Videos

U2 - Elevation Tour 2001 (Live from Boston) [VHS-Video]

After the huge, lavish spectacles of previous tours, U2 decided to tone things down a bit for Elevation, which accompanied their All That You Can't Leave Behind album. Just as the album marked a return to a simpler more stripped-down sound, the live shows returned to smaller venues and a more intimate show, and from start to finish Elevation provides a welcome reminder of what a great band this is. Recorded in Boston, the show features a healthy mix of new and old songs, which were written over the course of two decades but sound as fresh and relevant as ever. From classics like "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Where the Streets Have No Name," and "I Will Follow" right up to instant favorites such as "Beautiful Day" and "Elevation," every track is stunningly executed. If you saw the concerts, this is a worthy and lasting souvenir; if you didn't, watch this and you might be kicking yourself.

Best Of U2, The - 1980-1990 [VHS-Video]

Fifteen tracks including 'Sweetest Thing', 'Desire', 'With Or Without You', 'Pride', 'In The Name Of Love', 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' and 'Rattle And Hum'. Includes four U2 postcards.

U2 - Popmart (1998) [VHS-Video]

This stunning concert documentary sheds fresh light on U2's controversial 1997 Popmart tour, the Irish rockers' gaudy, epic trek in support of their electronica-edged Pop album. Mixed reactions to the pulsing, dance friendly music on Pop and disappointing ticket sales to stateside Popmart shows were interpreted as evidence that the band's new sound and look were merely opportunistic.

Yet one need only view Popmart Live alongside the Rolling Stones' contemporaneous Bridges to Babylon 1998 long-form video to grasp U2's underlying passion and conviction. While Popmart trumps the Stones (ringmasters of the original rock & roll circus and among the principal inventors of stadium rock) in terms of sheer scale, U2's presentation still strikes thematic sparks missing from the Stones' more conservative designs for the Bridges stage.

With its vast, ramped stage and enveloping video backdrop, the Popmart set serves the band's posttechno impulses, yet the music remains rooted in U2's passionate, high-flying rock style, using its skittering dance rhythms and garish pop-art motifs to support the band's underlying themes, not replace them. Filmed in Mexico City before a huge reverent crowd, the concert balances close-ups against the quartet's often mesmerizing staging effects; the camera work sustains a sense of the show's outsized physical setting, while expertly closing the distance between us and the band.

The band also shrewdly integrates older songs into the pumped up, burnished arranging style heard on Pop while stripping down newer material in less varnished, more vulnerable settings. A series of duets with just Bono and the Edge on acoustic guitars underscores that strategy.

U2 - Zoo TV Live from Sydney [VHS-Video]