Time & Perspective Quote by Bono

Rock 'n' roll is ridiculous: Bono isn’t insulting the genre so much as reclaiming its original license to be a little stupid in public. “Ridiculous” and “absurd” are punches thrown with affection. They’re a refusal of the tasteful, high-minded posture that bands like U2 can drift into when their cultural capital gets too large to fail. The subtext is self-aware: we became the kind of rock band that felt obligated to justify itself. Now we’re letting ourselves be a rock band again.

The line about “ducking that” is the tell. For years, U2’s seriousness was part of the brand - moral urgency, political witness, arena-sized sincerity. That approach won them prestige, but it also risked turning their music into a civic assignment: important, respected, occasionally stiff. Bono frames the shift as an aesthetic decision and a PR confession. They tried to outrun rock’s inherent theatricality - the costumes, the strut, the melodrama - because earnestness can read as pretension when it’s amplified by stadium speakers.

“Wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss” is deliberately corny, almost cartoonish. He’s modeling the very shamelessness he’s advocating: an embrace of excess, tackiness, physicality. Contextually, it fits U2’s periodic reinventions, moments when they pivot from righteous monumentality to play, irony, and sensual surface. The genius is that he makes surrender to silliness sound like artistic courage.