I’m a boy from 1980.

U2’s first album “Boy” is only a couple of weeks older than me.

This boy and that boy have lived through some tough times together. 

My memory of the 1980s is quite fragmentary, much like song lyrics often are. Whatever bits of my childhood I can still recollect would probably suffice for a song, like All I Remember by Brian Eno.

What’s interesting about "Boy" is that its opening track, I Will Follow, already contains all the stylistic ingredients that would define U2. Edge’s delay-driven arpeggios and minimalist power chords are already in place, alongside Bono’s (sometimes overly) dramatic belting.

On the cover, a boy’s face stares out with a sense of utmost urgency, materializing the punctum as described by Roland Barthes; an effect that overcomes and destroys all signification. This, too, has remained part of the band’s style to this day. Bono’s singing penetrates my mind like a blade – or like a flashing alert that something important is going on.

It was in the mid-1980s that pop giants such as Queen, Madonna, David Bowie, and U2 began to address global issues and flirt with international politics. The irresponsible hippie protest of the 1960s and the burlesque, escapist antics of both punk and glam in the 1970s gave way to the moralizing tone of the 1980s when pop stars staged collective concern, organized charity spectacles, and displays of global responsibility that were not always free of self-importance or ambiguity of motive.

When I revisit events such as Live Aid today, they seem to me both utterly commercial and helplessly naïve. Yet at the time I was animated by the same spirit that made me rejoice in the newfound freedom of speech during Perestroika (as a child I felt I had a lot to say), and later in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. As Alexei Yurchak observes in his Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, Western music coursed through the internal upheavals of the late USSR acting as a sonic compass for boys like myself.

Whereas hip-hop remained grounded in the street-level politics of everyday urban life, rock transformed problems by projecting them outward and blowing them out proportion – like a vast reverb machine. It wanted to operate on a planetary scale: to amplify marginal voices, to dramatize conflicts, and to construct a kind of sonic moral theatre in which individuals, movements and states were reimagined as rising toward ideals of justice, equality, happiness, and freedom.

That, of course, was a lie. But it wasn’t a bad lie.

When I listen to Where the Streets Have No Name, Miss Sarajevo, or Sunday Bloody Sunday now, I still feel lifted up like the guy in chewing gum commercials. Yet I know I don’t belong on those heights; “my home is the lowlands, and always will be.” That sense of urgency that comes together with the elevation is something I now mostly associate with deadlines, and I’m not particularly fond of those.

The boys of the 1980s are still on speaking terms, but they have drifted somewhat apart. When this boy listened to the EP, he was glad to reconnect, and the music did not disappoint. The overall style is reminiscent of the band’s 2010s albums, which I tend to like. Bono’s voice is still very much operational; it can still reach the higher notes and still calls on everyone to rise up:

America will rise
Against the people of the lie 

And this is something that does not sit too well with me. I appreciate that they sing a song in memory of Renée Good, who was shot by the ICE agent Jonathan Ross. It is difficult for me to understand those who attempt to argue that her killing was justified. She deserves to be remembered, and the kind of ICE operations that led to her death ought to be brought to an end. The construct of “illegal immigrants” as criminals is entirely foreign to me, and I don’t believe that immigration is the most pressing problem in the United States.

That said, it is worth noting that Renée Good died precisely because America had already “risen.” Jonathan Ross had “risen.” MAGA folks had risen. And yes, they had risen “against the people of the lie,” against what they call the swamp, the establishment, and the liberals. The aesthetic of uprising that left-leaning pop stars have cultivated for decades has now been taken up by the right. The playlist Donald Trump used during his election campaigns included many tracks written and performed by artists with broadly liberal views.

The stiffness and inertia long associated with classical conservatives worked to the advantage of their opponents. Now the situation has reversed. The left – the ideological heirs of the hippies and the punks – try to lecture MAGA on manners, but MAGA is not disposed to listen. In such an environment, Bono’s voice takes on an odd resonance; it misses the moment’s nerve and feels out of place. What does it want Americans to do? What does it want me to do? Are revolutionary clichés supposed to defeat Trump?

Do the boys of the 1980s no longer belong? Do the boys of 1946 win? I’m not sure, and Bono is not helping me here.