Beethoven Embarrassingly Compared to that U2 Prat Bono

It seems these days like U2's Bono is never not in the news: whether he's claiming that wearing trendy white wristbands will solve all the world's problems or telling politicians how to spend their country's money he seems to be eternally hedging the top spot of every media outlet's daily news roundup.

Typically, he was back in the papers yesterday; however, unusually, he was in the news for something other than being a self-righteous hypocrite or to shill yet another U2 best of CD. You see, as reported by several newspapers too lazy to find actual news stories to write about, this month's Gramophone magazine embarrasingly featured an article in which they declared Bono to be the modern equivalent of 19th century German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven.

Ignoring the fact that Bono isn't German, deaf, a piano virtuoso, a genius classical music composer or even, you know, talented and ignoring the fact that Beethoven isn't an overrated Irish git with a penchant for making ordinary non-rich people feel bad for not giving away money while wearing hundred thousand dollar sunglasses, the editor of music magazine Gramophone maintains the tenuous connection stating:

"Beethoven was a major cultural figure in his day, just as Bono is now. In the 18th century, composers were the pop stars of their day. Beethoven was also a regular guest at court and would have been a point of reference for the Austrian aristocracy. Bono has a comparable relationship with Tony Blair and George W Bush, and the dynamic is still the same. Beethoven believed the world should work to make itself a better place and that we should stand up against oppression."

Stand up against oppression eh? In my opinion, what we should stand up to is being told how we're supposed to live our lives and spend our money by someone who's job description is pretty much just singing glib songs about Beautiful Days and Sweetest Things and posing for wanky photos for Q music magazine. But I digress.

Beethoven wasn't available for comment because he's been dead for almost two hundred years and stuff but it has been speculated that had Bono and Beethoven been contemporaries Beethoven would have actually quite liked U2's music. Namely, the album "All that you can't leave behind" would have given Beethoven a brand new appreciation for his inability to hear anything.

As ill-conceived and probably sacriligious as this article is, it's also a bit of a refreshing change. I'm really not looking forward to next week when Bono will inevitably be back in the news for all the same old naive condescending "help all those plebs in shit countries" and "rock against poverty" stuff he's always banging on and on about ad nauseum, not unlike that fat man in Se7en who kept eating and eating cans of spaghetti until he exploded or something.