Top 25 U2 Songs: Some of the Classics

Five of my favorite tracks from the band's "classic" mid-to-late 80's run of albums.

We’re moving along in our countdown of my Top 25 favorite U2 songs with five songs that come to us from the band’s “classic” period; namely, when the band released the The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree albums. Most of these songs are ones you’ve heard more than a few times. They’re staples of the radio, of MTV, of the music consciousness. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t great songs worth a little conversation and consideration. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

“Indian Summer Sky”

I had to get cute at some point and pick a song that wouldn’t end up on a greatest hits album. I thought about this track from The Unforgettable Fire was the pick.

Maybe I shouldn’t have included it and instead put a song on here that will be an honorable mention, but I digress…

It’s a song that feels very in keeping with some of the sonic choices on the album, ones you especially hear on the title track (which we’ll be talking about shortly). The ambiance, helped created by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois’ production work, gives the track an airy, space feel that fits the lyrics and, to sound like I’m a million years old, the whole vibe. I also especially enjoy the rollicking drums from Larry Mullen Jr., which deserve a special mention for this track.

Bono’s lyric writing shifted on the album, becoming more impressionistic and taking the approach he’s described as making “sketches” through the lyrics. Those sketches here invoke the idea of an Indian summer, when the warmth stays with you well until the fall. It doesn’t spell it out for you, but it makes you feel it. It activates that image in your mind:

To lose along the way the spark that set the flame
To flicker and to fade on this the longest day.

It’s a song that has only been played 9 times in concert, all as part of The Unforgettable Fire tour in 1984. On the one hand, it seems a little strange because it’s a track that could work in the setlists from any of U2’s distinct eras and shifts. You’d think it might be one that they dug out and used at some point. But, even if it’s a song I enjoy, I must admit there are “stronger” songs that “do” what this song does and those are the ones that the band frequently call upon in concert.

“The Unforgettable Fire”

This song is one I closely associate with its place as part of the U2 360 setlist as it’s where I grew to love it. Here is the song being performed by the band at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

I think much of what I liked about “Indian Summer Sky” is here on “The Unforgettable Fire,” just done to a higher level. Eno and Lanois’ influence on their sound is apparent with the ambient spaciousness of the verses. The Edge’s guitar has a strangeness, seeming almost alien and quite different from what you heard on the group’s first three albums. You also see the band progressing into their arena-rock selves with the chorus, which is a perfect one to be sung along to along with an enormous room of fans.

The album version features strings arranged by Noel Kelehan while Bono’s lyrics were inspired by artwork shown at an exhibit called “The Unforgettable Fire” featuring works by survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. There are elements in the lyrics that reflect his engagement with such weighty things. I’m always struck by this line from the final verse, which is an allusion to the Psalms and also “Stand By Me.”

And if the mountains should crumble

Or disappear into the sea

Not a tear, no not I

It shows the band’s ability to write songs that serve many purposes. “Unforgettable Fire” can be heard in an interpersonal way, as a song about people, but also about something like the Hiroshima atomic bombing and the experience of the survivors. It can be about something even more universal.

I think Bono’s lyrics and U2’s songs are closer to poetry than Bruce Springsteen, whose work is much closer to prose writing. A song like “The Unforgettable Fire” is to be experienced and contemplated, much like a great poem. It resists easy interpretation and classification; yet, it resonates with us.

“With or Without You”

This is where we’re moving into all-time classic, greatest of the greatest hits territory. The Joshua Tree is easily my favorite album by the band and I think it’s one of those rare “no skip” albums where every you want to listen to every single song. “With or Without You” is a classic of 1980s pop/rock, a song very much in the vein of the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” as a song that is both passionately romantic and also kind of terrifying.

The music in “With or Without You” sets the mood. I remember describing the song, particularly the intro, as "sounding like the night.” Perhaps I’m influenced by the way in which the band would project maps of the stars and constellations during live performances. But I can’t hear this song, particularly the beginning, and not think of the darkness of the night with the sound of the Edge’s guitar calling to mind the faraway light of the moon and stars in the night sky.

In a documentary on that classic album, the Edge described what made the guitar work in the outro of the song so distinctive and unique:

I always fixate on that outro and how the Edge is able to fill that space with relatively sparse guitar work. While there are more technically virtuosic guitar players in the history of rock/pop music, the Edge is one of the best in terms of using the guitar to create sounds. He’s been described as a mad scientist at times. It’s very apt given how he can think of these creative ways to use the guitar to create these different and wide-ranging sounds.

I also think you hear on “With or Without You” how the band is synthesizing the Eno and Lanois production work into their sound, where the elements are there but it feels a little more seamless. Related, here’s a remix of the song by Daniel Lanois, collected on the 30th anniversary reissue of the album, that I enjoy:

There are many great live interactions of the song: the version captured on Rattle and Hum (and those that came during the Joshua Tree tour) are great, and it’s been a great encore choice for their tours going forward. I’ve always found myself enjoying the way it sounded as part of the ZooTV tour. There isn’t a definitive recording out there that I can point to, but this version from Dortmund in 1992 gets across most of what I’m thinking about:

I think there’s this forlorn sadness, which is particularly heightened in contrast to the grandiose characters and personas Bono brought to the ZooTV stage, that’s noticeable and moving. I also like the way the song feels and sounds following what came before it in the setlist (a song that we’ll be talking about later on in this series…). But amidst all the wonder and spectacle of ZooTV, having a song like this that lays so many painful feelings out there really heightens the emotion of the song. Also, you have to love it when Bono brings out the “shine like stars” outro to the song.

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

Part of what helped my U2 fandom grow was that I was able to get my mom into them as well when I was in high school and first becoming a fan. This meant I always had an adult who would want to go with me to see them in concert and who understood why I’d want to go see them. Her favorite song has always been “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” because it reminds her of the songs that were sung in church when she was younger.

This quality of the song is… not just highlighted, but made incredibly explicit, through its inclusion in the Rattle and Hum documentary.

The New Voices of Freedom choir would join the band for the song during their performances in Madison Square Garden in 1987 as well, again making the connection so explicit.

It’s honestly astonishing to me that a song with a line like “I believe in the Kingdom Come, when all the colors will bleed into one” could become a staple of rock radio. But while the song is charged with a spirituality, it’s also not about (pardon the phrase) preaching to the choir. It’s about how even if you’re a clear-cut believer, you can still be longing for more, that you can still be searching and wanting and that those things are not contradictory.

I think about the back-to-back lines by Bono: “You know I believe it, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” For anyone with any kind of spiritual/religious inkling or interest and who does not want or expect easy answers through that aspect of life, those lines and this song are going to strike a perfect chord.

“Where the Streets Have No Name”

If I were trying to rank these songs by U2 to end with a final top 5, “Where the Streets Have No Name” would easily be my number one choice. It’s without a doubt my favorite track in the band’s catalogue. The organ, followed by the chiming guitar like church bells, the swell of the music and the crescendo of the rolling drums, the Edge’s guitar sounding both percussive and shimmering, Bono’s cinematic lyrics… so big and yet if not relatable, they feel real. I think of a word like “transcendent” and how apt that is to describe this song.

It’s a song about wanting to go to a place where the things that divide us (Bono has spoken about how the lyrics were inspired by a trip to Africa and seeing places where the street that you lived on so defined who you were and what you could do) all disappear and slip away. To reference “Still Haven’t Found,” a place where “all the colors will bleed into one.”

This certainly has spiritual implications, but it could also be thinking about the idea of America (and this is U2’s “American” album, they even wanted to call it The Two Americas) and this could be in play there as well. It’s also a song that invokes the great, vast landscapes of America and the feeling of driving through them (how Kerouac).

I wanna feel sunlight on my face

I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace

…

I'll show you a place

High on the desert plain

When I think about what makes U2 such a great band, and Bono in particular a great lyricist and frontman, it’s what happens on “Streets.” It’s a song that can be read so many different ways—is it about personal liberation? spiritual transcendence? acceptance within a country? It’s about all those things, or it can be, and by having lyrics and a sound that is so big (but not incomplete or slight) you achieve that.

Though the version on The Joshua Tree is excellent, this is a song that is totally enhanced when in the live setting. I remember during the Elevation Tour especially, being there on the floor and having that feeling of something truly special happening. That energy is captured in the live recording of the song from that tour in Boston.

For some reason, one of my favorite things about hearing this song live is the way the band uses the all-red background as the organ beginning to the song plays. I’ve never been able to figure out why they do it this way (I know it goes all the way back to the Joshua Tree tour in 1987), but I’ve always found it somehow so perfect and resonant.

Agree? Disagree? Missing something? Let me know!