U2 Ranked - #20 - #11

#20 – “Stay (Faraway, So Close)”

The top 20. Here we go.

I’ve written several times throughout the course of this series about the dichotomy between the dominant side of U2—the one that is very much not a traditional songwriting rock band—and the other side of the band that, at odd times, nonetheless comes out with songs that sound very “traditionally” written and composed. My 20^th-favorite U2 song is one of those songs. This ballad off of Zooropa is easily the song that has lasted the longest off of that set, and with good reason. It’s been a live staple and a centerpiece acoustic song on a few tours, and its almost Dylan-esque simplicity and more-straightforward lyrics give it a timeless feel. I’m surprised it’s not covered more often.

A simple riff on the guitar and a steady beat on the drums usher us in and Bono starts his story:

Green light, Seven Eleven

You stop in for a pack of cigarettes

You don't smoke, don't even want to

Hey now, check your change

It’s a sad story (and yes, this is U2, I am using the term “story” VERY loosely), and as it unfolds there’s that steady pulse of a riff underpinning everything. But when it comes to the chorus, things lift—not in the traditional U2 way, with an anthemic ringing guitar part, but in a more-subdued way, with a rising chorus that the guitar remains under, not over. This is a song that features some of Bono’s best lyric writing—“And, if you shout, I'll only hear you.” That right there is a candidate for his best line ever. This is a very un-U2 song and yet it works so very, very well as a U2 song. Does that make any sense?

#19 - “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For”

And here we have U2’s other U.S. #1, also off of The Joshua Tree. I will be honest. If it weren’t for the gospel choir-backed version of this from the Rattle & Hum album, this wouldn’t be quite so high on my list. But that rendition is so transcendental that it makes me love the song just that much more. That this has always been a bit of a gospel song is no secret, but that live version really brings the praise elements out.

The first verse proceeds more or less as it does in the recorded version, with Bono’s impassioned vocals over that simple, but elemental, riff. Then Bono sings the chorus. “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” Then the choir repeats it. Chills. Over the next verse (still just a tambourine and that riff behind them), the choir does more call-and-response with Bono. Then the full band comes in and we get some gospel solos before Bono joins back in. The mix of the band and choir is just so delicious and so right—it really brings out the best in the song. Finally, at the end, we get the choir on its own, with no instruments behind them, in an extended finale, and it is just so joyous, so full of life and love it knocks you over.

None of this is to say that the album version is anything less than a great song, and I do very much love the production on that version, with the way the Edge’s guitar riff has that tight, drum-head of a sound in the beginning and how Adam’s bass lopes behind the guitar, pushing things forward. It’s just a gorgeous piece of songwriting all around. 

#18 – “Breathe”

No Line on the Horizon’s penultimate track, this is a barnburner of a rock song, with an energy the band almost never quite captures in its songs. I thought this song would just slay live, but audience reaction seemed  . . . tepid. It is beyond me. An awesomely tribal drum beat and a buzzing guitar build tension for a while, almost 30 seconds in fact, before the dual piano-guitar riff comes in. Then we get hit with some lyrics from Bono that always for me had a bit of a Paul Simon feel: “Coming from a long line of travelling sales people on my mother's side/I wasn't gonna’ buy just anyone's cockatoo.” I mean, come on.

But what really makes the song is that chorus, with its big, sweeping reach:

Every day I die again, and again I'm reborn

Every day I have to find the courage

To walk out into the street

With arms out

Got a love you can't defeat

Neither down or out

There's nothing you have that I need

I can breathe

Breathe now

This is a song that begs to be played loud, and the way the Edge’s riff works with the piano just works for me on so many levels. A great, great U2 song that never landed the way I assumed it would. So puzzling. 

#17 – “Mercy”

“Mercy” is an odd duck of a song in that it was never actually officially released. A very late cut from How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, it quickly circulated online having actually been released on some advance copies. It eventually did surface as a live song on the 360 tour, and even as an official recording on an EP from that tour. But I came to it on that bootleg, and that’s where I fell in love with it.’

This is the aughts version of “Bad”—and by that, I mean it’s an epic, long, soulful, and yearning song marked by the repetition of a very simple riff. Blender Magazine described it as "a six-and-a-half-minute outpouring of U2 at its most uninhibitedly U2-ish.” This is a very accurate description of this song, and a good indicator of why I love it as much as I do. There is a galloping bass line and that hypnotic riff and they carry a lot of weight, but there are also moments that have as much energy and chaos going on as “Exit” did live. It’s never been clear to me why such a remarkable song got cut, and I am very grateful that it leaked the way that it did. 

#16 – “Kite”

This lesser-known All That You Can’t Leave Behind cut is a gorgeous, aching song about parenthood and letting go. Not quite a ballad, it nonetheless is a slow, reflective song, with a strummed two-chord figure giving it a slightly folksy feel. The verse is quieter, and looks more inward, but with the chorus we get a beautiful aching melody to these lyrics:

I want you to know

That you don't need me anymore

I want you to know

You don't need anyone, anything at all

Who's to say where the wind will take you

Who's to know what it is will break you

I don't know which way the wind will blow

Who's to know when the time has come around

Don't wanna see you cry

I know that this is not goodbye

Big, high notes, impassioned singing—this is heart-on-its-sleeve U2, and if that kind of thing works on you, as it does on me, it just kills.

Then, after a piercing and simple Edge guitar solo we get a hair-raising bridge with Bono singing at the top of his range:

I'm a man, I'm not a child

A man who sees

The shadow behind your eyes

Goosebumps. Every time.

The song ends on a wonderful little denouement of a coda, with that strummed figure back to the foreground, as the passion simmers down. A lovely ending to one of U2’s most emotionally affecting songs. 

#15 – “Miss Sarajevo”

The Passengers album, an odd experiment of soundscapes that was basically a look at what would happen if Brian Eno were a full member of the band, yielded only one real lasting song, but it’s a doozy. This reflection on what passes for normal during war is an uncommonly tightly focused song for the band, with the simple lyrics questioning what daily activities make sense to soldier on with in a time of war, with the hook being an actual beauty pageant that took place during the war in Bosnia. The melody is wistful and beautiful, but subdued, with Bono’s lyrics almost whispered.

Is there a time for kohl and lipstick

Is there time for cutting hair

Is there a time for high street shopping

To find the right dress to wear?

Here she comes, heads turn around

Here she comes, to take her crown.

Then we come to the bridge, and guest vocalist Luciano Pavarotti lets loose with a gorgeous, operatic melody sung in Italian. The contrast between Bono’s subdued vocal and Pavarotti’s impassioned one is breathtaking, and takes what would have been a pleasant and moving U2 song and pushes it into being a classic. When the song turned up on a U2 tour, Bono would take that Italian vocal himself, and there are live versions you can listen to that are truly impressive displays of vocal discipline and power. If you had told me after the Pop tour that Bono would, ten years later, be capable of singing like that, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

#14 – “City of Blinding Lights”

Is this song kind of transparently an attempt to replicate the arena-lifting epic anthem that is “Where the Streets Have No Name”? Yes. Does it equal its obvious forbearer? No. Is it nonetheless an uplifting, big U2 song that takes my breath away? Yes it is.

A ringing guitar riff yields to declamatory piano, emphatic guitar chords, rolling drums and then the main theme, a beauty of an Edge line at once both wistful and hopeful. This was a great live song, more powerful than the album version, with its ready-made chorus of “Oh, you look so beautiful tonight,” and served as a stellar tour opener. If you are not a U2 fan this is not the song that will change your mind. It is very U2, But if you are? Catnip. 

#13  -“All I Want Is You”

A soft, soft guitar. A whispered vocal.

You say you want diamonds on a ring of gold

You say you want your story to remain untold.

All the promises we make

From the cradle to the grave

When all I want is you.

And then a ringing, pure guitar figure echoing away in the distance.

This, the final song on the underappreciated Rattle & Hum, is as stately a U2 song as exists. Its reliance on strings (supplied by Beach Boys cohort Van Dyke Parks), and that methodical verse, with its repeated “You say, you need”s, add up to a specific mood that doesn’t really fit existing U2 moods and forms. My favorite part, though, is Edge’s masterful, multi-tracked guitar solo, easily my favorite of all U2 guitar solos. It’s just a breathtaking achievement in the way it builds and builds in intensity and power, over a full 50 or so seconds, which by U2 guitar solo standards is forever. And then we get the almost two-minute outro, during which the strings slowly take over completely until it’s all strings, doing this spacey, beautiful melody to finish the song off. Gorgeous. 

#12 – “Window in the Skies”

I never would have guessed my 12^th-favorite U2 song of all time would be a new track written for a best-of collection. This song, produced by Rick Rubin (who had been slated to work more extensively with the band in a move that never panned out), is a big, joyful burst of noise, a soulful and delightful expression of happiness. The song has big, crashing piano chords, ethereal “ah”s, 50s-bass, and beautiful lyrics about the beginning of things.

The shackles are undone

The bullets quit the gun

The heat that's in the sun

Will keep us when there's none

The rule has been disproved

The stone it has been moved

The grave is now a groove

All debts are removed

This is an infectious song, with its big, Phil Spector-like sound and old-school energy and it sounds noting like any other U2 song I have ever heard. 

#11 – “Moment of Surrender”

This is the centerpiece of No Line on the Horizon, and it is a stunning piece of songwriting and production. Slow and majestic, this is a monument of a song, with a simply astonishing vocal from Bono, singing in a range he by all rights should have abandoned years ago.

It starts with a slow and steady drum beat and some synth sketching out a soulful, melancholy melody. This builds to a crescendo and then we get a confident, assured bass line, some piano chords, and then the vocal. Bono is singing all the way up at the top of his range here, right from the very start, in a canny move—the high note isn’t the climax, it’s the starting point. The vocal melody is a simple, declamatory one, pretty in its quiet form. After three verses we finally get the chorus, and it’s a stunner, just a gorgeous melody set to a simple and poetic lyric:

At the moment of surrender

I folded to my knees

I did not notice the passers-by

And they did not notice me

The Edge sings along here and the combination of their voices is beautiful. The second chorus is longer, with additional lyrics, and after it we get a pushing piano and guitar duet that yields to a bluesy, patient, and careful guitar solo, with not a note wasted. This yields to another iteration of the chorus:

I was speeding on the subway

Through the stations of the cross

Every eye looking every other way

Counting down 'til the Pentecost

At the moment of surrender

Of vision of over visibility

I did not notice the passers-by

And they did not notice me

This is a song of loneliness on a modern age, of disconnect. It is beautiful and sad and big and grand. I love this song.

Until Whenever

U2 Ranked - #30 - #21

#30 – “Red Hill Mining Town”

There’s a story that this Joshua Tree single was meant to be a key song on the tour, a centerpiece of those concerts, but that it turned out to be just too damn high for Bono to sing night after night. Which is a damn shame, because this is one of the best things that amazing album has to offer. This is a muscular, assured, mature song, and the way that the bass and drums come in with such authority after the intro never fails to thrill me. I read a comment on a blog yesterday that rang mostly true—the assertion being that U2 (or more accurately, Bono and the Edge, I guess) are not good songwriters. By this, the writer meant that, while a songwriter like Elvis Costello can sit down and write a song, from start to finish, as a focused musical and lyrical thought, U2 writes by jamming and noodling in the studio until musical ideas crop up that they want to explore. This method can produce amazing songs in the end, but it is a more haphazard, longer, and less reliable process and likely the primary reason the band can take so long to produce new albums. As the blogger noted, in the last ten years, there has been one U2 album. I relay all of this because, as generally fair as I think the assessment is, I would argue that they do have songs in their catalog that sound, at least, like more formally “written” songs. This is one. There’s a tightness, and a formality to the writing that really works well here. Listen to that aforementioned moment when the band kicks in as a unit—that sound is more than mere “jamming.” As far as those high notes go, there is some glorious singing here, and it’s a shame it couldn’t be replicated on tour—this is one of my favorite Bono vocals. 

#29 – “With or Without You”

This was (I believe) my first introduction to U2. Released in March of 1987, it quickly became a heavy staple in the MTV rotation, which is where I first came across it. At the time, I was 12, and only just beginning to get interested in music. At first, the portentous, moody qualities of the video (more than the song) turned me off. All of that seriousness, and Bono spinning around with the guitar at the end. I didn’t get it. But as time went on, the song, one of only two U2 tracks to go to #1 in the United States, began to burrow its way into my consciousness. I’m sure it helped that, before I eventually got the album, I was bombarded by the song seemingly non-stop—that access probably made the difference in it turning the corner and really grabbing my attention. A ballad, maybe now tied with “One” as U2’s most-known ballad, the song starts with a soft drum beat, a high synth part, and then the dual entry of Edge’s “infinite” guitar and Adam’s anchoring bass line. That “infinite” guitar (very long held sustained notes) is a gorgeous effect, and the way the Edge uses those long, long held notes really gives the song a unique feel. Part of what makes this ballad such a good U2 ballad is that, while the verses are quiet and subdued, when the band gets to the bridge the music has a chance to soar and climax—making the song particularly effective live, which is, after all, where U2 really came to prominence as a band. I love how simple Bono keeps his singing here, staying for the verses in that comfortable low register, his voice filled with warmth. Then the chorus comes and we get the first “With or without you” in that same register, and then the next one up the octave in a gorgeous keening tenor. It’s only here that the Edge loses the infinite guitar for some ringing chords as the music gets to that soaring I spoke of earlier, climaxing in some passionate, open-throated vocalizing from Bono. It’s a very smart construction, and a very effective build, and it stays smart in the way that at the very end of the song it drops back down again, with a quiet few bars that lead to the outro. The Edge has talked about how his favorite moment in the song is that outro—how you expect to hear a big guitar moment and instead you get this quiet, shy, relaxed figure in the guitar. It’s very effective. Such a lovely song, and such a nice one to be the #1 hit the band had been gunning for. 

#28 – “Unknown Caller”

Over the sound of birds you hear a hum. Then a repeated, two-note figure on keyboard. Then a plaintive echo of that figure on the guitar. These playfully bounce back and forth to each other before the drums and bass come in as Bono sings “sunshine” in a sweet falsetto. Only then does the song proper start, as that two-note figure asserts itself and the volume kicks up. “Oh, oh, oh,” Bono sings over a now fully developed riff. Then we get the first verse, over some gorgeously hesitant, pulsing music. I love all of this, but it’s only with the chorus that this becomes a top-30 song: “Go, shout it out, rise up/Oh, oh/Escape yourself, and gravity/Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak/Shush now/Oh, oh/Force quit and move to trash.” I adore this chorus, for the way it becomes this bigger, arena-sing along thing, shouted and joyful and passionate. Just thrilling. But the real pièce de résistance is the bridge, where out of nowhere we get this big, thrilling organ sound that just fills the room with light, soon joined by a French horn, and then finally by a short but immensely joyful Edge solo. Man. How people can have found No Line on the Horizon disappointing I will never know. 

#27 – “Bullet the Blue Sky”

On the Joshua Tree tour, there was a chunk of the set list that the band called the “heart of darkness,” where they played some darker, angrier songs all bunched together. “Exit” was in that grouping. And so was this. This is perhaps U2’s heaviest, most furious song, and it’s been a set list regular since that first tour. It’s also just a great song. There are not many U2 songs that start with a naked drum beat. This does. Quickly added are some echoing feedback and a stern, martial bass line. Then the Edge lets loose with some big, slashed chords that threaten to turn into riffs but never do. Then Bono comes in with a growled, spitted vocal. “In the howlin' wind/Comes a stingin' rain/See it drivin' nails/Into the souls on the tree of pain.” After another verse, we get the first taste of the chorus, with some wailed “whoos” from Bono and crashing guitar chords. “Bullet the blue sky.” After the second chorus, we get a real U2 rarity: a spoken-word interlude where Bono delivers a monologue about U.S. fighter planes strafing small villages: “Outside, is America.” And then we get one of the few “traditional” Edge guitar solos in the U2 canon—“traditional” in the sense that it is less minimalistic, and more bluesy and melodic than the Edge almost ever goes for, Live, this solo became a highlight in any tour it was in (which was most), with the Edge coming up with new variations on the blistering solo for each new tour. It’s an electrifying U2 moment. I also love how the song ends, with a spoken coda that ends only moments after the band crashes to a halt.

#26 – “No Line on the Horizon”

I’ve talked in this series before about the importance of the album opener. The title track off of No Line on the Horizon is a stellar album opener. An electronic warble warbles for all of six seconds before we are slapped in the face with a fuzzed-out guitar chord backed by driving drums and a thrumming bass. After a few seconds of this riff we get a modulation up, then one back down. And then Bono—impassioned, impatient, excited: “I know a girl who's like the sea/I watch her changing every day for me.” Tight, focused, disciplined—this is a song that announces an aesthetic for the whole album. Then the chorus: “No line on the horizon.” Simple, direct, and assured. For the bridge we get Bono letting loose on a long, high, sustained note—as if to announce that his voice may be aging, but he’s not holding back. For the final verse the energy relaxes slightly, just so that it can kick back in with a vengeance for the final lines. This is a bared-back missile of a song, all forward-moving energy and lean muscle. It is a song that I thought would be HUGE on tour, and then . . . wasn’t. I don’t get my fellow U2 fans sometimes. 

#25 – “New Year’s Day”

From the first four U2 albums the band released before they really exploded with The Joshua Tree, there are really only four songs that have remained vital and alive today—not just as live songs that the band likes to haul out on occasion (like “40”), but as singles. Songs that, if they were played in concert, would not be a throwback or nod to a song’s history as a live cut (like “Bad”), but just regular set list songs that are an indelible part of the U2 catalog. Those four songs are “I Will Follow,” “Sunday, Bloody, Sunday,” “Pride (In the Name of Love), and “New Year’s Day.” War’s “New Year’s Day,” with its piano, martial beat, and political lyrics (“Under a blood-red sky/A crowd has gathered in black and white”), is very much a War song, and yet it has an earnestness, and pulse, and beauty that has kept it vital for three decades. We all remember the piano riff, and the helicopter guitar, but it’s important to remember that bass line, which provides the energy and spirit that pushed the song along. Bono’s voice is youthful here, still a little boyish, but strong and impassioned. Still, for me it all comes down to that piano riff—listen to it at the bridge there, so simple, elementary almost, and yet so effective I the way it works with the bass. I will always remember the moment in the Red Rocks video where the Edge finished the piano solo and then grabbed his guitar to launch into the guitar solo. Of course a guitarist pulling double duty is not new, but as a young teen I found that fascinating, and I kind of wish the band today would look for more ways to translate their music like that, and rely less on under-the-stage keyboardists and second guitarists. 

#24 – “Gone”

This is the underappreciated Pop’s big rock song, the bold “Gone.” A distorted riff starts things off, the feedback ebbing and flowing, before a big, fat bass brings in the rest of the band. In typical U2 fashion, the chorus is driven by the bass, not the guitar, but when the chorus comes we get, after some dramatic piano, a revved up guitar wailing out a high, seeking riff. “You changed your name/Well that's okay, it's necessary/And what you leave behind you don't miss anyway.” For a band with half its members using stage names that have surely supplanted their Christian names, this is a telling line. The song as a whole examines that sense of loss, and in its angry energy, its big rock sound, its fat drums, attacks that loss with a sense of real bite. Live, this song was a barnburner and it became a tour staple. 

 

#23 – “Wake Up Dead Man”

Pop closes with this bleak, pained, and magisterial stunner of a song, leaving the listener on very much not an up note, but troubled and aching. A simple guitar figure in 2/2 opens up the song, and over that (and a distant rumble of newscasts coming in over a static-filled radio), we get these lines:

Jesus, Jesus help me

I'm alone in this world

And a fucked-up world it is too.

Tell me, tell me the story

The one about eternity

And the way it's all gonna be.

As I have discussed elsewhere in this series, U2’s reputation (well-earned) as a “Christian band,” can obscure the fact that sometimes their songs are about doubt—about that Christian faith cracking and failing. Look at that lyric—the narrator is begging Christ for some assurance that the misery, pain, and injustice he plainly sees in the world are for a reason, or that there is a light at the end of humanity’s long, dark tunnel. “Wake up,” he asks in the chorus, “Wake up, dead man.” It’s a cry to a supposedly risen Christ to fulfill his promise to affect change here on earth. The rest of the song continues in that vein, with entreaties to an absent Jesus to provide some guidance and succor. It’s important to note that Jesus never answers (let alone arrives), and that, even as the song escalates and the music gets angrier, thrashing out, we never get resolution. Finally, listen to that ending—and remember, this is not just how the song ends, it’s how the album ends. Not with a sign of uplift, but with a tired drum fill just petering out, as if exhausted. In this song, at least, the band is singing about a faith that provides, not strength, but doubt and worry. This aspect of the band’s identity as “Christian” is often forgotten. More’s the pity.

#22 – “The Fly”

When I wrote about “Zoo Station” I mentioned that I had already been exposed to how different this new U2 sound for Achtung Baby was through the first single—“The Fly.” And I can still remember the palpable sense of disappointment I felt on hearing it for the first time, primed as I was for something like another “Where the Streets Have No Name” or “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Little did I know that almost 33 years later I would be writing about it as my 22^nd-favorite U2 song ever.

“The Fly” was a very canny choice as a lead single, and a brave one, in the sense that something like “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” sounded more like a typical U2 rock song than this did, and might have eased fans into the new sound in a more gentle manner. And yet the in-your-face choice of “The Fly,” really worked, even if the single didn’t hit with as much force as I’m sure the band was hoping (peaking at only #61 on the Billboard Hot 100.) A lot of the song’s staying power comes from that Edge riff, one of his all-time best, nasty and buzzing up and down like a pissed-off bee. The secret-obsessed, aphorism-laden lyrics help too; Bono gets off quite a few good lines here (“It's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else,” “It's no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest,” “Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief”). And of course there’s what the band dubbed Bono’s “fat lady” voice, a high, sweet falsetto he had rarely deployed before, but that with this album would become a key weapon in his arsenal. Finally, there’s that guitar solo, an all-time Edge great in the way it takes its time to toss out several discrete musical phrases—it has to be one of the longest Edge guitar solos ever put to record. Live the band really had fun with this song, especially with a newer version brought out for the All That You Can’t Leave Behind tour.

#21 – “When I Look at the World.”

Take a look (and listen) to this lyric—the chorus from All That You Can’t Leave Behind’s “When I Look at the World.”

So I try to be like you

Try to feel it like you do

But without you it's no use

I can't see what you see

When I look at the world

When I wrote about “Wake Up Dead Man” a few songs back, I talked about how it’s about a crisis of faith—a plea for Christ to “wake up” and bring about the peace he has promised. Similarly, I have always read this song as a fellow crisis of faith. That chorus, to me, is directed at Christ—and about the singer’s frustration that trying to be Christ-like is, well, hard—impossible, even. “I can’t see what you see.” In other words, “I can’t see the goodness and hope in the world that you see.” It’s there in the opening as well:

When you look at the world

What is it that you see?

People find all kinds of things

That bring them to their knees

We mortals see pain in the world—all sorts of things that “bring us to our knees.” Why can’t we see what [Christ does]?

And that sense from “Wake Up Dead Man” of being tired of waiting for salvation and peace is here to:

I can't wait any longer

I can't wait till I'm stronger

Can't wait any longer

To see what you see

When I look at the world

And then there is the final lyric:

I'm in the waiting room

Can't see for the smoke

I think of you and your holy book

While the rest of us choke

Tell me, tell me, what do you see?

Tell me, tell me, what's wrong with me

“You and your holy book, while the rest of us choke.” An angry lashing out at the promise of salvation that has been broken? That’s my reading.

Of course, none of this would work without the music, and the music here is gorgeous—yearning, lifting, beseeching—a classic U2 song, but in a vein where the music seems to never be resolving, to always be in the process of modulating but never getting to the modulated. A great song to lead us into the top 20—at long last!

Until Whenever