U2 - The Unforgettable Fire poll

prefer the 'wide awake' version, but maybe still 'bad'

i tend to think of this as one piece somehow

I haven't owned or listened to this in forever, but I think "Wire."

(Also, I used to have the poster up top. On my bedroom wall in high school.)

i love this album.
title track probably. or pride.
the "making of" vhs of this album is pretty cool. plenty of eno.

the guitars here really chime. It's all about the chime wrt 80s u2. along with some stomp.

Title track all the way. Super evocative. Yes.

what mookieproof said

title track, promenade, or elvis presley and america... love the whole thing too much to say, really. except pride. always skip that one.

This is probably my third favourite U2 album after Achtung Baby and Zooropa. I'm going with the title track which is just perfect and is easily their most underrated single.

http://youtu.be/LGA7ja3C35E

DAMMIT

http://youtube/LGA7ja3C35E

The instrumental breakdown in the title track is right out of Trevor Horn: the best kind of schlock.

Love this album, though I rarely listen to it any more. Think my vote goes to the opener, a timeless song containing such a heavy yet subtle mood and melancholy.

Me too

Surprised to see I didn't vote for any of these in the U2 ballot poll. At least half of them are outstanding.

where they got the title:
http://collections.museumca.org/?q=system/files/imagecache/collection_image2/S6-91.jpg

listening to it, 'pride' seems like the weak link. everything else is A+. then again, 'pride' was always my least favorite of U2's mega-anthems. our pal bimble was, iirc, a huge fan of this album.

The instrumental breakdown in the title track is right out of Trevor Horn: the best kind of schlock.

otm - it sticks out like a sore thumb on that song but I love it so.

Pride vs Bad

What he said ^.

Loved both so much when I was young, now they seem like utter pathetic songs to me.

Bad I can still listen to

I can't stand "Bad" or "Pride." I don't like that kind of U2 at all.

Pride has become Clockwork Orange like insufferable

'bad' on 'wife awake in america' is the better version

uh, *wide awake

poor dear, get her some hot milk

xp dammit

I guess you can write a song title out of the virtues, e.g. "Charity (In the Name of Mercy)."

"Miss You (In The Name of Markers)"

Pride be not a virtue tho

Wrath (In the name of Lust)

Torn between "Wire" and "A Sort of Homecoming," but the live performances of both are better.

Pride be not a virtue tho

― ship who you wanna ship (flamboyant goon tie included)

communist

hate Pride all you want for sanctimony or appropriation or overplay or whatever but that riff is all-time

still Bad tho, with a boost from the ghost of the live version

Free at last
They took your life
They could not take your wrath

voted "Promenade" because it is that kind of hazy middle American summer day, Coca Cola football radio radio

'bad' on 'wife awake in america' is the better version
lol and agree

this album is the quintessence of 8th gr for me, cannot choose just one but if i had to choose one to eliminate obvs it would be "pride"

OTM rogermexico.
I can understand the hating for "pride" and don't care much for it now but damn did I love it as a kid. It was one of the first things I wanted to learn when I first grabbed a guitar (of course it was silly without guitar effects !).
Great track anyway.
I'll have to listen to the album to make up my mind.
Maybe "bad".

That's it: I heard "Pride" as a high schooler in the early nineties and thought "ehhh what's he bellowing about?"

I listened through this afternoon and it just cemented my opinion that "Pride" and "Bad" are next level on this album (which I've never enjoyed as a unit as much as three preceding or Achtung Baby; it is better than the 2nd half of The Joshua Tree tho)

I'M WIDE AWAAAAAKE

When I explained to a co-worker what bugged me about the "early morning, April 4" line, he stared blankly at me for a minute and then said, "But the song's about Jesus Christ."

oh man
this is what makes liking u2 embarrassing

Pride is a great single, but it just doesn't fit with the rest of the album which is dreamy and diffuse (and perfect).

The Unforgettable Fire EP is a distilled version of everything fantastic about the album, too.

Love love love this album. I wore out my vinyl copy back in 1985. Best is the live version of Bad, but on this record it's A Sort Of Homecoming.

either limit the mlk appropriation to one song or make all the songs about him -- in-between is extra embarrassing imo

I think it's the Wide Awake version of Bad where he sings "rebulation" right? I could never get into that alliterative part it's a huge fumble for me but w/e

love 'bad' but it's been more than twenty years since i've been able to listen to it and not think of adam sandler's cajun man

According to this site, they haven't played 'Wire' since 1985... only played on the tour for the album, by looks of it.

xpost:

Yeah, you'd think it would be one that they'd dig out often.

Although they haven't played 'Twilight' live since then either.

Looking at it the first side of this is really really good.

they played "MLK" at the 2002 Superbowl, no?

Some of the original b-sides as well as the bonus track "Disappearing Act" on the remaster are pretty good to very good as well.

Huh. I still love "Pride" a bunch, though the Rattle and Hum version even more so. Had no idea there was such a backlash against it. I suppose its the kind of song that might represent, to many, what makes U2 so insufferable. My current feelings abt it might just be plain inextricable from my childhood love of it. I dunno.

It definitely sticks out on this otherwise far more textured and reserved album, which is probably the point where their post-punk roots were finally being shed once and for all (discuss?).

If I weren't voting for "Pride," I'd go with "A Sort of Homecoming."

Some of the original b-sides as well as the bonus track "Disappearing Act" on the remaster are pretty good to very good as well.

"Love Comes Tumbling," which originated in these sessions, remains one of my five favorite U2 songs, I think. It's the perfect link between old U2 and this era.

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

This album, and The Joshua Tree, were their last okay releases. After this it was a straight dive down to suk rok..

so wrong

nah, achtung baby and zooropa have a lot to offer!

Zooropa was their best record since Boy. Pop was nearly as good. After that, though, they were strictly dullsville: all broad, empty arena-rock gestures and pseudo-glam pastiches.

Zooropa and Boy are the two that I would immediately reach for if I wanted to listen to a couple of U2 albums.

Acthung, and after that I stop caring.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Achtung is pretty much a start-to-finish given for me. Zooropa is of a piece, and also awesome. In fact, I listen to pretty much all my U2 in reverse chronological order. Like, I listen to Achtung and Zooropa the most, Joshua Tree and Fire the second most, and the first three so rarely these days that when I listen to them I'm reminded of all sorts of stuff I had totally forgotten about. Which is different than hearing things in Achtung and Zooropa and Fire and Joshua Tree that I'd never heard before, which is one aspect that makes those discs so cool.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

love 'bad' but it's been more than twenty years since i've been able to listen to it and not think of adam sandler's cajun man

― balls, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 02:48 (three years ago) Permalink

true dammit

Happy to see the title track at the top of this.

love 'bad' but it's been more than twenty years since i've been able to listen to it and not think of adam sandler's cajun man

glad I don't know what this is

Yeah I do this too. FWIW it's a dumb skit where the whole point is to get him to say words that end in -ion so he can say "onyawn," "desolashawn," "isolashawn," etc.

Sounds great

terrible title and i have resolutely ignored the lyrics, which are almost certainly more terrible, but sometimes 'elvis presley and america' is right on time

Often the title track's my favorite U2: like they let Eno turn them into Trevor Horn producing Simple Minds.

everything about this album exists in perfect continuity from Seven and the Ragged Tiger

i have resolutely ignored the lyrics

Daniel Lanois and the Edge told Bono the lyrics didn't matter because the song would be interpreted correctly by the heart!

Never liked this album, but aurally the production took a right step in a new direction, and I still have the three singles.

"elvis presley and america" is the only dud on the album, just meandering and interminable

i appreciate this lone instance of meandering

love this album

I loved listening this one on headphones in the dark off a cassette as a teenager. There is a lot of space in the mix with all that echoes and delays going on.

Might need to load this one into the player as I have not heard it in a long time.

Always worth a watch; so many great bits, it’s really funny too

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

I way underestimated "Wire" when we did the artist poll. It's now one of my favorite U2 songs, pure fire

My hatred for "Elvis Presley" has largely burnt out into indifference. in the early ilx days I called it U2's worst song but now I think of it more like six minutes of nothing

This album was forever tainted for me by buying a defective cassette in my teens. I didn't listen to it as much as the other U2 albums because it sounded really muffled. By the time I started switching to cds, and I could finally hear it clearly, it was still murky in my mind.

If you find "Bad" overblown, side 2 of this is nothing but a slog.

When I explained to a co-worker what bugged me about the "early morning, April 4" line, he stared blankly at me for a minute and then said, "But the song's about Jesus Christ."

― Shart Week (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, August 19, 2013 1:55 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh man
this is what makes liking u2 embarrassing

― no fomo (La Lechera), Monday, August 19, 2013 2:01 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Still think about this a lot, I've had way too many exchanges in the past w/U2 fans similar to this. My brother has a friend who was a huge U2 fan but he bailed "when they abandoned Christ."

"Achtung Baby" is an album about Jesus and blowjobs, iirc.

I've met a couple of odd U2 fans lately that really underscored their popularity and the breadth of their fanbase. One guy called U2 his favorite band of all time, though couldn't name an album from the past 20 years or so. Iirc Journey was his second favorite band, or some other shit like that that counters U2's storied reputation as anything more than just another big rock band with lots of fans. Though I still think they are.

Jeff Tweedy recently published a defense (from his perspective) of U2:

I was talking with a friend the other day about how beautiful this song is and thought I’d give it a shot. I put it in a quiet singing key to keep it from going in any of our neighbors’ ear holes.

This continues a bout of U2 re-reckoning for me. There was a period where U2 (and Bono in particular) got to be a pretty convenient and irresistible punching bag for a lot of snobs like myself. But watching David Letterman’s unabashed joy at getting to hang out with them and watch them be (almost) normal human beings in Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with David Letterman left me almost as awestruck as I was when I first heard them on a late night college radio broadcast at the tender age of 13. I actually knew who it was before the DJ back-announced “I Will Follow,” based on the powerful descriptions of their sound I’d read in music mags for free at the grocery store while my mother shopped.

Nothing has really ever sounded the same since. No one really sounds like U2, yet their influence is baked into most modern rock music. Even when people deny it, I think it’s there. They fundamentally changed people’s perceptions of what a guitar-based rock band can sound like. Which would have made them an important band even if they had chucked their instruments into the River Liffey after their first few records. But they didn’t. They stuck together for fifty-plus years and now they’re an institution with virtually no peers. And like a lot of institutions, they’re easy to take for granted. That’s probably why they get so many punches thrown their way. Institutions get to be institutions by proving year after year that they’re able to withstand the slings and arrows of cruel criticism alongside self-inflicted missteps and embarrassments, yet still retain appreciable value.

https://jefftweedy.substack.com/p/one-u2-cover

Some good points there, but

They stuck together for fifty-plus years

Forty-plus. And they didn't stick together, as Larry isn't playing the Vegas residency.

("Larry isn't playing the Vegas residency" was NOT on my U2 bingo card in 1984.)

Tweedy talking a lot of bullshit there, they're institutions because they made a zillion dollars in the 90s so you couldn't stop them now even if you wanted to, you can pay attention to their output or not but what acts these days are drawing upon U2 as influences? Any at all? Enya is more influential of an institution surely?

lol I'm pretty sure contractually/financially Larry is "sticking" with them, just like Bun E. gets his cut of Cheap Trick money even though he's no longer in the band.

If I were Larry I would go to every Vegas show and heckle them from the balcony, then go gamble away my nightly share of money I earned despite not performing.

U2 have been institutions since The Joshua Tree. I'd argue a band becomes an institution when there's really nothing it can do to stop it from selling out venues, which I'm pretty sure is the subject of Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride."

Of course, "institution" may be just another way of saying "taken for granted," which undercuts Tweedy's argument a bit (more).

Despite never playing live, Enya's been passively doing residencies in offices and supermarkets and hold lines for decades. (Love ya Enya, don't ever change.)

picturing Larry like this during the Vegas residency:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPBmWw_1fxo

Coldplay has been the most successful U2 follower, strictly following their 2000-present model though, and there are other worse bands who have done the same too, but maybe no one particularly new to the scene idk.

Coldplay is boring obv, basically the foo fighters of chiming stadium rock, but I think "what U2 meant" is missed by anyone trying to follow them. Before they settled into their present course they were constantly changing, I think boy and October were the two most similar albums to one another. Even TUF and TJT, which has superficial similarities, were pretty different. One kind of hazy ambient and the other more muscular stadium rock.

("Larry isn't playing the Vegas residency" was NOT on my U2 bingo card in 1984.)

My sister and I used to joke that U2 would end up doing a Vegas residency. Joke's on us, I guess.

lol @ "fifty-plus", Pitchfork made the same mistake in their Surrender review. It's alarming.

I want to hear these fabled 1971 U2 recordings

Kind of post-psychedelic, a little bit of the Dead, some blues ....

11-year old Bono hits notes he could only dream of 10 years later.

Y'all don't have the 1973 bootleg where they opened for Slade in Dublin?

loved that version of 'i trew a brick few a windo m8'