Top 25 U2 Songs: Honorable Mentions (Part I)

Starting another ongoing series by counting down my 25 favorite songs from the famous Irish group.

I’ve decided to take on another countdown of my 25 favorite songs by one of my favorite musical artists. This time, I’m tackling the Irish rock band, maybe the biggest band in the world, U2.

To provide a helpful bit of context, I’m going to quote from my first post that dealt with the band U2, which you can read in its entirety by clicking this link:

"Everything I ever lost now has been returned. The most beautiful sound I'd ever heard."

But here’s the important stuff:

I know I’m dating myself here (and some of you will probably say “good lord, he’s not that old”) but my high school years lined up with the release of U2’s big comeback album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. That album, which returned U2 to the top of the rock band mountain, prompted me to go digging into their previous output (The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby) and had me asking my mom if I could go to shows on the Elevation Tour. Out of that, a U2 fan was born.

U2 is a band I’ve thought a lot about. They’re a group I’ve listened to a ton, the band I’ve seen in concert the most (7 times). I love U2 for a lot of the reasons I love Springsteen—the epic scope of the songwriting, the themes of the lyrics, the soundscapes, the grandiosity. But while Springsteen does it from this essentially American perspective, U2 comes at it from this European (specifically, Irish) perspective. The sounds of each band are very different as they come out of different traditions, but I think there’s a lot of common ground and my love for one explains my love for the other.

I also, unlike (I think) a lot of people, don’t mind Bono’s… Bono-ness. I enjoy it. Sometimes it’s ridiculous, yes. But I also think there’s a kind of… sincerity or a sincere good at the heart of what he does that I kind of enjoy it.

Maybe I just like bands who’ve been on the cover of Time Magazine...

And now, perhaps prompted by listening to the episode on “One” in Rob Harvilla’s podcast series 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, I decided I wanted to write about this band again and make my way through their back catalogue.

In each post, I’ll be going through and talking about five of my favorite songs by Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. But before we get into the actual list itself, I’ll quickly offer up a few honorable mentions

“Stories for Boys”

I worked my way in reverse chronological order through U2’s discography, which meant my interest in their early work came as I got older. Digging deeper into new wave and the alternative music of the 1980s, I came to really enjoy U2’s earlier work, including this track of their debut album, Boy.

It’s so striking to hear these songs that sound like early New Order or a band like that while knowing what their sound would develop into in all its anthemic glory. While “classic” U2, the U2 we think of and love (or hate), is so precise, this feels gloriously rickety. It’s as though the song will crash and fall apart. It’s perfect in that regard.

“October”

I remember hearing this song first as the bonus track on the Best of 1980-1990 album the band put out in 2000. The song’s stately, somber nature is in contrast to the band’s frenetic post-punk on Boy.

It gives you a hint of what they’ll really develop into when they hook up with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Songs like “MLK” or even “Love is Blindness” start here. October is an album I haven’t really dug into or found a foothold with even though it’s the most explicitly spiritual of U2’s albums (and I am someone who has written and thought about the relationship between culture and religion), but the title track is one song on the album that has stayed with me.

“New Year’s Day”

While War is the album that got many people into U2, it was always somewhat inscrutable to me. But no one can deny “New Year’s Day,” one of the band’s first hits, helped by a music video that found its way into rotation on the early iterations of MTV.

The bass line is what I’ll aways fixate on with this song. While Bono and the Edge get most of the publicity and Larry Mullen Jr.’s drumming is so distinctive, Adam Clayton is a hell of a bass player and it’s worth noticing when he really shines. Also, the lyrics do seem so appropriate for New Year’s Day, when “all is quiet” and “I will begin again.” The song has loftier aspirations than just being about that January 1st feeling, but I do like how it has that resonance.

“Two Hearts Beat As One”

Something that has been commented on, even by the band’s lead singer I believe, is that U2 doesn’t really write love songs as we think of them; eventually, Springsteen got to that point on “Tougher Than The Rest.” But this track on War, probably my favorite song on that album that isn’t one of the big two (though it was released as a single), is an example of the band writing something fairly straightforwardly romantic.

“Two Hearts Beat as One,” written during Bono’s honeymoon, has lyrics that are personal all with the power and drive of the U2 songs that strive to touch on the wider world.

“Pride (In The Name of Love)”

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this song, which is one of the important songs in the band’s history. A song famously “about” (though to say the song is “about” kind of cheapens it all) Martin Luther King Jr., it’s an instructive song for how we should regard the group going forward.

We see their interest in the issues of America as they want to write songs that touch on our figures, our history, our issues. This comes off of The Unforgettable Fire, the first album they would do with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. It’s that first step when the group goes from that 80s alternative world to something even bigger. It’s when the aspirations become even greater.

Here’s the band playing “Pride” live as part of The Joshua Tree tour, captured in the Rattle and Hum documentary.

So be on the lookout for the first batch of five songs in my countdown of my 25 favorite U2 songs (and even some honorable mention posts mixed in there as well). Let me know what songs you hope making it on my official list!