I’ve written a lot in the past about some of U2’s more obscure gems, deep album tracks like “Running to Stand Still” or “Electric Co.”, but today I want to celebrate one of U2’s best-known songs, “Vertigo”, from 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (HTDAAB) album. “Vertigo” is, in my experience, one of those […]
Read MoreU2101 – Electric Co.
If you don’t know, “Electric Co.” was originally recorded and released back in 1980 for inclusion on U2’s debut album, Boy. Bono has explained the song by saying that it’s about a friend of his who suffered from some mental problems and was subjected to electric convulsive therapy, which, in Bono’s view “made him worse.” […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
One of U2‘s most rockin’ songs is their single from the 1995 film Batman Forever, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.” The song’s title first appeared, in an obscured fashion, on the cover to their 1993 album Zooropa, and in many ways could serve to explain the ways in which Achtung Baby, it’s […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Acrobat and Love is Blindness
I remember the first time I ever heard “Love is Blindness“, the first thing that I noticed was the similarity between the melody of the organ intro in that song to the vocal melody that Bono sings during some parts of “Acrobat“, the preceding song on Achtung Baby. Since that time, I’ve come to appreciate […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Live and Rare
I thought that for our U2101 chat this week, we might do something a little different, and talk about a few of the songs that U2 have played live but which have never seen an official release. It hasn’t happened too often in their long career – it seems that the band prefer to rely […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Walk On
I was managing a record store back in late 2000 when All That You Can’t Leave Behind was released, and I remember being really excited with the way the album was being received by music buyers. One shopper, in particular, whose comments have stayed with me told me that he liked “the one that sounds […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Desire
I’ve never quite been able to get my head around why Rattle & Hum was so roundly detested in the critical community. I’ve read all about how people interpreted the fact that U2 were celebrating some of music’s brightest stars to mean that the band thought they themselves were one of those stars. I’ve heard […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Bullet the Blue Sky
“Bullet the Blue Sky” is one of those songs that I always like to think of as belonging to U2-fandom. There are some songs, like “Beautiful Day”, “One”, or “With or Without You”, that are universally acclaimed and beloved, even by those who don’t know much about the band. In fact, I suspect that there […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Stay (Far Away, So Close)
Zooropa occupies a strange place in U2’s discography, somehow managing to simultaneously be the most and least accessible album they’re recorded. I say the least accessible because its got some of the most adventurous, sonically experimental music that U2 has put out, with songs like “Lemon”, “Numb”, and “Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car” […]
Read MoreU2 101 – Sunday Bloody Sunday
“Sunday Bloody Sunday” is one of those songs that a lot of U2 fans seem to have mixed feelings about. I hear a lot of talk about how it’s one of those “warhorse” songs, like “One” or “Pride” that the band’s been playing regularly for too long, and how it’s time for the song to […]
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