Originally Posted by BJFan99

I'm sorry, but did you watch any footage from the European tour or Rock In Rio last year? Yes, his voice is gone and will never become any better again (I've accepted this by now), but there's still one thing he has left of his past greatness as a live performer that he won't lose until he can't move around anymore. That's charisma and the capability of working a crowd.

You simply can't judge his energy on stage by watching one song (at most) per show. In Rio he moved like crazy all night jumping and running all over the place, went into the audience in front of the stage to greet the fans during LYHOM like he already did back in 2000 (no, it wasn't needed as a "schtick" to cover up his vocal shortcomings back then, but interacting with the crowd in different ways has still been an essential part of his act for about all of his career), did extended outros on BTBMB, BOR and BM, a brief jungle noise on KTF... the list is endless. His vocals were atrocious, there's no denying it, and in the encore he was barely able to get any voice out at all, but I still very much enjoyed the show with him again being the showman I grew up watching on my old Crush Tour DVD.

You don't have to be able to sing to be a great frontman. Bono (who Jon idolizes) has never been hailed as one of the greatest singers in the industry, yet he's an amazing performer and continuously hailed as so. The same with Liam Gallagher.

I'm not sure how Jon is any different and why so many seem to think he can't do anything anymore, when at the end it's only his voice that's really gone. I enjoyed his showmanship efforts in Tallinn as well (and yes, I was there and heard every single bum note he sang), and something like Saturday Night and IBTFY from Dublin night #2 were still great to watch, as even though his vocals were still poor, the old ad-libs and improvisations were great to have back after having been absent for so long. So pardon me for defending Jon on this, but he's still a world-class frontman and has the crowd eating out of his hands every night even though he indeed can't sing worth a crap anymore. The voice is a bigger issue and a distracting one on its own, I know, but we don't have to blow things out of proportion here, though.