“20” – U2 TRACKS POLL (voting closes midday, Thursday 4 August)

& now I hear the little tinkling arpeggios more clearly---I'd never fixed on them before but now they're so loud.

I need to learn to listen to music as closely as you all.

Lots of Edge/U2/Sinead soundtrack collabs: "Heroine," "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart," "I'm Not Your Baby" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiWZ5bzcdaM&feature=related

the tinkling whatever they ares (keyboard I would think) are one of my favourite things in pop history.

I don't really like 'your blue room' but I quite like the very off-centre solo at the end (when I think Adam C talks).

I think 'one tree hill' is a bit botched, as a production - interesting things are buried, like the Edge playing the blues. It came out, for me, a bit more clearly when I heard the version they did on new year's eve 1989 and the Edge played those blue notes a bit more frontally. I like the track (it's in my top 20!) but really think it's muddy and a bit underachieved. I walked through St Stephen's Green listening to it last month and confirmed this view.

'a man and a woman' is a rarity, a late U2 LP track with real character, distinction; catchy, poppy, dramatic, corny -- very good indeed, I think, and slightly lost in most accounts of their career. I think there's a Yeats touch, as Buck Mulligan says, on it somewhere. 'Soul needs beauty for a soulmate' and, if I remember aright, 'rent' as in ripped?

Lots of good Edge guitar leads here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2kWgm-0xmM

What I've always liked about Marr is that even though he's open about his influences (sometimes explicitly so) it's never too obvious unless you trace it backwards. "The Queen Is Dead" title track was apparently a direct spin-off from VU's "I Can't Stand It" but I never would have guessed that until Marr pointed it out in an interview. Now it makes sense.

Seriously, check out that website I linked to. It has song by song descriptions of what he claims to be copping, and rarely does the final product sound anything like what he claims to be ripping off!

if that 'one tree hill' is the new year's eve one (at the Point) then that's nice.

the 'one tree botched' idea would support my other larger sense that The Joshua Tree is oddly experimental / improvised / live / organic / rough for a massive selling international #1 LP -- obviously Eno / Lanois the obvious explanation.

(though this thing can happen with oddly big records - in a different way, BORN IN THE USA is strangely rough too, for its status)

Then there's the great U2 studio version whose solo is different again from the also fantastic 'play the blues' solo of R&H.

Yeah, it's on the b-side to the "Where The Streets Have No Name" single. That version of S&G actually got some airplay - certainly here in LA.

Seriously, check out that website I linked to.

I'm well familiar with that website... Was going to post it here, but you beat me to it.

Guitar on that 'One Tree Hill' sounds very Will Sergeant to me.

Like, "How Soon is Now?" is apparently CCR/Gun Club's "Run Through the Jungle" plus Can's "I Want More," plus Bo Diddley, plus these two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7XBDaodo1g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3tuJ4qFmxY

!!!

Anyway, sorry to derail.

"True love never can be rent
But only true love can keep beauty innocent"

is meant to be Yeatsian, I'm sure.

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/a-man-and-a-woman-lyrics-u2/4f73f1112f2ecf0c48256f2000063ddf

Elvis, I'm playing the B-side 'silver & gold' now.
I like the guitars on it a lot.
It was never a big thing here, prior to the film showing the song off.

I'm really just waiting for the solo.

someone should stick up for 'race against time'.

There's also a 'rent from this land'/'rent the soil' (or something like that) in Van Diemen's Land

Isn't the word 'tear'?

tear their hands as they tear the soil.

S&G: The solo starts about 4:16 then fades.

Josh, I went to Simon Goddard talking about Smiths in 2005, and he laboriously went through these influences - piling them up but each time he'd repeat the whole list of what they were. It was sort of educational for me, nonetheless.

Part of the point no doubt is: you try to sound like X and end up sounding like Q, and that's creativity.

'Mona', though, is an OBVIOUS reference point - via the take on THE ROLLING STONES' first LP, featuring guess who. I heard that in 1994 and thought I'd happened on the secret source of 'how soon is now?'.

Really wanted to vote for Paul McGuinness as the worst song/aspect of U2.

Isn't the word 'tear'?

¡Ay! (though there is also a 'to be rent from one so dear', thank goodness)

The click track, btw, is less for the drummer and more for the rest of the guys, who may be working on overdubs or redoing parts separate from the drum tracks. The click lets them all sync up smooth when they mix the whole track together.

While I was composing my top 20 list last night I was listening to a recording of the in-ear monitor feed from the Denver show this year (it's on D1m3 if you want to hear) and was shocked at just how much clicking/countdowning is going on. Hell, on "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and "Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me" there are countdowns to the chord changes. I wanted to shout out "c'mon guys, you know how to play this" at them.

Yeah, though, it's like the national anthem in a stadium: you may think you know it, and you may know it, but factor in acoustics, noise, flashing lights, fans, and it's a wonder these dudes don't screw up more often. I saw Paul McCartney on Sunday, and he joked about how he looks out from the stage and sees all the signs and has to focus: "Paul, don't read the signs!" Then he gives in and starts to read the signs, anyway. And then he messes up or flubs a lyric.

I'm not familiar with the website you mention, but try a recording of U2 at Wembley 8.1993: they're on 'real thing' and during the solo Clayton casually forgets a whole load of bars, goes into the solo and makes the Edge discordant and scrambling to find a new way to get back to the song without it all collapsing.

later Bono goes into the chorus of 'babyface' while it's the verse, and spends the rest of the line pretending it's a new alternative verse

etc

let me say that I have a lot of time for Josh in Chicago who buys expensive tickets to U2 and Paul McCartney. This is what one should do.

But U2 are very very different from Macca - he's always been a pro, never really made a mistake in 50 years, whereas U2, however long they go, can't get it together. It's one of the real oddities of the band, how they can't play their own songs without basic errors.

and makes the Edge discordant and scrambling to find a new way to get back to the song without it all collapsing.

And that's precisely the point where Edge's playing gets interesting for me... I like his playing a lot and he's probably the biggest influence on me as a guitarist, but I wish he would allow himself to play the wrong notes on occasion.

See also: Mark Knopfler vs. Richard Thompson.

xpost Ha, I don't pay!!!! One should most definitely not do that, if they can swing it.

Mark Knopfler vs. Richard Thompson.

Which of these guys are you saying plays wrong notes!?

Do you mean that Knopfler has this more exploratory style, more ... tentative, for lack of a better word, whereas Thompson just rips out these perfect blow your mind leads like they're nothing to him?

Case in point... that crazy background harmonic bashing going on in "Surrender." You don't really hear it in the studio version as it's rightly in the background, but whenever I saw them play it live he'd really free himself up and go bananas. You can sorta hear it in version on Under A Blood Red Sky.

Knopfler is the one who's too controlled.

I like him.

Elvis, do you like the solo at the end of 'dancing barefoot'? I do, always did, since that song first surprised me.

just listened to all those 1989 covers and can't see any objection to them, save from someone who just doesn't like U2 anyway. if you like U2, they seem to be very good; don't think I'll ever hear a better 'unchained melody', certainly not a better 'dancing barefoot'. guess there are just the 3 covers.

Most played top 15

On pure vote-from-the-heart impulse, I initially picked three of the best tracks from All That You Can't Leave Behind--"Beautiful Day," "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," and "Walk On"--as my Top 3. I eventually moved the last one down my ballot in a fit of strategy, but now wish I hadn't. They're the songs, it seems to me, that they were trying to write their whole career.

They're the songs, it seems to me, that they were trying to write their whole career.
--Pete Scholtes

This, to me, is like saying the Rolling Stones spent 30 years working up to "Love Is Strong" and "The Worst"

i voted for a few later tracks, but only "Beautiful Day" from that album -- i liked "Walk On" for the first time hearing it live but in general that and "Stuck" are bland tripe imo

Beautiful Day is their finest late-career song.

Stuck In a Moment... is probably their best late-career "slow" song.

Walk On is, next to Mysterious Ways, one of the two worst tracks that have ever appeared on a proper U2 record (not including Elvis Ate America).

voted

but not for anything in this millennium

My two current millenium picks were "Beautiful Day" and "All Because Of You"

certainly not a better 'dancing barefoot'

Enh, I still think The Church's cover of this is better but that's something you'd know I'd say anyway.

Potential side-poll idea... songs you would like U2 to cover. My vote: "Cortez The Killer"

I'm not a big enough Stones fan to get the references, but the songs are live staples (don't know if that's the case with the Stones ones), and like I suggested upthread, I came around to them slowly and reluctantly. (In fact, I don't think I instantly loved a U2 album after 1983 except Zooropa.) "Stuck" to me is just timeless pop/soul about getting over despair, but then I also still love "Sunday Bloody Sunday." (On-the-nose can be a spine-tingling thing when put right.) "Walk On" is a more poetic and evocative update of "Pride" without its blunt force, maybe because it was dedicated to a living hero rather than a dead one, and could as easily be about death.

Beautiful Day is their finest late-career song.

Agreed. When that song came out, I was like OK, now they're trying. I really liked it! I've enjoyed this song on occasion. But then? I started to feel manipulated again. Clearly I have trust issues wrt U2.

i've never not felt like someone was pulling strings when i enjoyed a U2 song, it's not really a problem for me

I'm not proud of being such a naive earnest U2 fan, but here I am :-/

The production of "Beautiful Dady" is sooooo chintzy. I was so let down when I learned Lanois-Eno produced it: the verse melodies are lame, therefore the chorus has the unfair job of trying to lift a limp song.

*Day

i didn't like "Beautiful Day" initially because of the way the booming live drums on the chorus still end up kind of mixed lower than or sharing equal space with the gently ticking snare loop from the verses, but it's grown on me, i think it's a pretty cool-sounding track.

xp Alfred: Wait, aren't you a Taylor Swift fan? I hear a huge influence there. And the verses are as singalong as any U2--the "been all over you" is an all-stadium moment. And there are like three choruses. But yeah, I had the same initial reaction.

Chinzy nu-U2-style production is the template for pretty much all MOR pop and rock these days, from country to Christian.

Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono though; and the production of Speak Now is arena done right.

I'm gonna throw "Beautiful Day" a vote for its chorus, an über-U2 moment, but the times I heard the song, on lowish bit rate mp3, I was convinced the tinny sound was an artifact of the rip. Once I got the album I was puzzled that that was how the opening & verses really sounded.

otm

Didn't vote for it, but I could have easily voted for "Electrical Storm," which makes me wonder what William Orbit (MIA? RIP?) would have done with latter-day U2.

"Electrical Storm" is one of my favorite Lost Singles.

plus it had Larry semi-naked at the beach.