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

http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/U2-black-and-white.jpg

What to do?

PICK YOUR TOP TWENTY U2 TRACKS. Put them in order. Email them to ismaelklata at gmail dot com by midday, Thursday 4 August.

Points will be allocated as usual: 40; 36; 33; 30; 28; then 26 down to 12 for the others.

An experiment: the idea of negative votes has been suggested before but never done, so if you wish you may also choose ONE HATED TRACK, which will score -20. Suck on that, ‘Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark’.

Sources

• list of songs
• full discography
• spotify playlist

Votes in by midday, Thursday 4 August. That’s midday at Zabriskie Point, California; so circa 8pm UK time and 3pm in New York. I’ll count them that evening, and the rundown will be on Friday the 5th. Now get to it.

Why U2?

I thought they’d be an interesting band to poll. Really famous but without I think a huge fanbase on ILM, and hence no real preconceptions as to what might do well. They also more than meet the ‘different eras’ test – there are at least four different versions of the band, and it’ll be interesting to see how they play against each other.

Also, beyond half-a-dozen or so headline singles my impression is that their music isn’t actually that celebrated. I’ve been researching them like crazy and I know they’ve got a ton of good stuff, so it’ll be fun to bring it out.

What is U2?

You may pick any U2 song, which includes solo work and The Passengers.

Don’t specify remixes, alternates or live versions – you can discuss which version is best during the rundown. ‘Party Girl’ and ‘Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl’ are the same song. ‘Gloria’ is the one off October and Under A Blood Red Sky – if you want to vote for the snippet off Rattle and Hum, and by all means do because it's a blistering medley, vote for ‘Exit’ and explain yourself during the countdown. The two ‘No Line On The Horizon’s will be counted together.

Votes for the ILM-only release of No Line On The Horizon are not eligible.

Is the Passengers side project eligible?

An experiment: the idea of negative votes has been suggested before but never done, so if you wish you may also choose ONE HATED TRACK, which will score -20. Suck on that, ‘Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark’.

omgbrilliant

The Passengers are in. Any solo stuff also counts. I didn't think they had that much - just the Mission Impossible tune and Bono's horrible duet with Sinatra, but it appears he's done quite a few collaborations. I have not heard these.

Votes for the ILM-only release of No Line On The Horizon are not eligible.

aw

Are you going to post the top 5/10 most hated tracks as well as the regular countdown?

I may do, depending on turnout, but mostly they'll just form part of the regular countdown.

I'm a bit scared that this is what'll decide the #1, but if that's what happens so be it.

Jah Wobble/The Edge/Holger Czukay Snake Charmer for Top 5 please

The spotify playlist should be collaborative, incidentally, if I've done it right. Feel free to add any odds & ends.

As it stands it contains: all the albums; the two 80s live EPs; a couple of non-album singles; plus the extras from the rereleases of the early albums, except where those seemed superfluous.

GOD DAMMIT "ELVIS ATE AMERICA" IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE US

also I don't know about anyone else but this was the easiest ballot to put together yet

yeah I put mine together this afternoon in like five minutes

gonna sit on it a bit in case someone says something provocative on this thread (e.g. I've already rethought my vote for "Elvis Presley and America" but if it seems like it's gonna be -100 I'll re-rethink it)

I really did mine properly, so it was bloody hard!

I wasn't actually a particular fan before doing this, but I've listened to everything I could find, ordered and devoured Under A Blood Red Sky (which is absolutely spectacular), then cut it down, cut it down again, and was eventually left with 23 tracks. Took me weeks all in. Last one to go was probably my favourite before starting the whole process, so I'm feeling a bit bad already.

I've been listening to b-sides all day (the things I do for you people), so my ballot's proper too! But still, I've lived with these songs enough that it's not too much a challenge. & it's been a while (like, since the 80s) since they were my favorite band, so retrospective perspective is easy to come by.

They used to be my favorite group growing up, but as I got into tons of new music in late high school and college, these guys became one of these bands I was embarrassed about ever liking. It would have seemed unimaginable to me in 1997 to not own all their albums; by 2000, the idea of owning All That You Can't Leave Behind never even crossed my mind.

Two years ago my brother insisted on lending me How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and I was pretty much blown away. Though sonically, it's a total rehash, the tunes are fantastic and it's probably my favorite album of theirs after Achtung Baby. Should be interesting to go back through their catalog and see what still works for me; I'll definitely be repping some of the Atomic Bomb tracks in my ballot.

That's the kind of thing I want to hear! With that album I don't even know where to begin in 2011---at an Obama rally in 2008 they played "City of Blinding Lights" & it sounded pretty great but it was just the moment, I think?

All I can stand these days is Zooropa, on which they pretended to be glitz hounds.

by 2000, the idea of owning All That You Can't Leave Behind never even crossed my mind.

If you like Atomic Bomb, you'll like All That You Can't Leave Behind

they're ok, but they're not the frames or anything

can I just do a negative vote? ;-)

i'm hella down for this

hella down for u2 trax poll, i mean

can I just do a negative vote? ;-)

I did wonder if I'd get this request! I think you'd probably better put in a plausible ballot first. If I open this up to everyone who hates Bono, it'll look like a golf leaderboard.

The two 'No Line On The Horizon's will be counted together.

Votes for the ILM-only release of No Line On The Horizon are not eligible.

Wait, wha? Link please!

let's release the U2 album before U2 releases the U2 album

The HATED TRACK option makes for interesting strategy (not least because there are so many to choose from). Do you pick one that no one's gonna plausibly vote for because it's so awful, or do you to try to stick it to a song that might place otherwise?

also I still have a hard time believing the names of the songs on No Line On The Horizon---I don't remember how any of the songs sound, but I'm not talking about that, I'm talking, ffffuck, "Fez - Being Born" & "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight". Though actually "Original of the Species" is another appalling title. I threw a brick through a window indeed.

I don't know if it will even get any votes, but I know without any doubt that I'd give "Walk On" an anti-vote. (This is because I'm pretty certain no one will even bother voting for any of the Spider-Man songs.)

Live At Red Rocks is what I was referring to as 'absolutely spectacular' btw - the album's great, but the film is incredible.

If you like Atomic Bomb, you'll like All That You Can't Leave Behind

Yeah, I checked out that and their most recent album after liking Atomic Bomb so much (I now even own a copy of ATYCLB, found it for like $3 used), but neither of them grabbed me apart from a song or two.

Dude, "Walk On" is my No. 2 at the moment. The downside of the -20 votes is that we'll end up with a far more "tasteful" and less embarrassing and therefore boring list--I'd almost rather the hate votes not count at all but just be added as a note after each placer, so you potentially have a No. 1 that's also the most hated.

On first impulse, my hate vote was going to be "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," but I have to say, seeing them play it live a couple of times took the energy out of my hate. "Where the Streets Have No Name" still won't make my list, but seeing that live made it undeniable in that context too. Also hated "Mysterious Ways" until seeing my 2-year-old niece dance to it, at which point its awesomeness became obvious, and now that's at the bottom of my list. Those are probably my least favorite albums, but to hate a song, you have to remember it. I'll probably go with "Angel of Harlem."

Rattle and Hum has a buncha contenders. When Love Comes To Town is dire, and the two remakes are hilariously bad.

I honestly don't think I could do 20 songs for any band and def not U2 however I do count one of theirs as among my favorite ever songs and that is "Out of Control". Why? Because it is the best. That's why.

Oh and I got to meet Bono a couple years ago when I was working on a project dealing with HIV/AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa and he was tiny, funny, charismatic as hell and pretty great all around. Fuck the Bono haters imo. I think he's sort of awesome.

I honestly don't think I could do 20 songs for any band

seriously?

Out of Control is terrific. On my listen to Boy yesterday it was the standout.

she also said bono was awesome, so grain of salt.

lol - he really was!!

Seriously. OK well maybe I could but I don't have the attention span for that sort of thing and I'm not really a list person. I'm also not and never have been an album person. I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to a whole album start to finish without skipping some songs. Some of these polls have sort of amazed me insofar as that (for example) I was like "Oh man, I love the Pet Shop Boys!" and then I opened the thread and it wasn't until like half-way through that I started recognizing songs and then I was like "Well damn, maybe I don't love them as much as I thought I do".

Ok so maybe I like U2 a little more then I let one because I did once (albeit a very long time ago) sit in my car all night in freezing weather so that I could be at Tower at 5:00 am to buy what, aside from the first Pixies shows in London, remain the most expensive concert tix I've ever bought.

BUT when they played Out of Control that night I may have jumped and screamed a little bit. OK, I totally did.

it's okay. i went to a they might be giants concert once. we all have our skeletons.

lol

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so did i

yeah def. voting for "out of control". heres a lesser known U2 track thats up in my top 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ9sLF1sSp8

"love comes tumbling" is pretty great from that e.p. as well

For many years I forgave most of U2's, er, indulgences because I loved Bill Flanagan's protrayal in U2 at the End of the World, still one of the best rock biographies: catching a band shedding one skin for another. They really do like the best kind of bros if you never have to listen to them.

For a band with so many haters they've never had a rep for treating people badly. Like, Bob Geldof seems like a bully and by all accounts is a bully, but you don't hear horror stories from people who have worked with U2 or with Bono in an activist capacity. I can see people finding him annoying or hating U2's music but I can't work out what's underpinning the current consensus that he's one of the worst people in music - there are many terrible human beings out there and I don't believe he's one of them.

ilxor sonofstan has told a few tales of u2 douchebaggery from their early days

Ah, that's interesting. Haven't heard them.

Guitar solo on "Out of Control" is all-time. I do love how they play pretty much any song from their catalog at one point or another--did "Zooropa," "Scarlet," "Please," and "Discotheque"on Saturday. Speaking of U2 hate, my incoherent spill from that show: http://blogs.citypages.com/gimmenoise/2011/07/u2_at_tcf_bank_stadium_review_setlist.php

it was Stewart Osborne-

"I encountered U2 on what I believe was their first UK tour, which they were supposed to be co-headlining with Delta 5.
I wasn't aware that they were supposedly Christian at the time, but the way they and their entourage conducted a concerted campaign of bullying and intimidating Delta 5 (who, lest we not forget, were 3 girls and 2 guys) until they had effectively relegated them to being U2's support band, didn't seem to be exactly overflowing with "Love Thy Neighbour" Christian spirit to me.

Sounds completely right."

They behaved exactly like that in their early days in Dublin too.
Pricks then, Pricks now.

― sonofstan, Monday, April 13, 2009 11:19 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

I do want these Achtung Baby extras -- but I bought the CD singles as they came out, and I have the LP on the original vinyl, still pretty pristine. It is funny that those things are now 'de luxe'.

The dvd would mean most to me because my really fantastic Achtung Baby video cassette won't seem to play on my video player.

not sure I can justify this one at all:
http://www.rhino.co.uk/store/products,the-smiths-complete-deluxe-collectors-boxset_39767.htm

again, some of us had the vinyl first time round!

pf i have it in my head that just about everything you possess is an antique, I can quite easily imagine a mahogany ipad

It looks like a disassembled Transformer.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, August 5, 2011 4:36 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

LOL!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cSIJd5KIL._SL500_AA300_.jpg http://www.u2rockband.com/postcards/images/bono/bono_makeup.jpg

I just had another thought re: U2 and Irishness and the USA.

Major detour here, but humor me:

I know "Oh, I just LOVE his accent, it's so SEXY" has been around since the dawn of time. And that it applies for nearly every discernible variant of world Englishes.
However.

There is a certain kind of American woman -- you may know the type or maybe not -- of a certain age, usually, who will just flip the fuck out for any old run of the mill dude with an Irish accent. I blame U2 for that. Colin Farrell, for instance, has benefited substantially from this.

Example: My old roommate, who was not a good judge of character by anyone's measure, once fell for this Irish guy who worked as a bartender in the college town where we lived. He was kind of coarse, nasty, and stupid - not someone I would want to socialize with much less date. Months she dated this guy, he came over, was a complete tool, and mostly just mooched off of us. Later, she found out that he was smoking crack while she was sleeping. THEN she found out that he *wasn't even Irish* and that he had been faking the accent. That's when she broke it off.

i don't think u2 has all that much to do with american chicks going nuts for any accent from the british isles

Another example: Lisa Simpson's Irish boyfriend!
Colin: I'm Colin.
Lisa Simpson: I haven't seen you at school
Colin: Just moved from Ireland. My dad's a musician.
Lisa Simpson: Is he...?
Colin: He's not Bono.
Lisa Simpson: I just thought because you're Irish and you care about...
Colin: He's NOT Bono.

(please note - i don't really "blame" U2 for this, nor do i think they or actual irish people have/had anything to do with my ex-roomie's super degenerate ex-boyfriend)

have been listening to ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND again
and to be honest I've been underwhelmed
though I still think a couple of good tracks turn up late on.

ATOMIC BOMB probably the reverse
it has at least 3 good ones in the first half (miracle drug, sometimes, blinding lights)
but the second half might be the worst half U2 have ever done, save 'a man and a woman'
I don't like how they strain for big choruses that just don't come off -
'original of the species'
and 'all because of you', so mystifyingly a 45.

we still haven't addressed NO LINE ON THE HORIZON
I wonder if I actually like that more?

'Hallelujah here she comes' underwhelmed me in 1989
maybe more to my taste now
though Desire Hollywood Remix is surely better!!

we still haven't addressed NO LINE ON THE HORIZON
I wonder if I actually like that more?

― the pinefox, Saturday, August 6, 2011 4:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i voted for "breathe"

There's good stuff on all the later albums, but they haven't really bedded down as a whole for me. Pop's the last one that feels like a project, rather than a bunch of songs (nothing wrong with that, but it's hard to get a handle on in the context of doing this).

I've finished the counting, incidentally. There's only one tie in the top fifty, so I'll probably go for that. There's also some stuff at 51-60 which I'd like to include, but you've got to draw a line somewhere.

Yeah "Breathe" is very good, and one of the best to hear in concert last year. "Magnificent" was also a good cut from that album. Otherwise, Horizon is probably their worst album, that or R&H. So many go nowhere songs. Sad too, because I felt like they wanted to do something different on that album, there are small moments where you feel like they are trying for new sounds or approaches. It quickly falls back on old habits, and doesn't have the tunes to boot.

"Your Blue Room" was one of the last cuts from my ballot. I've never really taken to the Passengers album apart from "Your Blue Room" and "Always Forever Now", but man, those two tracks are some of the best U2 has done. The latter would have fit like a glove on Zooropa (except maybe lyrically). And seeing "Your Blue Room" in concert was a genuine shock. I thought they themselves had forgotten that album.

yeah it was pretty goofy how No Line was preceded with a bunch of talk of an Achtung-style reinvention, and then when it came out it basically sounded like the last two albums minus the hits.

also lol @ just now learning that "I'll Go Crazy" was co-produced by will.i.am

This is super helpful to me, to get an idea of how to listen to the post-Pop albums (this is why *I* like to read critics!). I voted for two of the most obvious songs from this era, but the albums don't cohere to me either. I think it's largely their sound, the production etc.---I have the same problem with latter-day REM & I think it's that my ears don't hear enough modern rock for what's special about these sounds to stick; so even if there are hooks, they wash over me. Aging, I guess, but I don't hold my own perspective to be particularly important & would like to hear them differently, as I care enough about these artists to try to get what they're after (I trust them, in other words, for better or for worse).

I find current REM and U2 disappointing for the same reason, namely that both, I believe, are still so rich with potential. And yet the results are so middling, uneven or misbegotten. If REM needs to do an album in a church, sitting around in a circle or something, U2 needs to let a little more space back into the music, focus less on the charts or young people liking them and more on doing something weird and making young people like that.

Serious question: does it matter if neither band can? Bands have lifespans; they've had theirs.

I really admire Bowie for just stopping, y'know?

if ever there was a band that will never stop touring arenas and stadiums and releasing platinum albums until they start dropping dead, though, it's U2. obviously it's no travesty if they keep shitting up the charts with mediocre product, but it'd be nice if they made better records to justify all that attention.

also Bowie was churning out unremarkable album after unremarkable album for so long that i honestly didn't realize it'd been 8 years since the last one until you just mentioned it.

Does it matter? No, I guess it doesn't matter. But it does devalue the creative currency of both bands when their product starts to sound like product, especially since, as I noted, I believe both bands still have it in them to be great. Not every band does after that long. Then again, Eno has offered a very perceptive reveal of how U2 has long worked. The band writes in the studio, more or less hitting record and then working their way through dozens of permutations of at least that many sketches (you can hear this on Achtung Baby outtakes). Yet the band still works within a an external timeframe, and eventually has to finish the record (see: what happened with Pop). Therefore, admitted Eno, a U2 album's evolution is typically a series of creative ups and downs as songs get worked over again and again. If time runs out when things are great, great. If not, we get incomplete feeling misfires like the last album.

Bowie, it doesn't need to be said, had a good nearly 15 year run of classics before REM and U2 started making their cultural mark, so I'll happily concede the man his contemporary mediocrity. Keep in mind, too, that Bowie retired (probably) because he, you know, almost died.

U2's recorded legacy would probably benefit from if they were one of those bands who issued a collections of outtakes and alternate versions (or Passengers-type side projects) after every album or two.

I think they're one of those bands, like Rush (fittingly, the longest running stable line-up outside U2), that doesn't leave behind much in the way of detritus. Even the famed Achtung Baby outtakes are mostly just take after take of an evolving "Salome" - a b-side.

Side projects, on the other hand, I can get behind.

I don't actually think NO LINE is just a retread in the same mould as the previous 2. I think it does try to do different things. There's much more spoken-word stuff isn't there - 'stand up' and 'cedars of lebanon'? and that and 'white as snow' are newly muted.

But it might just be that it feels different to me cos I bought it on vinyl. I actually think I like it more than the previous 2, though, having made that vinyl-flipping effort.

I guess I agree with Josh that bands can get good again by simplifying things - Trinity Session style etc. It's a pity that that wouldn't work with U2: they're just not that good at playing music together, are they?

I love U2 and value what their creative process has issued, but I get frustrated by talk of 'writing in the studio', 'creative process', 'going away to the south of France for initial sessions, then relocating to New York to work together in a new way' etc ... because I have written many songs and I know all it needs (or WHAT it needs, as Chance in Rio Bravo might clarify) is a pen and paper and maybe an instrument to hand, for 15-30 bewildering minutes, no matter if it's a wet Wednesday in the same old town you grew up in. If you don't have that spark (and one usually doesn't) then the studio shenanigan thing is probably going to be a self-deceiving waste of time.

But it does devalue the creative currency of both bands when their product starts to sound like product, especially since, as I noted, I believe both bands still have it in them to be great.

Does it? Again, I hope I don't sound obtuse. That U2 keep churning out product (as they have since 2000) doesn't devalue by one cent Zooropa, Acthung Baby and the assorted singles and album tracks I consider their best work, in the same way that Stones albums don't devalue their classics.

Unless I'm not reading you correctly...?

also Bowie was churning out unremarkable album after unremarkable album for so long that i honestly didn't realize it'd been 8 years since the last one until you just mentioned it.

So has U2! But we won't agree here.

love U2 and value what their creative process has issued, but I get frustrated by talk of 'writing in the studio', 'creative process', 'going away to the south of France for initial sessions, then relocating to New York to work together in a new way' etc ... because I have written many songs and I know all it needs (or WHAT it needs, as Chance in Rio Bravo might clarify) is a pen and paper and maybe an instrument to hand, for 15-30 bewildering minutes, no matter if it's a wet Wednesday in the same old town you grew up in. If you don't have that spark (and one usually doesn't) then the studio shenanigan thing is probably going to be a self-deceiving waste of time.

But every album since at least The Joshua Tree has been recording in so, er, itinerant a manner (so was Exile on Main Street for that matter). The biographical data doesn't matter so much.

* recorded. Bleh.

Changing my mind with these guys is inevitable, but from where I sit 20 years on, the album being issued as a boxed set that folds out into a jet-ski has fewer good songs than the most recent one--which has a much better and more original production IMO--or each of the three preceding it. As for them not playing well together, I call nonsense.

I am enjoying flipping through parts of the U2 by U2 book, and finding that they withhold a lot of songs for many years before they're done. "Wake Up Dead Man" first took form in the Zooropa days, while "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" dates back to Pop, before Bono came up with the falsetto part. He sang a version of it as his father's funeral.

also Bowie was churning out unremarkable album after unremarkable album for so long that i honestly didn't realize it'd been 8 years since the last one until you just mentioned it.

So has U2! But we won't agree here.

― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, August 6, 2011 6:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

hey the last few U2 albums are definitely unremarkable, sure (the difference is that Bowie's were also uneventful, and turned out at a much faster clip)

anyway that posted wasn't actually comparing Bowie and U2, i was really just remarking on wow it absolutely hadn't occurred to me that Bowie finally gave it a rest

'wake up dead man' goes back to 1990-1, it's on the Achtung Baby rehearsal tapes. I was very surprised when they pulled it out 7 years later.

I suppose the Edge, AC and LM can play well together, but I'm not sure they can really improvise, jam, go in and out of other songs, the way that a lot of musicians would. Take a country act like Union Station as a model of 'playing together' - a band really intuitive with their instruments and listening to each other (don't think it matters if you don't like country) - I don't see U2 as able to do that. I think they're too flat-footed, even the Edge too distracted by his epic boxes to really go with a flow. And even if the others can do it, Bono can't play an instrument well enough to join in - though his vocal improvisations on the AB roughs show a different way of joining in.

I think U2 can sound great together, playing a song they know, but I think there's a different sense of 'playing music together' and in that sense I suspect that they're still rather awkward at it.

yeah i don't think anyone's saying they're secretly great jazz musicians or anything, just that in the course of their songwriting method they probably stumble upon and then abandon some interesting ideas.

hopefully this Achtung Baby/Zooropa reissue box set coming out this year will have some cool stuff on it

If Zooropa was the sound of a band whipping something together over a short span, then certainly U2 used to be capable of stumbling into something great. Maybe the problem is that Eno and Lanois are not the producers they once were? I wouldn't discount that, as it's not like those once reliable dudes have been sterling across the board lately, either.

Zooropa was almost twenty years ago; maybe the band's not capable of writing songs that good anymore?

btw A Bigger Bang is better than any Stones album of the last twenty years, and certainly better than anything by U2 released since '93, but U2 could never rely on craft like the Stones (Bono has said repeatedly that they're the worst cover band in the world).

Yeah, Bigger Bang is mostly good, except for the song that sounds like INXS.

I blame Mick for that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loo1I2b7KWY

It was a filthy block of flats
Trash was on the floor

U2 has this problem that I've mentioned a few times here in different contexts, and that is they seem to have lost the ability to write compelling melodies. That last record doesn't have a single memorable tune. Think of how much more melodically engaging songs like "Lemon" or "Stay" are in comparison. I really think that for most songwriters, the "melody muscle" loses tone with age.

"melody muscle" sounds like a euphemism for Hongro dong

haha

I've got greedy. This is going to be a top sixty after all - twenty each on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I'll get things rolling some time tomorrow morning.

xp: "Moment of Surrender" has a great melody, whatever else you think of it--I started softening toward the lyric upon reading somewhere it was about addiction, which makes much more sense than love/salvation/whatever else, and it wound up making my Top 20. "Get on Your Boots" has a great chorus, as dreamy as "Stay" at high speeds.

Is it possible--just throwing this out there--that you guys listened to early-'90s U2 with more open ears?

If anything, I was more dubious of imminent "Achtung" U2 after "R&H" than I am of current U2. I vividly remember my reaction to "The Fly" as some variant of WTF? Nu-U2 I've given plenty of chances and always come away disappointed. To the albums, at least.

I loved U2 pre-Achtung Baby

when it came out I was keen, resistant and disappointed
it took me a while to come round to it

I still don't like it as much as 1984-7!

but I always liked 'the Fly'

I listen to the later U2 LPs a lot so I don't think a lack of openness is a problem here

Having spent so much time on this thread, I am going to allow myself to predict 20 songs that I think will do well in the ILM poll.

No, make it 22.

1 drowning man
2 the unforgettable fire
3 with or without you
4 beautiful day
5 i will follow
6 out of control
7 gloria
8 new year's day
9 heartland
10 bad
11 where the streets have no name
12 bullet the blue sky
13 exit
14 zoo station
15 until the end of the world
16 the fly
17 acrobat
18 love is blindness
19 numb
20 lemon
21 stay
22 daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car

maybe 'drowning man' and 'gloria' are red herrings

OK, a short list of 10 that I think will do well:

1 the unforgettable fire
2 with or without you
3 beautiful day
4 i will follow
5 out of control
6 heartland
7 zoo station
8 until the end of the world
9 the fly
10 lemon

Take it to "It's a musical journey" - U2 POLL RESULTS