The Alternative Number Ones: U2’s “Staring At The Sun”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones. The column is now biweekly, alternating with The Number Ones on Mondays.

Pop happened because U2, like a lot of aging rock bands, got sick of the sound of rock bands. It's an old story: A hyper-serious, messianic guitar band ascends to the absolute heights of what such a group can represent, and then they decide that they'll have to become a completely different thing in order to further transcend. When you reach that stage, it's not just that you need something new to jolt yourself back into a stage of total excitement. It's that you believe the entire world needs that jolt, that you need to figure out how to supply it.

While U2 worked on their 1997 album Pop, getting club producer Howie B into the mix and messing around with rave-style drum loops for the first time, the great rock writer Ann Powers went out to Dublin to interview them for a SPIN cover story. The Edge, a man who famously plays the guitar, told Powers, "The sounds that a guitar is capable of creating are at this point cliché. The challenge is to find things you can do with the instrument that are not already used up." Bono agreed: "We're actually trying to make a kind of music that doesn't exist yet. That is a terrifying place to be."