U2 remain the band capable of putting more meaning into a line than many others manage in a whole album.
The latest target for singer/songwriter Bono's acute social critique is advertising. POP frequently distorts words while the ongoing Popmort Four feature the largest TV screen ever made as stage backdrop. Both these devices deliberately confuse reality and perception, which is precisely the charge Bono wishes to level at the marketing execs.
The Playboy Mansion is used as a symbol for an imagined world of perfection where 'sorrow, pain . . . shame' will be no more. 'And though I can't say why, I know I've got to believe' that world exists because ours is fundamentally false 'if beauty is truth and surgery the fountain of youth'. Bono's being reacts against this notion but where can he look for a resolution?
