Top 25 U2 Songs: The early years

Officially beginning the countdown with a post on five of my favorite songs from the beginning of U2's career

It’s time to get into it and talk about the first set of songs from my Top 25 U2 songs. This first batch features songs from the band’s first albums as well as one song off of an album that reflected a sonic transition and transformation for the group. Without further ado…

“Out of Control” and “The Electric Co.”

I’m going to tackle these two songs together, which are my two favorites from the band’s first album, Boy. Listening to these tracks, I’m left thinking about the fact that the band had Martin Hannett produce the “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” single. You hear elements of his production and what he brought out of a band like Joy Division on these songs but with even greater energy (what you’d expect from U2) even if he’s not the one producing here.

The speed and intensity with which the band are playing make it feel like the songs are going to fall apart like something burning up reentering Earth’s atmosphere. I guess that’s appropriate when one of the songs is called “Out of Control.”¹

“Out of Control” is a song, as Bono put it in 1979, “about waking up on your 18th birthday and realizing you’re 18 years old and that the two most important decisions in your life having nothing to do with you–being born and dying.” I’ve always enjoyed that view the song takes of the eighteen year old protagonist realizing something, seeing the bigger picture.

I’ve also always thought this verse was a kind of mission statement for the band.

Boys and girls

Going to school, and girls

They make children

Not like this one

Namely, I like the notion that there’s not really a group like U2 (and, specifically, a singer quite like Bono).

This version of the song, performed at their 2001 concert at Slane Castle, reinforces in my mind the idea that this some kind of… origin point for the band (as Bono notes, it was their first single).

What stands out the most on these early U2 songs is the Edge’s guitar. This is the point where it is anthemic before it’s truly anthemic. But the chiming sound he creates, the music ringing out like a bell, is so distinct. I was watching this video of a live performance of “Out of Control” when they were touring the United States promoting Boy and the Edge’s work was what jumped out to me initially.

“The Electric Co.” is a track that I gained an appreciation later on in my U2 fandom as those early albums became my go-to choices (I discussed this briefly in my first post in this series). It’s definitely an out of control song (maybe more than “Out of Control”) and also one I’d play during my sessions as an alternative 80s music DJ because it could work alongside early Cure and New Order tracks to get people moving. I also love the vocals, especially the backing ones, on the song’s chorus.

“Gloria”

One thing I love about U2 is that their lyrics wrestle with spiritual and religious themes. October is famously where they’re the most explicit about that, but having that moment early on that makes it quite clear this is an interest or concern of theirs is useful for understanding the rest of their work.

“Gloria,” my go-to song on that album, certainly makes that clear with the Latin in the chorus. The verses are a little bit less explicit, and yet with that bit of context you can easily tell what this song is about:

I try to sing this song

I, I try to stand up

But I can't find my feet

I try, I try to speak up

But only in you, I'm complete

That language of “try[ing] to sing this song” and “speak[ing]” is all very much out of the U2 framework that would exist for their entire career. They want to make the utterance, to give voice to something that is meaningful and powerful. Here, in this moment of youthful extreme devotion, they make the ties to the divine quite explicit. The explicitness of it goes away throughout the rest of their discography, but those concerns do not go away. It makes sense, as a band is starting out, that they might be a little more direct at the outset and then things will become a little bit more guarded and implicit as they mature.

The song also features the classic early Edge guitar, chiming and ringing out like a bell. Adam Clayton’s bass work also gets some time to really shine and get the attention it richly deserves.

Bono and the Edge get the most attention with the group, but the rhythm section of U2 drives much of their sound and deserves their flowers.

“Sunday Bloody Sunday”

The thing about putting this list together for U2 is that you’ll get to a song like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that’s so big and you both feel like you can’t say anything about it and also that you should say everything (because it’s such a big, important song).

Of course the thing you notice most about “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is Larry Mullen Jr.’s drumming. The martial beat, something close to what you would hear in a drum corps than a rock band, gives the song a special kind of energy. If you asked me for the most… famous, most distinctive, most whatever drums parts in popular music history, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” would make that list.

While the album version is iconic and the live version captured on Under a Blood Red Sky is perhaps more well known insofar as recorded live versions go, I always think about the performance captured in Rattle and Hum from a 1987 rendition of the song at their Denver, Colorado concert.

During the performance captured on Under a Blood Red Sky, Bono famously told the crowd the song “isn’t a rebel song.” I believe that’s examined even further in the Rattle and Hum performance and the profoundly raw hurt the band displays after the news of the Enniskillen bombing by the IRA.

What good comes from, in this case, “bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old-age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day?” The band famously sidelined the song a bit after this performance because of how raw and emotional it was, and I think it also points to how it captured what the song was about. The tension between a cause like independence for Northern Ireland but those who think the way to achieve that is through terrorist violence and killing their countrymen is what U2 wanted to put on display.

This is a song that’s not about a simple binary but rather the condition that pits people against one another.As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how this is a brave and challenging position to stake out and write something about.

And the battle's just begun

There's many lost, but tell me who has won?

The trenches dug within our hearts

And mothers, children, brothers, sisters

Torn apart.

It’s a song that can seem simple but as you dig a little deeper you realize it’s much more complex (I think about this song and Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” in similar ways).

“A Sort of Homecoming”

The first major shift in U2’s sound came with 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire. While those first three albums were very much out of the post-punk playbook, their work with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois took them in a very different direction. On the opening track, you immediately hear these new soundscapes. The music is lush and spacious particularly when the songs are compared to the stuff on their first three albums. It starts with the album’s first track, “A Sort of Homecoming.”

You hear sound of Larry Mullen’s drums, the chime of the Edge’s guitar, Adam Clayton’s bass, but they all feel a part of one soundscape where they also all blend together. I think about Eno’s influence and his interest in ambient music as being responsible for this particular shift.

Bono’s lyrics take on a wider view that matches the music, drawing on a quote from the poet Paul Celan that “poetry is a sort of homecoming” and using it as a jumping off point. We can understand these ideas as having to do with a literal homecoming but also more metaphorical returns.

And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, 'desire' time
And your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape.

And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.
Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight at last I am coming home.
I am coming home.

A song like “A Sort of Homecoming” is when Bono makes a leap as a lyricist, in my eyes at least. There are layers to what he’s writing about here, which allows for… if not different interpretations then at least different engagements.

Appropriately enough, one of my chief memories with this song is hearing busted out and performed live in my hometown (at Oracle Arena in November of 2001) complete with a fan joining the band on stage to play guitar.

We’ve covered the first five songs on my official list of top 25 U2 songs—”Out of Control",” “The Electric Co.,” “Gloria,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and “A Sort of Homecoming.” What songs off Boy or October or War did I leave off (we’ve got a couple more coming from The Unforgettable Fire in the next entry, so stay tuned!)?

1. '“Out of Control” actually appeared on the band’s debut EP Three but was re-recorded with Steve Lillywhite producing for the version you hear on Boy.