#40 – “The Unforgettable Fire”
Strings and U2 are a rare mix. The Edge’s particular brand
of effects-laden guitar work usually obviates the need for the sweep and
grandeur rock artists often turn to strings to achieve. And yet there are a few
songs for which the band has turned to some dramatic strings (real or synth?—my
ears are too poor to tell. OK, probably synth.), and the title track off of The Unforgettable Fire is one. This is a
moody song with a particularly interesting tone—not the anthemic joy or bigness
of something like “Where the Streets Have No Name,” but not a ballad or rock
song either. The song opens with quiet keyboard and guitar, a quick feedback
chord echo, and then heavy, almost-ponderous bass and drums. There’s a sense of
landscape to the music, open deserts and long treks. The sense of drama is
added to at about the halfway mark, when the strings make a more overt
appearance at the bridge, declaiming with authority a simple, but more overtly
theatrical than usual for the band, melody—it’s almost like an Andrew Lloyd
Weber moment. And then that mood is broken with some orchestra hits right off
of an old Casio keyboard that lead into an elegiac passage that’s always stood
out to me as a favorite melding of lyric and music: “And if the mountain should
crumble/Or disappear into the sea/Not a tear, no not I.” The song ends with an
interesting progression of chords in the strings that only pops into place just
when you think the fade out is complete. This is a fascinating detour for the
band, and very effective piece of composition.
#39 – “Zoo Station”
I became a U2 fan right on the tail end of the Joshua Tree phenomenon. My fandom was
enhanced and cemented by Rattle and Hum,
both the movie and album, and so by the time 1991 came I had absorbed the
band’s back catalog and was as familiar as any teen with the band’s “sound,”
whatever that was at the time. So it was with no small amount of anticipation
that I (and my sister, who I had dragged into my fandom with me), sat on my bed
on the day of Achtung Baby’s release
and tore open the cellophane on the cassette. We had already heard “The Fly,”
and so had some inkling of the idea that this was not going to be The Joshua Tree II, but were still
pretty unprepared for the squall of guitar that opened the album; or the
dirtier, clanging percussion; or the electronic processing Bono’s voice was
being put through. Listening to the album now, it’s hard to remember how foreign this sounded to us, and how many
listens it took for it to start to make sense. But many years later, I’m pretty
confident of the greatness of this song (and album), and of how smart it was of
the band to kick off this new album with those sounds. When the chorus comes
around that ringing Edge guitar is there, if still somewhat disguised, and I
can hear that this is indeed the same U2 I fell in love with.
#38 – “Grace”
All That You Can’t
Leave Behind provides us with another reflective album closer in “Grace,” a
simple, gorgeous ballad about the idea of, well, grace. Opening with a simple
repeated guitar riff and bass line, this is a song that takes its time. It’s
odd for U2 to indulge in as extended an intro as this—especially one not about
a quiet build but that is basically a complete musical thought in and of
itself, without lyrics. We don’t hear Bono until 1:03 into the song, in fact,
and the intensity doesn’t ratchet up once he enters—he stays with the low-key,
quit vibe of that guitar and bass line, and while we get some accent notes and
synth chords in the background, it’s not until the second verse that the drums
kick in. And really, that’s it—this is not, like “The First Time” is, a song
that uses a slow build to achieve dramatic effect. It is instead a simple,
assured, sweet, and beautiful song about forgiveness and serenity. I make it
sound sleep-inducing; it’s anything but. “Grace finds goodness in everything.”
#37 – “One Tree Hill”
This deeper cut off of The
Joshua Tree was never a big single or hit (in the United States—in New
Zealand it charted at #1), but it is a favorite of U2 fans and in its own way a
centerpiece of the album. Written as a kind of eulogy for Greg Carroll, a roadie
from New Zealand who died in a motorcycle crash shortly before the recording of
the album, the song is a chugging, solemn, and yet not depressing ode to the
land and the One Tree Hill peak in New Zealand that Carroll had shown the band
years before. In typical Bono fashion, the lyrics are not specific to the
landmark or Carroll, but instead are more simply about the land and the
inevitability of life cycling over and over: “We run like a river/Run to the
sea/We run like a river to the sea.” There is something vaguely tribal in the
rhythm to the song, and the lilting, serene, rolling riff is an Edge highlight.
My favorite bit may be the pain Bono allows into his voice at the end as he
sings, over and over “raining in the heart, raining in the heart.” This is a
beautiful, sweeping song, and a highlight of the album.
#36 – “Running to Stand Still”
“With or Without You” may be the ballad from The Joshua Tree that everyone remembers,
bit this is really the ballad at the heart of the album. Opening with a
plaintive, almost-country melody on an acoustic guitar, the song quickly yields
to a quiet, mournful chord progression on the piano, with guitar quietly
plucking on top. Over this somber bed of music Bono sings “And so she woke
up/Woke up from where she was/Lying still/Said I gotta do something/About where
we're going.” Bono has talked over the years about how the song is about heroin
addiction in in Dublin's Ballymun flats, a public housing complex and the place
described in the song as “seven towers,” and the refrain “running to stand
still” is a wonderfully poetic way to describe the trap of addiction. While the
song builds to a climax of sorts with the bridge (“She is raging/She is
raging/And the storm blows up in her eyes”), it ends on a sad note of
denouement, with Bono playing a mournful harmonica. This was a highlight of the
live concert footage in Rattle & Hum,
with the band really making the quiet, hushed song work in a big arena setting.
#35 – “Mysterious Ways”
“Mysterious Ways” was a big hit for Achtung Baby, and in the United States the band’s fourth-highest
tracking song ever. This danceable, funky song is defined by two key elements—a
hooky, short riff from the Edge that repeats throughout the song, and an
insidious, sinuous bass line from Adam that doesn’t kick in until 40 seconds
in. Live, this song became a centerpiece of the Zoo TV tour, with a belly
dancer appearing on stage to entice Bono as he sang about a woman “mov[ing] in
mysterious ways”—although it would be the Edge that fell in love with and
married her. For me, the song rates as high as it does for the hypnotic,
building bridge, which ratchets up the intensity before yielding back to the
chorus. It is also important to note that this is yet another U2 song that
conflates religion and sex, or love, with the obvious allusion to He that
usually is said to move in mysterious ways. You know, people make fun of “You
Might up My Life” for a lyrical conceit that U2 has lived off for years.
#34 – “Magnificent”
As I have said already, No
Line on the Horizon seems to have gotten a reputation in the five years
since its release as a failure that failed because it neglected to offer up the
big anthemic U2 sound that made such a triumphant comeback with All That You Can’t Leave Behind. This is
such bunk that it almost beggars belief. This big, anthemic U2 song is exhibit
A. The soaring chorus and airplane-taking-off guitar are there, married to a
dance beat that’s much less of a dance beat than some of the Pop stuff. This is just a big,
back-of-the arena U2 song, and I really can’t suss out why it made less of an
impact than, say, “Beautiful Day.” It even has some of that
conflating-God-with-the-terrestrial thing the band likes to do—“From the womb
my first cry/it was a joyful noise.” I just don’t get it.
#33 – “I Will Follow”
Getting into some big guns. This is the first U2 song to hit
big, still a live staple, and a song that will almost certainly lead out the
obituary of both Bono and the Edge on the nightly news when they die. This is
the first incarnation of the minimalist U2 sound, and apart from some triangle
or light bell noise going on in the background is pretty indicative of the
music the band would continue to make for the next thirty-plus years. It kicks
off with an instantly identifiable Edge riff, still one of his most famous, and
a great example of how the band would do more with less over their entire
career. Just a machine-gun attack of a riff that threatens to oscillate forever
until a final jump up the scale at the end. This simple figure repeats
throughout the song, pinned down by youthful drums and a functional bass line.
Over this alchemy Bono sings about the transition out of childhood and into
adulthood, the theme of the album. This still may be one of my favorites of
Bono’s lyrics: “A boy tries hard to be a man/His mother takes him by the
hand/If he stops to think, he starts to cry/Oh why?” And then there’s the
bridge, where the machine gun stops and we get a pushing bass line and some strummed
chorus over the sounds of glass bottles clanking together. That moment when the
machine gun returns? Pure poetry.
#32 – “Until the End of the World”
One of the few character songs the band would do, this Achtung Baby album and tour highlight is famously sung by Judas to Jesus. And while
lyrics like “I took the money, I spiked your drink/You miss too much these days
if you stop to think” and “In the garden I was playing the tart/I kissed your
lips and broke your heart” make the point of view pretty clear, this is still a
U2 song, and so barely qualifies as a real “character” song the way a, say, Tom
Waits song might. It’s still a hell of a rock song, and was a live staple for a
few tours. Tribal drums kick things off after some seriously electronically
tortured Bono wails and then lead into a spiky Edge riff. The “chorus” is
really just the one line (“You, you were acting like it was the end of the
world), followed by the opening riff, but we do get a very nice Edge solo in
between verses, longer than he usually allows, and one that really took off
live.
#31 – “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”
This Grammy-winning ballad off of All That You Can’t Leave Behind is another example of that album’s
experimental nature. No, it doesn’t experiment with new electronic sounds or
dance rhythms, but in its piano soul stylings it was as much of a departure for
the band as was “Mofo.” Written in response to Michael Hutchinson’s suicide, in
a kind of tough-love format (“You gotta stand up straight, carry your own
weight/These tears are going nowhere, baby”) the song has Bono wrestling with
questions about what would drive someone to such a horrible act. And yet the
song, slightly tinged with melancholy though it may be, is upbeat, with those
soul and gospel piano chords doing a lot to keep the mood from turning sour.
The coda, with its inspirational lyric of hope, is a lovely a thing as the band
has ever written.
And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along the stony pass
It's just a moment
This time will pass
Until Whenever
