I know that a lot of you are probably groaning to yourselves after reading the title up there “The Fly?!? Oh, man! I hate that stupid song!” while just as many of you (I’m looking at you here, Joe) are jumping up and down with joy. My first experience with the song came right after […]
Read MoreU2101 – Slow Dancing
As I matured in my U2 fandom, there was a period of transition from collecting albums to hunting down more obscure tracks, like one-offs for soundtracks and collaborations with other artists. One of my favorite discoveries from this period was the 1993 B-side, from the Stay single, “Slow Dancing“, which was originally written by Bono […]
Read MoreU2101 – Vertigo
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 […]
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