BRISTOL—As Americans tune in to ESPN and ABC this month to watch the World Cup, they are once again unable to pry themselves away from the sonic assault of Irish rock band U2. In an unprecedented deal with the rock supergroup, ESPN has agreed to feature U2 songs and U2 songs re-recorded by the Soweto Gospel Choir as the exclusive soundtrack of their World Cup coverage and commercials.
“Fuuuuuuuck! I thought we were done with them when we didn’t buy or support their last album,” the country said, referring to 2009’s lackluster No Line On the Horizon. “Ugh. Corporate America is aware there are other bands, right?”
Spokespeople for the "World Wide Leader" in sports were not so negative in their assessment.
“Look, with such a big worldwide event coming up, we had one decision to make: select a mildly interesting choice for bumper music or just put on the first band we could think of,” explained Seth Adler, Senior Director of Sports Marketing at ESPN. “So someone blurted out the Black Eyed Peas and we were going to go with that. But then someone explained that it was only the second-laziest choice we could have made, so we decided to go whole hog and make the laziest: U2.”
“Then we came up with the masterstroke of Africanizing some of their songs so you wouldn’t think this event was taking place in Sweden. You know, to fully homogenize this whole experience and reduce a culture to the broadest cultural stereotypes Americans can recall from the Lion King,” he explained.
Sources note that U2 lead singer Bono was only happy to oblige, eagerly fusing his music and Africa in a way that had already been driven into the ground many, many years ago. Those close to him say he was so touched by the size of the royalty check that he stared at it for a few seconds before putting it on the pile with the others.
America has claimed it’ll let this choice of U2 go, in lieu of the alternative of listening to the Black Eyed Peas, but has cautioned sports broadcasters that they have to discover the existence of a third band before the next major sporting event or satisfaction will be had.
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