U2 Super Bowl Ad Confirms ‘Achtung Baby’ Las Vegas Residency Plan At The MSG Sphere
13.02.2023 - 06:53
/ deadline.com
A Super Bowl commercial confirmed today what has long been suspected: U2 will take up residency in the brand-new MSG Sphere in Las Vegas for an immersive show that mines the band’s catalog.
U2 has been in a retrospective mood of late. Lead singer Bono has been making the rounds to promote his memoir, Surrender. On Friday, the band will release U2 its long-awaited Songs Of Surrender ― a collection of 40 songs from across the band’s catalog, re-recorded and reimagined. And now, the band has confirmed the Vegas residency that will be focused on one of its most iconic albums.
Dubbed “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At The Sphere,” the residency will celebrate the band’s darker, post-Joshua Tree turn that resulted in the 1991 album Achtung Baby and hits like “One,” “Mysterious Ways,” “The Fly” and “Even Better Than The Real Thing.”
The residency will take place at the brand-new MSG Sphere at the Venetian. It’s a $2.2 billion venue which is billed as the largest sphere in the world (besides maybe the word itself). The MSG Spher has a 160,000-square-foot wraparound display plane, the highest-resolution LED screen in the world, which will doubtless play a part in the U2 residency.
“It’s nothing like Las Vegas has ever seen before,” Bono has said of the residency. “I’m interested in Las Vegas for all kinds of reasons, even going back to ‘The Fly.’ “
That is doubtless where the wraparound screens come in.
The Fly was a character Bono played during the band’s Zoo TV tour in support of Achtung Baby. In contrast to the austere stage setups of previous U2 tours, Zoo TV was an elaborately staged multimedia event satirizing TV and the viewing public’s overstimulation. The staging played with “sensory overload” in its audience, featuring large