2018-11-09

3Arena, Dublin, Ireland

Set List of Show:

Act One:

"The Blackout"
"Lights of Home"
"I Will Follow"
"Gloria"
"Beautiful Day"
"Dirty Day"
"Zoo Station"
"The Fly"
"Stay (Faraway, So Close!)"
"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"

Act Two:

"Elevation"
"Vertigo"
"Even Better Than the Real Thing"
"Acrobat"
"You're The Best Thing About Me"
"Summer of Love"
"Pride (In the Name of Love)"
"Get Out Of Your Own Way"
"New Year's Day"
"City Of Blinding Lights"

Encore:

"One"
"Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way"
"13 (There is A Light)"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "It's A Beautiful World" (Its A Zootiful World Mix) - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" (Miraculous Metal Remix) - U2
Pre-Recorded Intermission Song(s): "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" (The Gotham Experience) - U2 with Gavin Friday and Regine Chassagne
Pre-Recorded Intermission Song(s): "Women of the World" - Madison Ryann Ward and Other Voices

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

"Gloria" (Van Morrison) / "Gloria" (Patti Smith) / "The Jean Genie" (David Bowie) / "The Hall of Mirrors" (Kraftwerk) / "The Showman (Little More Better)" (U2) / "Women of the World" (Jim O'Rourke) / "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" (U2) /

Show Details:

Torrential rain rolls into Dublin late in the afternoon, making it a wet trek to the 3Arena for fans. The show is the third of the four hometown shows on this tour, a modern theatre located on the North Wall Quay in the Dublin Docklands. The venue is a smaller venue than the tour has been visiting, and the round stage is in the middle of the catwalk instead of at the end. There is no support act for these U2 shows.

The rotating song that U2 has been doing in the fourth song is “Gloria” tonight, with snippets of Van Morrison and Patti Smith’s versions of the song included. Sadly, some fans have already left the show by this point, leaving during “Beautiful Day”, in order to be first in line for the show the following night.

The band has been introducing new songs to the show in these last weeks of the tour. Although rehearsed extensively, and even appearing on printed set lists, “Dirty Day” has not yet been played. That changed tonight, with the band playing the song in front of an audience for the first time since December 1993, when the Zoo TV was in Tokyo.

“Dirty Day” uses ‘remixed’ video footage from the Cedarwood Road video presentation used earlier in the tour. It is mixed with drawings of U2 as young men and at their current ages, as well as drawings of their dads. From the stage Bono speaks about his father Bob, and the fathers of the other men in the band. The song “Dirty Day” was written about fathers and sons, and Bono has spoken about how some of the phrases used in the song came from his father’s favourite sayings.

The song opens a suite of songs introduced over the last couple of weeks in the final weeks of the tour. These included “Zoo Station”, “The Fly”, “Stay (Faraway, So Close)” and “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”.

Later in the show “Vertigo” includes a snippet of “The Jean Genie” and Bono includes a good chunk of the lyrics of “The Showman (Little More Better)” in his introduction to “You’re the Best Thing About Me”. Macphisto is in the house, and calls for the people of Ireland to build a wall, a reference to the ongoing issues Brexit is creating with a border between North and South in Ireland.

The shows in Dublin on this tour were announced on January 29, a few weeks later than the other shows on the tour (January 16). Initially only the shows on November 5 and 6 were announced. General on sale took place on February 2, 2018, with the other two shows being announced during those sales. Unlike other shows on the tour where all of the VIP tickets were seated, the Dublin shows also offered a VIP package with General Admission tickets, which included the VIP gift, access to the pre-show dinner held at the Gibson hotel.

Officially Released Tracks