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

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.

lol

Boy George had a quip: "When Bono sang 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for,' I used to say, 'Turn around, he's right behind you!'"

adam knows

Aside... have to mention "The Three Sunrises" as another great Lost Track. I gave it a vote.

Confessions of a teenaged U2 fan part 1...
I don't want to sound like a "the music of my youth was so much better MAAAAANNN" guy, but holy shit there were a lot of great records released in October 1980: Remain In Light, Black Market Clash, In The Flat Field, Telekon, Organization, More Specials, Kilmanjaro, The River, Dirty Mind (though I wouldn't know about that for a couple years), Making Movies, I Just Can't Stop It, The Black Album, Zenyatta Mondatta (confessions of a teenaged Police fan will have to wait). I remember hearing "I Will Follow" somewhere in the middle of all that. I kinda liked the song but it never made a big impact on me. I kept thinking that it sounded like Joy Division with a couple pots of coffee - all furious drums and bass with just enough guitar to glue it together but man did Bono's "YOUUURRRRRR EYYEEESSS" yelping bug me*. At the time I never would have believed that they would go on to be one of the biggest bands ever. Really? Those guys? You would have an easier time convincing me that Ride would huge on the sole basis of "Chelsea Girl." I never did get around to picking up Boy as the stereo I had so carefully pieced together from garage sale finds over the summer was sidelined* so U2 was, with apologies to Douglas Adams, "just this band you know."

I remember reading a Robert Hilburn column around then and... ah forget it, fuck him and fuck everything he's written as he's done more to make me a disillusioned U2 fan than U2 themselves.

*I was 15 years old - just old enough to demand authenticity from my rock stars. Mad scientist new wavers and punks were, of course, exempt.

**I had just put on side two of Who Are You when Jim D. barged into my dorm room and shouted "it's fucking 'Trick Of A Light' you have to crank it LOUD!" and maxed out the volume as far as it could go. The speakers didn't just blow out, they smoked - frying the speaker transducers to slag. Motherfucker just said "oops, sorry" and never offered to replace them. I just realized that I'm still sore about this.

I eventually liked "I Will Follow" but it'll have to wait until the next part.

Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono
Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono
Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono
Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono
Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono
Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono
Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono

^^ next-level trolling itt

its weird how stirring i found bono's bellowing on Pride (In the Name of Love) at one point, and how thoroughly that song bores me now - maybe its just radio overexposure

I think 'city of blinding lights' probably the best late-period U2 song

otherwise:
a man & a woman
beautiful day OK for the arpeggios
peace on earth, I like the melody
NEW YORK a big lost track
Miracle Drug
sometimes you can't make it? - maybe

I quite like the opening 2 cuts on NO LINE ON THE HORIZON
and maybe the best song on that is 'I'll go crazy if ...'

I bought that on double vinyl, if I played it now it might make me nostalgic for ... that heady, distant summer of ... 2009.

lol

@davidjriley98 Don't get me wrong, I like the band U2. and I give them more credit than Disturbed, since this is originally their Song, not saying their version or the band itself is bad, I just happen to like Disturbed's version a bit better.

RyanKenny59 9 hours ago

When U2 played in Glasgow a couple of years ago Bono stood on stage snapping his fingers and said, every time I snap my fangers astarving child somewhere in the world dies. Someone in the crowd shouted, Well stop snapping your fingers then you sick bastard.

alecahauf 1 month ago 14

:-D

That joke has appeared on every single internet comment thread about Bono since Live8 in 2005. It is to Bono threads what "dancing about architecture" is to threads about music criticism.

no... (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ NO

have enjoyed reading this thread a lot

Will prob still go ahead and vote for last.fm most played tho.

U2 are dublin-irish, maybe middle-class irish, they're irish but they're afraid-to-milk-a-cow irish.

Would add Protestant to Dublin and middle-class (except maybe Larry?).

They don't wrap themselves in the flag nearly as much as these days - there's already somewhat of a backlash due to their tax-exile status so I think that may have some bearing on their reining it in. back in the 80s I remember them being held up as a source of national pride, I'm sure a lot of people still feel that way about them.

one aspect of their success that probably doesn't have much impact outside Ireland is the continuing influence of the coterie that came up with them. people like Gavin Friday, Guggi, and many of the Hot Press crew.

Taylor Swift is a better singer than latter-day Bono

― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Thursday, August 4, 2011 2:09 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ next-level trolling itt

― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.),

oh plz

oh man, that clique, hot press, just no.

Yeah, i think protestant is definitely in there too. None of it diminishes their irishness, just to be clear, but they're very much a specific type- i suppose that's true for anyone anywhere tbf.

FWIW i don't ever feel like they milked it or anything, yeah the tricolour but i mean cmon, yeah we wore them like a badge in the 80's but what else had we in the 80's, until ray houghton anyway. I was six when the joshua tree came out and i can still clearly recall how big a deal it was to have bonofied proper worldwide superstars back then. It's not like that's still not a novelty either.

Bono's always had his eye higher than winning over just ireland, so i don't think they ever really overdid that aspect.

The tax stuff, the fakery, the middle aged success merchants dressing badly and wooing the world, the desperation for currency (either way you like it tbh) and the cod-yet-not-cod religion- 100% irish, the boys done good.

lol well said DM, been waiting for your response since the question was posed tbh!

now if we can get sonofstan and localgarda to weigh in...

I've mentioned it before, but I found the most illuminating aspect of the Bill Flanagan book the financial stuff, the implication that U2 really didn't rake in the dough the way people thought they did. Hence the emergence of nu-U2, "All That You Can't Leave Behind" and beyond, where the band has been overtly aiming for hits and mega tours that fill the coffers several times over.

xp Pretty sure Bono is working-class - he certainly self-identifies as such. Not sure about Edge. Adam is disarmingly, unapologetically posh.

I voted for four "Rattle and Hum" tracks (all were in my top 12) -- I'm one of the only people on the board who defends that album so I figured I needed to back up my words. I also gave a high placing to "Numb", which I've always felt was their most underrated single.

i coudn't imagine bono is working-class tbh, but i mean in ireland there are so many social factors that rival or outright beat that for importance

Stoney Batter

His dad was a postal worker - not sure where postal workers fit into the Irish class system but middle-class sounds like a stretch.

i believe that was a full review of the chippy up by landsdowne rd

postal worker, pension, public sector

I think it might be a stretch, but a small one tbh.

not sure where postal workers fit into the Irish class system

Either second class or parcel post, depending on weight iirc.