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  1. Agreed.
  2. Yes, very commical that my thread has 13 pages. Whatever.

    Here is one thing I picked up on.

    With ATYCLB, the one track that does seem to get ripped on a lot is Grace. To me, next to Beautiful Day, Walk On and Peace on Earth, which are the 3 songs that shift the mood of the album, Grace is the most important tune on the album. It sums up the entire album. The album starts off positive with the first 3 songs, does a little soul searching in the middle 4, then gets serious starting with POE. Grace brings the album full circle back to the Beautiful Day that started the whole thing off. No matter how bad things get in this world "Grace makes beauty out of ugly things."

    Grace is one of the most beautiful tunes U2 have ever recorded. I can never figure out why this tune gets picked on so much by U2 fans. It is so important to the cohesiveness of the album.


    "Grace, she carries a world on her hips
    No champagne flute for her lips
    No twirls or skips between her fingertips
    She carries a pearl in perfect condition
    What once was hurt
    What once was friction
    What left a mark no longer stings
    Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things
    Grace finds beauty in everything
    Grace finds goodness in everything"

    Beautiful lyrics from a beautiful song.
  3. You're absolutely right. Grace is a great song and album closer and recapitulates the themes initially sounded in "Beautiful Day." I'm not sure what people find objectionable about it. It doesn't have an immediately catchy tune, not a single, but album closers -- 40, MLK, Mothers of the Disappeared, Love Is Blindness, for example -- rarely are. I think ATYCLB has the cohesiveness that HTDAAB lacks, which is why its a stronger album and the best after JT and AB. I go back and forth over whether ATYCLB or War is a better album, but I tend to think War is underrated in the U2 catalogue.


  4. The reason I dislike Grace is on a musical level. There's nothing that grabs my attention, holds me or anything. I completely empathise on a thematic level - I completely agree that the actual substance of the song itself is very meaningful etc., but I can't pretend that I like it on a musical level lol.
  5. Gracedoesn';t have a great melody, but it works as an album closer.

    By the way, after listening to NLOTH, I think HTDAAB is going to be seen as a transitional album. On HTDAAB, you get an an attempt to bring together different aspects of U2s classic sound with contemporary rock, which it seems at first listen they are doing more successfully on NLOTH.

  7. My computer is really, really slow for some reason and I'm having rouble posting.. I'll have to log in later.
  9. To my ears the line "Grace is a name for a Girl, it's also a thought that changed the World" is the single most painful line that Bono ever wrote or sang. To me it completely destroys the song because it explicitly explains its main metaphor instead of leaving it for the listener to discover. It's cheesy. It's well meant instead of well done. It's like assuming the listeners are too stupid to get it unless it's rubbed to their noses. It's like reading a book which you already know the end of because the author explains it on page 2. The rest of the song never recovers from that single line. They should have left the line off, and they'd have a good album closer.

    My 0.02, as always. No offence intended. Peace and love.

    Alex
  10. Peace on Earth has great lyrics, better than Grace. I think G gets a lot of flak because it is a nothing song, and is very chill. I think grace is good, but not the best on the album. an effictive closer however
  11. I love Grace. (But only for setting my alarm clock to in the morning for my wake-up song. Very mellow way to wake up...very calm and soothing. Much better than Sunday Bloody Sunday)
  12. Originally posted by haytrain:I love Grace. (But only for setting my alarm clock to in the morning for my wake-up song. Very mellow way to wake up...very calm and soothing. Much better than Sunday Bloody Sunday)


    Bullet the blue sky would be hell to wake up to. or really exciting
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