"It's a musical journey" - U2 POLL RESULTS

i can already see that none of my top 4 are going to place :(

I didn't vote but if I did it probably would have looked something like this:

1 - Out of Control
2 - With of Without You
3 - All I Want is You
4 - Pride
5 - Two Hearts Beat As One
6 - I Will Follow
7 - New Year's Day
8 - Who's Gonna Ride Yr Wild Horses
9 - Seconds
10 - Where the Streets Have no Name

Tsk. Stay tuned - I can reveal that at least one of those will still place.

Only one? I would have thought at least a couple. Hmmmm. Well I suppose you did say at least one.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8440/036gloria.jpg

36 Gloria
180 points, eight votes
October (1981)

Gotta tell you the truth here: I remember the era well, and I listen to the albums lots, but I've never for the life of me figured out just what about "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa" was meant to be ironic, or junk cultury or whatever.

When Bono discovers a big word like "irony," he tends to muck up its definition. I love those albums cuz they're trashy and hook-filled like U2 albums rarely are.

I love this on Live At Red Rocks, especially when Adam gets the stage to himself to slap bass. It's not exactly funky, but it's damn cool.

Gloria!

I feel strongly about my vote for this one. I don't care if it's earnest and corny, I love it. Love that picture too.

Yeah. A lot of these pictures, esp the early ones, are pretty great.

another fantastic early song

I played October to DEATH in junior high, probably listened to that album more than any other in eighth grade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK34DVYsICY

I mean, I challenge anyone who likes U2 to not like this song. Also, Bono's Gloria contains an alveolar flap!

If I only had the slightest idea what that is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_flap

I started a thread about alveolar flaps this morning! I was thinking about them, and this song illustrated my point perfectly!

A thread about your alveolar flap, or tap

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8608/035acrobat.jpg

35 Acrobat
187 points, nine votes
Achtung Baby (1991)

This was a top five pick for me. I love how the album slows down in the last three tracks to a deep, complicated mess. The book reckons that's the return to the reality of making a marriage work after the surface thrills of the first nine tracks.

I only voted for one of the final three songs on Achtung Baby but they're all of a piece to me & together U2's finest album closer.

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6459/034seconds.jpg

34 Seconds
192 points, nine votes
War (1983)

My #5.

I put the 3 final tracks from Achtung in my top 10 -- all of a piece for me too, they just kept moving up my ballot. Had Love is Blindness at #3, thanks in part to its gorgeous and expansive live version (the Sydney Zooropa tour video is on youtube). AFAIK they never played Acrobat live, even in the days when the Zoo tour included every other song on the album except So Cruel.

Any great versions you know, feel free to put the youtube up. I keep hearing about legendary performances, but I wouldn't know where to start looking.

The "Love Is Blindness" on the Stay! single put it on my ballot for a while, though I eventually demoted it in favor of "Gloria" (my only vote for a song pre-Unforgettable Fire iirc).

live at Yankee Stadium, 1992, apparently (not on youtube)

xp Achtung Baby/Zooropa's "irony" is all in the packaging - artwork, videos, the Zoo TV tour. That's what's so brilliant about it imo - moving, complex, sincere songs in a fun, flashy wrapper.

I'm not sure how I feel about Seconds. It usually seems a bit ham-fisted, but sometimes I catch myself singing it without thinking.

I was just listening to "Seconds" the other day, and for all the talk about War being strident/anthemic, here's a very clear yet poetic song about the moral symmetry between terrorists and nuclear superpowers, which wasn't something you heard very much about outside the left in the '80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33ZKmi586PA

^^ one of Edge's best moments. Though I also like the understated album version, the way the guitar gets stuck on one note.

Seconds is a good song but I always flinch at the bom-bom-bom drum sound.

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/6595/033bulletthebluesky.jpg

33 Bullet The Blue Sky
194 points, eleven votes, one most hated
The Joshua Tree (1987)

Their only truly, violently angry political song - very much playing against type. Very strong on the Atomic Bomb tour.

my most hated; what a dreadful song, enough to degrade The Joshua Tree significantly in my view. The Rattle & Hum version is the worst, though I guess it's provided lotsa lols over the years emulating the ridiculous ending.

Ah, that's interesting! I've always had them down as a political band, but it's only your saying that that's crystallised for me the ambivalent/meek/pacifist thread through it all.

"I Threw A Brick Through A Window" isn't an overly meek or pacifistic song

I thought it was a metaphor

They have a combative streak but they made a decision to accentuate the positive - Pride was originally an attack on Ronald Reagan until Bono wrote MLK lyrics instead. This softer approach works, arena-rock-wise, which is why Bullet always feels like a loose cannon in the live set - a glimpse of the angrier band they might have been. To quote - cough - something I wrote, just for background:

‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ is the only song in U2’s history into which Bono pours all of his violence and none of his diplomacy: it is the anti-‘Pride’. When he came back from Central America he told his bandmates what he had seen and asked The Edge, ‘Could you put that through your amplifier?’ He even brought in photographs and videos of the atrocities to inform the playing of the song, which he wanted to sound like ‘hell on earth’. The man with the face ‘red like a rose on a thorn bush’, slapping down $100 bills, was Reagan, he later admitted, but Eno had advised him, ‘You’ll ruin it for people if you give them images.’

the only track i skip on joshua tree

I almost voted for "Bullet the Blue Sky" as my most-hated, too. Especially after the majesty of the first three songs on The Joshua Tree, it comes as such a rude interruption.

Should be first track on side two. Blame Kirsty MacColl.

I pretty much despise the second half of The Joshua Tree aside from "Trip Through Your Wires"; basically, everything after the raging fury of BTBS just seems sleepy and boring.

(I didn't notice "Trip Through Your Wires" until someone played it for me in isolation several years after The Joshua Tree came out; up until then it was as anonymous and boring as the rest of the second half of that album.)

I actually always loved the drama of the last line in "Bullet the Blue Sky" and thought it was a highlight of Rattle and Hum, even as this album and that film stranded my U2 fandom. Again, a poetic connection not many people in the culture were making: between Central Americans being drive out of their homes by U.S.-backed terror and coming illegally to America for refuge.

At least as I heard it. I also don't see anything meek or ambivalent about U2's pacifism--there's a pathos in the phrase "bullet the blue sky" that hardly seems like an endorsement or call to arms.

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/3135/032holdmethrillmekissme.jpg

32 Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
201 points, nine votes, one first place
single (1995)

heh, for some reason i thought that song was widely hated. I had it on my ballot but nixed it cuz I thought it wouldn't rank

i remember seein the kickin rad video when i was a kid, so i guess i had heard a u2 song when i bought Pop

It's another one I can't decide about, but I'm leaning towards it being actually really good. The book reckons it was on the Zooropa provisional track listing though - that'd've been all kinds of wrong.

Just missed my top 20. Hadn't heard it since 1995 until they brought it back into the set on this last tour - great trashy swagger.

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5578/mlookingfor.jpg

31 I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
209 points, one first place, one most hated
The Joshua Tree (1987)

lower than i expected

Yeah, def.

Hey, how many were people allowed to put on ballots because I only thought up ten before but I am bored this has got me thinking and I want to finish my imaginary list.