Originally posted by colbourne25:[..]
Fingers crossed.
SURELY, given the nature of this tour, it being shorter in length and in places they very rarely play (and some never) they will extend the sets a few songs.
To me, this tour will be the ultimate indicator as to whether the band is in autopilot or whether they actually want to put in some work. If they play the exact same setlist (or change only 1 song) as the JT17 tour it will be clear they're being (very) lazy and in autopilot mode playing the songs they've played a million times over and what they would consider easy to play. I am really really hoping that they branch out but I'm not holding my breath
I'm probably in the minority here but I actually want them to play JT + hits like they did for JT17. As an Australian who hasn't seen them live before I want my first U2 shows to be full of hits. Plus I think in a crowd of 40,000-60,000 I think hits will go down much better to the more casual audience than playing a lot less well known songs or deep cuts.
In my opinion I think mega fans of all bands/artists (like us) are too quick to place our expectations, judgement and labels on the band according to how we want to see them act and what we want them to play. Calling the band lazy is unfair if they only play their big hits on this tour because we don't know why they choose to do so. It might be because they are more comfortable playing those songs, or it might be because they think those songs will work best with the crowd. Remember they are playing stadiums in a market where they haven't been since 360 and other places they haven't been. These places are more likely to want to hear the greatest hits played rather than deeper cuts. Also (another point against the band being lazy) remember that I+E and E+I tour were full deep cuts and other songs the band would be less comfortable playing. If the band were really lazy they wouldn't be doing this tour (they are rich enough that they don't have to), they wouldn't bother trying to make new albums/phone them in as much as possible (probably playing to nostalgia) and every new tour would basically be a greatest hits tour that aims to make as much money as possible as easily as possible. As we can probably all agree this what U2 has been doing.