Bono Reveals He Dislikes The Name U2 And Cringes At His Own Music

Irish rocker Bono shares his belief that U2 “pushes out the boat on embarrassment”.

In a recent interview on the Awards Chatter podcast (via The Times), the U2 frontman confessed that listening to his own vocals in the band’s music made him “cringe”, adding that he had only learnt how to sing “recently”.

“The one that I can listen to the most is ‘Miss Sarajevo‘ with Luciano Pavarotti,” he said. “Genuine, most of the other ones make me cringe a little bit.”

“Although ‘Vertigo‘ probably is the one I’m proudest of. It’s the way it connects to the crowd. I’ve been in the car when one of our songs has come on the radio and I’ve been the colour of, as we say in Dublin, scarlet. I’m just so embarrassed.”

“I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot,” he continued. “And maybe that’s the place to be as an artist, you know, right on the edge of your level of embarrassment. And the lyrics as well, I feel that on Boy and other albums, it was sketched out very unique and original material, but I don’t think I filled in the details, and I look back and I go, ‘God’.”

The 61-year-old also reiterated his continued dislike for the name U2. “I still don’t like it,” he said. “I really don’t.”

“But I was late into some kind of dyslexia. I didn’t realize that The Beatles was a bad pun either. In our head it was like the spy plane, U-boat, it was futuristic – and it turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence, no I don’t like the name.”

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