retreads of The Bends… only more nefarious. U2 rode the post-9/11 jingoism on a wave of American flags and ’80s revivalism, and has released a solid string of records capitalizing on same. Some bands take risks and some play it safe. And don’t even get me started on the selfless philanthropist who needs 200 semi trucks just to go on tour, by David Byrne’s estimate. These guys are bad news, Mouse!
Mouse… you still with me? So I’m thinking if you can bring back the U2 that recorded Pop, you’ll do the whole world a favor. If that band still exists, of course, and if we can turn the dial back from “inspirational” to “brooding,” then there may still be hope. I trust you, man, and I don’t expect to see you playing a Super Bowl halftime or hocking Doritos alongside Rascal Flatts. Honestly, I figure you are like a young Tom Waits… with the anti-commercialism, with the artistic integrity, with the sheer fucking class. I mean, quite early in your career, you went toe-to-toe with Jay-Z and the Beatles simultaneously in the most daring copyright skewer since Paul’s Boutique. Your music’s online for free, so you sell blank CDRs! If that isn’t punk rock, then I’m hanging up my gloves.
History’s watching, sir. All you have to do is be strong. I’d like to think of you as one of the guys on the ground, pulling down the messiah-huge Bono statue. Mission accomplished.
Are you there, Danger Mouse? It’s me, Corbie. Write back soon. |
