At Glen Hansard‘s funeral in Dublin, Ireland Tuesday (Aug. 4), U2‘s Bono played a musical voicemail from Patti Smith before reciting the lyrics of “Beautiful Day,” Eddie Vedder performed Hansard’s “The Song of Good Hope,” and both singers joined a group performance of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” Also among the mourners were Hozier, Imelda May, the Edge, the E Street Band’s Jake Clemons, and many other musicians. Hansard died July 29 at the age of 56 after a motorcycle crash.
Bono’s tribute celebrated Hansard’s gift for friendship. “How do you do that?” he asked. “People on the green outside, best friends. People tuning in, best friends. Even people who haven’t met him, best friends. Everyone who met him, they just remember the day they met him.”
He played a message Smith left him the day Hansard died, with a song she sang for his family. “It’s a lullaby for Glen’s family and friends,” Bono said. “She was happy to share it.” He followed with a mostly spoken-word piece, with help from the Edge, that rewrote some of the lyrics of “Beautiful Day” to honor Hansard: “You write your life until the story becomes true.”
Vedder performed Hansard’s “The Song of Good Hope,” harmonizing with Markéta Irglová, who shared the 2008 best original song Oscar with Hansard for “Falling Slowly” from Once. “It’s not as bad as it seems,” Vedder sang, his voice shaking with emotion.
“Glen said once that when you lose someone, you don’t really lose them,” said his brother, Richie Hansard. “If you have the strength and the will, you will gain them back and you inherit the best parts of them. And we have. We have inherited all the magical, colorful words, hugs, talks, madness, sadness, insightful, manic beauty that a brother, an uncle, a husband and a father could ever give. Thank you, Glen. Thank you, brother.”
Towards the end of the service, Liam Ó Maonlaí of Hothouse Flowers, Vedder, Bono, and the Edge joined a dais full of singers to perform Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.