The Philippine stop of U2’s Joshua Tree Tour on Wednesday, December 11 at the Philippine Arena—made possible by MMI Live and Smart—happens to be the second to the last leg of the 2019 tour. The band will park the tour after the last stop in India on December 15.
To say that U2’s concert is the biggest this year for us Filipinos is an understatement. To add to the hype, here are more reasons to brave northern Manila traffic this December, with the SEA Games’ closing ceremony happening on the same day.
There are only a handful of touring artists who know how to perform in a concert bereft of larger-than-life props and eye-popping spectacle and U2 is one of these acts. The Irish group’s decades of live band and branding can captivate an audience with a monolith rock (pun intended) stage performance or engage thousands with the help of giant LED visuals that help tell stories. Luckily for fans, U2 will do “both concerts” on Wednesday night. The tour will open with earlier hits from Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. before they move on to the Joshua Tree Act 2 part that has all the spectacle.
If the band remains faithful to the already widely circulating set list, U2 will open with “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “New Year’s Day” and “Pride” (In The Name Of Love),” a time travel ticket back to the ‘80s in itself.
Expect U2 to go full throttle with “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “With or Without You,” “Red Hill Mining Town,” “Trip Through Your Wires,” “One Tree Hill,” “Exit,” “Mothers of the Disappeared,” “Angel of Harlem” among others.
The band then reserved a full set for the encore, which is not so much of an encore with hits like “Elevation,” “Vertigo,” Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “Beautiful Day,” “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way,” and “One.”
The fact that we will experience U2 inside a closed door arena is also something to look forward to for music fans. Let’s pray that Filipinos don’t outsing Bono and you have that full concert experience: contained sound and spectacle. Seriously, people! Stop out-singing all performers during live events. We all come for the artists. Bono at 59 deserves to be heard. Be mindful of the fan beside you who went to actually watch U2, not you too. Do your own U2 sing-along elsewhere.
Because U2 is both band and brand, it’s amazing how they stayed relevant over the years touring an album they released back in 1987. Their songs and their themes both remained significant. In each stop, U2 makes sure they devote a personalized portion of the show to their audience. It would be interesting how Bono will recognize the band’s loyalists from this side of the world.
During their November Sydney show, Bono told the crowd, “Our drug of choice tonight isn’t alcohol. It isn’t chemicals, though it has been, it isn’t the Holy Spirit, though the same. It’s you.” In their more recent Singapore show, Bono gave it back to the fans by saying, “Thank you for your patience. It only took us 42 years.”
Let’s take as much of the U2 experience in and try “Running To Stand Still” where Bono sings, “You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice.”
Image credits: Jordan Strauss/invision/AP