U2 proves they're the biggest band in the world at Sphere in Las Vegas on January 31, 2024
I got to check out the 28th night of U2’s extraordinary residency at MGM’s Sphere on January 31. I’d been itching to see the boys and hadn’t seen them since 2018 on their Experience & Innocence tour. I hadn’t made the trek to Vegas for one reason only: I hate Las Vegas. I hate the vibes, the sounds, the smells, and the whole ethos of the entire town.
But a friend convinced me ('sup Mike) to check out the show, and it’s not an understatement to report it was maybe the best concert I have ever seen at the greatest venue of all time. I’ve seen well over 500 shows since I was nine years old, and I did not think I’d get to make this claim now, but the lovable lads from Liverpool (that’s an inside joke for all you U Talkin’ U2 to Me? Listeners) blew me away once again.
I’ve seen U2 nine times since the Elevation tour hit Anaheim for a few shows in 2002. U2 was among the handful of first shows I ever got to see as a kid, and as I grew into a music loving adult, the lads cemented themselves into one of my favorite acts. The Bono hating world wide web be damned.
After the Elevation tour I got to see the 360 tour at the filmed show at the Rose Bowl in 2009, two shows in Los Angeles on the Innocence & Experience tour in 2015, three Joshue Tree tour shows in 2017 (Los Angeles twice, and in San Diego), and two shows on the Experience & Innocence tour in 2018 (Los Angeles and San Jose.)
The Sphere show was a long time coming. When you enter the insane structure, you immediately feel like you’ve entered an episode of Doctor Who or Star Trek. After being sardined into ever changing tuberous queues to get in, you’re spit into the main atrium of the Sphere where you take seemingly endless escalators to your mountainous seating sections. I was in the 200’s so I didn’t have to travel too long.
The moment you enter the concert hall itself it’s at once disorienting and breathtaking. You’re tricked into thinking there is a hole on the top of the building exposed to the Las Vegas sky – but it’s an illusion. Just like the entire experience. What follows over the next two hours is the greatest technological and audio sensory magic trick I’ve ever seen.
The show opens with the Achtung Baby track Zoo Station where Bono and the boys make their commanding entrance to you. The band plays the entire 1993 Achtung Baby album, albeit not in order. Every available space in the sphere is a screen - as is the stage the band plays on. Lovingly nicknamed the turntable, the stage literally becomes a to-scale turntable that plays all sorts of visuals throughout the night.
U2 uses the tools they’ve been given to their fullest capacity. Highlights included a desert sky that starts at night and ends on a bright sunny day to Where the Streets Have No Name, the literal unbuilding of the Las Vegas strip from present to a hundred years prior (funnily enough, U2 chooses to not show Trump Tower, haha.) during the new single, Atomic City, and the beautiful all creatures great and small that flood the screen from black and white to color during Beautiful Day. (After the flood all the colors came out.”
After seeing this show, it confirmed in my eyes that U2 are the biggest and best band in the world. Just when you thought they were done doing “biggest band in the world” shit ie, the free album, the iPod, the Claw, they do it again in Vegas in the years of our lord 2023 and 2024. What the hell does U2 do next? I know it’ll be huge.
Song highlights: SECONDS, ALL I WANT IS YOU, ZOO STATION, TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE, THE FLY
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