I was going over some SoE reviews online to punctuate a point I wanted to make and I came across a review of it by SPIN.
The review made a point that it used as the main thread of it - and it really got me thinking and made a lot of sense to me.
Essentially it was saying that u2's bigness is why they have become so bland and so safe and they are trapped by it/slaves to it.
I thought it was a great point.
Review starts with:
"U2 and the Rolling Stones have taught us that being the biggest band in the world is the most joyless of rituals. They record albums as excuses to tour, they embark on tours as excuses to transport massive steel structures from city to city and set world records for Largest Stage Ever. Sales and chart success aside, when bands reach this point they’re done. The problem’s less that they succumb to nostalgia, though they may, than how massive scale and routine professionalism suck the content from the music–suck the need for content from the music. U2 may not have recorded the same album five times since 2000, but they may as well have; by now U2 albums as individualities don’t matter. Of course their latter-day albums are bland, cursory collections of gargantuan arena-rock generalization. Could they really hit the road, fill the stadiums, and touch the souls of every living human in the audience with anything less?"
Review ends with:
"They call one song “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way,” a platitude that suits. This band knows what it means to be bigger than anything in its way. They’re so big specific albums don’t matter. Nothing specific they do matters. They’ve swept themselves up in their own bigness; it subsumes them."
https://www.spin.com/2017/12/u2-songs-of-experience-review/