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

love mysterious ways, everyone here prob well sick of sbs

overground!

Suggest Ban Sunday? (xp)

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/8140/016asortofhomecoming.jpg

16 A Sort Of Homecoming
391 points, sixteen votes, one first place
The Unforgettable Fire (1984)

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay (why did this not win?! does everyone love costumed bono that much more?!)

My number one!!! <3

why does anyone like this band

Took you quite some time to pop up and rain on this parade, Shakey, expected you sooner!

was resisting tbh

being mentioned on the Beach Boys poll thread brought me over to take a peek

and I wasn't trying to be dickish I seriously don't understand what the appeal is here. 12 yo me really liked them, but 12 yo me just wanted to appear as a serious/thoughtful music fan and that's what they were being sold as

12-year-olds have the best taste, everyone knows that

Surely you can think of worse offenders than U2 on the pretentiousness front, yes? With fewer good songs?

I don't really care about pretension. good songs, yes, but I don't find these guys to be particularly good songwriters/melodicists/lyricists and the rhythm section is exceptionally leaden. so yeah, I don't get it.

the only genuinely well-written song of theirs that I enjoy listening to is "One".

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/2264/015alliwantisyou.jpg

15 All I Want Is You
401 points, seventeen votes
Rattle And Hum (1988)

Van Dyke Parks' strings on All I Want Is You are utterly delicious. This song is Rattle & Hum's one moment of splendour.

Aw, yay.

love mysterious ways, everyone here prob well sick of sbs

― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Wednesday, August 10, 2011 12:50 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

I like SBS a lot. If my imaginary ballot had gone beyond 10 it prob would have been like 11 or 12.

"When Doves Cry" is massively overplayed as well but its status as one of Prince's best songs seems pretty much undeniable to me.

funk redeems over-familiarity, once again

"When Doves Cry" is one of my defaults for greatest song ever written, which I cannot say of most U2 songs, if any. Basically, "When Doves Cry" cannot be overplayed. It is beholden to a different standard.

Glad "A Sort of Homecoming" cracked the top 20... Edge's guitar is incredible there.

whereas U2 have defaults for some of the worst anthems ever written.

I haven't been following this thread partly because, as I said when it started, I think it was wrong and cruel to put an ugly and nasty image at the top of it which would appear any time anyone clicked on it.

I don't know whether the countdown thing is over yet. I will have a look at it some time.

12 yo me really liked them, but 12 yo me just wanted to appear as a serious/thoughtful music fan and that's what they were being sold as

I would argue that lots of folks who make it a point to ostentatiously smack down U2 often also want to appear as "serious/thoughtful music fans... I also think our 12-year-old selves are a lot and more intuitive about quality (not to mention far less aesthetically hung up) than we give them credit for.

("are a lot more intuitive"...)

I see, it is up to #15. I expect many very great tracks have been listed.

Clarke B otm. I had my first reservations about "Pride (In the Name of Love)" when I was twelve :)

clarke b probably v otm

oh alfred

if only we could back to the innocence of childhood and its intuitive love for u2 and nosepicking

c'mon pinefox, the images do get better after that horror

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/6577/014untiltheendoftheworl.jpg

14 Until The End Of The World
415 points, fifteen votes, two first places
Achtung Baby (1991)

there are very few things I can think of that I liked when I was twelve that I don't still like now

The whole process of "growing out" of bands rarely if ever happens to me; I've had artists go directions/do things that make me stop paying attention to them (hi dere, Morrissey) but it's rare that that is a retroactive indictment on other albums of theirs that I've enjoyed (funnily enough, one of the few examples of this happening to me I can think of is with The Smiths and Strangeways...; I like a good bit of that album when I first heard it, but when I started listening to their back catalog practically all of that material appealed to me so much more that couldn't go back to Strangeways...).

Until the End of the World was my #1. I was hoping madly that it would place in the top 5. Deserves a better picture TBH. Ismael, enough with the bad-hair era - bring out the Zoo TV grabs. We want our Macphisto.

xp Maybe 12-year-olds overrate U2 but only 15-year-olds should think they're the worst thing ever.

We want our Macphisto.

Speak for yourself, guy.

Spoiler: there is plenty more bad hair to come. Doesn't Larry look sweet though?

xp It would jazz up the page a bit. Too much bad hair and youthful solemnity in B&W. (Says the guy who hasn't spent hours compiling and illustrating this poll)

they sure did love their blowdryers

Sorry, I blew out all my pigment on #32

when I was twelve I liked "Living in a Box" and "Shattered Dreams" more than "With or Without You" :(

if only we could back to the innocence of childhood and its intuitive love for u2 and nosepicking

Not so much innocence as a sort of purer receptivity, less "shoulds", less awareness of perceptions and the politics of aesthetics. The whole idea of listening to something because I thought that's what serious music people did wasn't part of my engagement with music until much later than 12, that's for sure... And sometimes it feels like something I'm still trying to shed completely!

much later than 12, that's for sure

Yeah, where does this idea come from? I was at the earliest 15. In the disco book I was reading last, some guy was claiming to have been down Studio 54 every night as an eleven-year-old!

The whole idea of listening to something because I thought that's what serious music people did wasn't part of my engagement with music until much later than 12, that's for sure

yeah well um you didn't have my family

12 year old me was down with Weird Al & my mom's 60s girl group 45s. good times!

True, Shakey (I think)... Although I do remember REJECTING stuff at that age because my mom and dad were really into it...

when I was twelve I liked "Living in a Box" and "Shattered Dreams"

I bought both those singles (aged 13)

I just can't accept U2 on the basis of pure pop thrills or something, it seems like that isn't really what they do...? that isn't what I get from listening to them anyway. it all seems so clumsy/stilted. very mannered and self-serious, even when they're trying to be "fun". Bono's earnestness in particular comes across as almost pathological, I feel like there's nothing to relate to there, it's all sweepingly empty gestures.

xp

True, Shakey (I think)... Although I do remember REJECTING stuff at that age because my mom and dad were really into it...

my parents by and large didn't care about music. my older brother, on the other hand, was an entirely different story.

I can't believe you guys are shitting on U2 when there was talk of how spectacular PWEI and Jesus Jones were itt. Honestly.

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