In a recent issue of Hot Press, Neil McCormick talks about the upcoming U2 album (due Nov. 23, first single, “Vertigo,” due Sept. 21), commenting:

“It’d be interesting if U2 could ever make a marginal or personal or intimate record again; in a way they can’t because they’ve raised the stakes to such a level that they have to knock a stadium monster out, they have to knock that ball out of the stadium every time.”

While only a newbie when it comes to U2-fandom, I’m sure if I agree. Certainly U2 would be hard pressed to make a marginal album (any votes for marginal album? Zooropa? I’d have to say that even the albums I like the least have some amazing moments that are better than a lot of other bands’ best work), but what about personal or intimate?

I think what I like best about U2 is their uncanny ability to be both universal and intimate. Bono sings about the grandest themes of life in the most intimate way possible. Perhaps not every album, but most of All That You Can’t Leave Behind feels that way for me. Especially after 9/11. Even the fly-boy posturing of Achtung Baby or the detached soul-searching at the end of Pop strike me as intensely personal.

At the same time, McCormick’s right. Nearly every U2 album has that grand, stadium sound that’s reaching out to a million people. And that’s what I love about it.

The other day I interviewed Dan Spencer, trombone player for the O.C. Supertones, for an upcoming article (Spencer mentioned that half the band now lives in Nashville, prompting me to wonder if the band should be called the D.C. Supertones for Davidson County). Their seventh album, Revenge of the OC Supertones comes out on June 15. After Spencer mentioned U2, I asked if the Supertones were given a chance to take part in the In the Name of Love U2 tribute album, which song they’d cover. This was his commendable response:

“You just don’t cover U2. Unless you’re somebody like Johnny Cash, you just don’t do it. Even if we were offered a lot of money we wouldn’t do it, it’s just against our philosophy. I applaud the guys who can, I just think we’d butcher it. There are just some bands you don’t cover. You don’t cover the Beatles, you don’t do U2, you don’t do Bob Dylan. There are some guys that are untouchable.”

Yet the butchering does happen. Before details of the In the Name of Love album emerged, I pondered what CCM bands I’d like to see cover what U2 songs. Sadly, no one listened to me.

My article on the U2 Tribute album, In the Name of Love, posted on passageway.org last week. I say “my” article, but it took some heavy hits in the editing department. Maybe 3/4 of it is mine. So if you don’t like it, it must be the other 1/4.

My favorite axed quote helped to establish just how involved Bono is in humanitarian efforts: U2’s guitarist the Edge recently joked that they could finish the next album if “Bono can just tear himself away from saving the world for long enough to finish the lyrics.” (Telegraph, reported in @U2).

While I’ve interviewed a handful of the artists involved and written about In the Name of Love, I still haven’t reviewed the album. I’m waiting to get a full copy (I’ve only heard half of it), though the biggest complaint I’ve heard is just how much of a charity the project is or isn’t.

I’ve heard reports that only 50 cents of every album will be donated to charity, which sounds pretty weak. Maybe that’s standard charity album proceeds, but on a $12 CD someone’s still making money. I’ve heard reports of different Christian bookstores and Sparrow records chipping in cash to the effort, but it still seems odd that such a measley portion of the CD would go to charity. One artist I interviewed even seemed to think they recorded their song for free, though that wasn’t true. The publicist involved told me all the artists were being paid as they normally would, so it’s not much of a charity case on the part of the artists (unless they decide to donate their income).

The project seemed like such a great idea whose time had come, but I’m not so sure now. The execution of that idea might be killing it.

Bono graces the cover of the March 2003 issue of Christianity Today. It’s about time.

“‘Love thy neighbor’ is not a piece of advice, it’s a command,” Bono told Christianity Today in an earlier article. “Christ talks about the poor [and says] ‘whatever you have done to the least of these brothers of mine, you’ve done to me.’ In Africa right now, the least of my brethren are dying in shiploads and we are not responding.”

“To me,” says U2‘s Bono, “faith in Jesus Christ that is not aligned with social justice, that is not aligned with the poor — it’s nothing,” (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by Liam Mackey, Hot Press, December 1, 1988).