Initially, the point of U2‘s Sphere residency in Las Vegas, Nevada was a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the band’s 1991 album Achtung Baby. Instead, the shows, which kicked off on September 29 and will run through February 16, 2024, are a communal celebration of the band’s seventh album and other corners of their catalog.
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Throughout the first batch of UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere shows, U2 has generally performed a 22-song set, playing Achtung Baby in its entirety with a selection of some surprising covers, songs from their past, and the band’s present.
A typical Sphere show kicks off with a remix of the band’s 1993 Zooropa track “Lemon” and a “Choral Intro” by Brian Eno, who inspired the band’s turntable-glowing stage with his own smaller design in 2021.
Running through the first eight tracks of Achtung Baby, U2 moves from the opening “Zoo Station” and hits “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “One,” and “Mysterious Ways,” before ending on “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World.”
Then, the set turns.
Dubbed the Turntable set, during the halfway mark, the band switches off Achtung Baby and goes into semi-acoustic mode. As the spherical graphics also pare down, the band segues different ends of their catalog, spanning more than 40 years.
During recent shows, Joshua Tree tracks “With or Without You,” “Angel of Harlem,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Where the Streets Have No Name,” have made their way into the Turntable interlude with “Desire” often medlied with another song—anything from The Beatles‘ “Love Me Do” to Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole.”
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The band recently plugged in Kylie Minogue‘s 2001 hit “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” with their Rattle and Hum track “All I Want is You.”
Every night, the middle set changes, then returns to Achtung Baby with the final four tracks, “Acrobat” through the closing “Love is Blindness,” before an encore of five more songs.
Anything from the aforementioned Joshua Tree tracks, along with “Elevation,” “Vertigo,” the band’s latest single “Atomic City,” and “Beautiful Day,” which has been coupled with snippets of Louis Armstrong‘s “What a Wonderful World,” The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and more has made it into the encore.
Though the midway and encore songs can shift nightly, here’s a sample setlist from U2’s first Sphere show on Friday (September 29).
‘Achtung Baby’ (Part 1)
1. “Zoo Station”
2 “The Fly”
3. “Even Better Than the Real Thing”
4. “Mysterious Ways”
5 “One” (with Prince’s “Purple Rain” and Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”)
6. “Until the End of the World”
7. “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”
8. “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World”
‘Turntable” Interlude
9. “All I Want Is You”
10. “Desire” / “Love Me Do”
11. “Angel of Harlem” (with Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” and King Harvest’s hit “Dancing in the Moonlight”)
12. “Love Rescue Me”
‘Achtung Baby’ (Part 2)
13. “So Cruel
14. “Acrobat
15. “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”
16. “Love Is Blindness” (with Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas”)
Encore
17. “Elevation” (with Claude François-penned “My Way”)
18. “Atomic City”
19. “Vertigo”
20. “Where the Streets Have No Name”
21. “With or Without You”
22. “Beautiful Day” (with The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (Reprise) and “Blackbird”
Photo: Sam Jones / Courtesy of Full Coverage Media
