2023-10-25

Sphere, Las Vegas, NV

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"Zoo Station"
"The Fly"
"Even Better Than the Real Thing"
"Mysterious Ways"
"One"
"Until the End of the World"
"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
"All I Want is You"
"Shallow"
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
"Desire"
"Love Rescue Me"
"Acrobat"
"So Cruel"
"Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"
"Love is Blindness"

Encore:

"Elevation"
"Atomic City"
"Vertigo"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"
"With or Without You"
"Beautiful Day"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Lemon" (Remix) - U2
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "Glorify" - U2 featuring Brittany Howard
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "What A Wonderful World" - Louis Armstrong

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

"Love Me Tender" (Elvis Presley) / "Paint it Black" (Rolling Stones) / "Movin' On Up" (Primal Scream) / "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) / "Moment of Surrender" (U2) / "Blackbird" (The Beatles) / "Glorify" (U2 featuring Brittany Howard) /

Show Details:

Tonight U2 plays their twelfth night of 25 shows in 2023 at the Las Vegas Sphere. An additional 11 shows will bring the total to 36 with newly added shows going on sale today. The full listing of shows can be found in our U2 show archive. U2 are performing these shows without founding member, Larry Mullen Junior, who is missing due to surgery to repair damage suffered from years of drumming. A Dutch drummer, Bram van den Berg replaces Mullen at these shows in Las Vegas.

Introducing “Even Better than the Real Thing” Bono introduces the rhythm section, “Hello. How are you? Where are we? Why are we? Who are we? I know who you are…the first man, Adam! And you? Who the fuck are you? Let’s find out shall we!” allowing Bram to break into the song. Bono comes back for a proper introduction later in the show. At the end of the song Bono speaks about Sphere. “It’s not an Elvis chapel. It’s an Elvis cathedral!”

Heading into “One” Bono shares, “It’s a Wednesday night. Don’t know what’s going to happen on a Wednesday night. Everything I would say. A lot of darkness in the world outside, across the world…show us your light.” “Love Me Tender” fills in the space between “One” and “Until the End of the World” tonight as it has at previous shows. Bono adds in a snippet of “Paint it Black” during “Until the End of the World” tonight.

A brief introduction to “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World” sees Bono sharing “it’s the simple pleasures. Going home. After a night out, with a balloon for your kids” and after the song he calls the balloon, “quite and expensive trick.” No one is brought on stage this evening to ride on the balloon.

Tonight a surprise guest joins U2 on stage to perform. Bono introduces her to a loud burst of applause, “We’re not just going to flip the record, I want to flip the script. Because I tried, some of you might know about this next song, I tried to write from a woman’s point of view. To sing it from a woman’s point of view, as ridiculously absurd as that sounds. That was my secret. I kept it until I had a book coming out. I sang it to women. But I’ve never sung it with a woman. I’m going to do just that tonight. Not just any woman, the most audacious divacious in any room she is ever in. Would you welcome to our turntable, the divine, the divinyl, Lady Gaga.” The song Bono is speaking about is “All I Want is You”.

Coming out of “All I Want is You”, Bono leads them into “Shallow”, which sounds like it was going to be a little snippet added to the song, but becomes much more as Lady Gaga takes on the vocal. The song, originally performed by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper comes from the A Star is Born film. Bono joins in on Cooper’s lyrics for tonight’s performance.

Bono and Gaga later have a discussion between songs where he asks Gaga if she has been in the desert. He then tells her a story about an infamous Irish newspaper article headline when The Joshua Tree was released. The headline? “Four Pricks in the Desert”. Bono laughs about the headline, and then shares, “Well here we are! Wanderlust” before calling Lady Gaga a desert rose.

Bono and Gaga then announce the next song, with Bono sharing, “We wanted to us this moment to talk about our travels, and to talk about a person who means so much for us in our travels. He’s kind of our north star of our life on the road. He’s more than our promotor, he’s more than anything, he’s a myth.” The song is dedicated to Arthur Fogel, and Lady Gaga chimes in to say “Happy birthday Arthur, we love you!” Bono and Gaga share vocals on “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” which ends with a piece of “Movin’ On Up” by Primal Scream, sung by both.

As she leaves the stage, Bono once again talks about Lady Gaga, “What a woman. She’s many people. Disco diva. Burlesque babe. Jazz singer. with a heart, a heart of rock and roll!” Although U2 have pulled others onto stage during these shows at the Sphere, this is the first time they’ve invited another performer to join them on the stage. Previously, Lady Gaga joined U2 on stage at a show at Madison Square Garden in July 2015.

Band introductions tonight include Bono sharing about Bram, “He’s too good looking, he’s too tall, he’s a force as well as a face.” Bono shares that “The only thing Adam cannot do while he’s playing the bass is laugh,” making Adam laugh by attempting to tickle him. And The Edge, described as a “card-carrying genius” and “our magician”, Bono shares that The Edge did not lose his passport today. The Edge had been spotted earlier in the week in Canada taking in a Hozier concert in Vancouver, and it sounds like there may have been concerns about him getting back into the country.

Other pieces of songs include “My Way”, which comes in at the end of “Love is Blindness”. “Moment of Surrender” is heard over the introduction to “Where the Streets Have No Name”. “Blackbird” appears at the end of “Beautiful Day”. And after the show ends, and the post-show music appears on the PA, Bono returns to the mic to sing a few lines from “Glorify” as it plays.

Many thanks to David for using our Mixlr account to stream the show this evening, letting us all into the sound!

Initially only the first five shows in Las Vegas were announced. An additional seven shows were quickly added on April 25. (October 11, 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, and 25 were the newly announced shows.) The opportunity to apply for pre-sale tickets opened immediately on April 24, with the initial show announcement. These new shows were part of the same pre-sale, and those who had already applied were given a chance to change to these new dates if desired. Ticket face value ranged from $140.13 – $501.35 at four different price points for seats. A General Admission floor was priced at $267.88, and at each show there was be a (RED) Zone riser at the back of the GA area which will hold 50 people, priced at $600.00. When the ticket sale for verified fans opened on Thursday April 27, Platinum pricing was in effect for the seats in the venue, with most tickets being priced well beyond these original prices. The general on sale, on Friday April 28 was announced to be cancelled by Ticketmaster due to demand, but later the verified fan restrictions were lifted at that time anyway.

Officially Released Tracks