The people have Ukraine have been heroically holding off an invasion from Russia for two months now, and you’ll never be able to guess—not in a million years—which famous rock band has decided to step in and use the horrifying human rights disaster to make a big show about how much it cares about horrifying human rights disasters. Just kidding, it’s obvious which band we’re talking about, even without the spoiler up above: It’s U2, which was apparently invited to Ukraine by President Zelensky himself and took some time to put on a little concert for civilians and soldiers in a subway station below Kyiv.
Now, we’re being unnecessarily snotty here because U2 is an easy target, so let’s be clear and say that this is fine. They’re not hurting anybody, and the crowd in the videos that have been posted seem to be into it, but this is an extremely U2 thing for U2 to do. It’s a good thing that almost certainly brought some good into what is becoming an increasingly dark world, but also the band tweeted about doing it so everyone knows that it happened. Which is fine, but it’s SO U2. Frankly, we’re surprised it took two months for this to happen.
Deadline has some more information, including that Ukrainian singer Taras Topolya from the band Antytila joined U2’s Bono and The Edge during their subway performance. They performed “With Or Without You,” “Desire,” “Angel Of Harlem, “Vertigo,” and a version of “Stand By Me” with new lyrics about Ukraine. Deadline says Bono told the audience that the people of Ukraine are not only fighting for their own freedom, but “for all of us who love freedom.”
Again, this is all good. How could anyone have a problem with this? But at the same time… U2’s just gotta be U2.
