The Fly

In 1991, U2 was the biggest band in the world and everyone was sick of them. The earnestness. The mullets. Bono waving a white flag at Wembley like he was going to end the Cold War through the power of caring really, really hard. Even the band was sick of themselves.

So they went to Berlin—the wall had just fallen, history was happening—and they came back as different people. Or the same people wearing masks of different people. It was hard to tell, and that was the point.

“The Fly” was the announcement. Gone was the chiming guitar that had launched a thousand commercials. In its place: industrial grind, distorted vocals, Bono singing through what sounds like a broken telephone about a character named The Fly who wears leather and wraparound sunglasses and speaks in fortune-cookie wisdom.

The Edge built a wall of noise that owed more to Nine Inch Nails than “Where the Streets Have No Name.” The rhythm section locked into something aggressive and urban. And Bono committed fully to the bit, hiding his famously sincere eyes behind shades and delivering lines like “every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief” with the smirk of a man who knows he’s being ridiculous and wants you to know he knows.

It was either brilliant reinvention or calculated career move disguised as artistic growth. Probably both. But it worked. Achtung Baby became the template for legacy acts who wanted to evolve without losing their audience. The Fly became Bono’s escape hatch—a persona that let him say things the earnest guy with the flag couldn’t.

Some bands play it safe. U2 burned their own house down to see what would grow in the ashes.