U2

Top names in the news this week

With Bono musing about retirement, we asked music industry veterans if they’d miss the Irish foursome

The festival gets underway with premiere of Davis Guggenheim’s U2 doc

Pitt finally shines with the lustre of a latter-day Warren Beatty or Robert Redford

Good luck finding a top-grossing act these days with a young lead singer

A memoir, a Neil Young CD: Daniel Lanois is back. Jonathon Gatehouse on the legend’s search for pure sound.

The Grammys are to pop music what the Super Bowl is to sports

Elvis Costello’s ‘Spectacle’ returns tonight, with U2 in Toronto

Newsmakers of the week

There’s a well-documented reason the do-gooder can’t put his money where his mouth is

Here’s what I’ve been listening to over the past several weeks.

U2’s “new” Live In Paris CD (available on iTunes here, if you’re into that sort of thing) captures the band at the height of its abilities as a performing ensemble — Paris in 1988, on the endless Joshua Tree tour. But it’s inevitably disappointing because almost a dozen of U2’s best songs have been on albums released in the ’90s and ’00s. The boys didn’t yet have their best material when they were in their best shape as a band.