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U2 - Winter
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2000-2009
  2. Originally posted by kris_smith87:[..]

    While I note your obviously being sarcastic I just want to say that I really enjoy Wild Honey haha

    I also think Winter is pretty good as well. Not their best, but it would be an enjoyable album track for me.



    All right, now you've got me into my 'deep-thinking' mode. I love this kind of stuff!!!

    I like the song but I just felt like being sarcastic. It's quite catchy...but not really 'hit' material. As I said before, hits don't matter to me and why they should to anyone else is something I just don't get. Maybe they want them to become commercially appealing but I don't. One album in three years is better left largely unknown because then it's not overplayed. Beautiful Day, Vertigo, Elevation, Stuck In A Moment and City Of Blinding Lights suffered badly from this...and still do to these days.

    Anyway, Winter is one of their greatest songs (for me) for some reason. I don't know whether it's the backing track - it could be too complex to play live - or the interesting yet completely strangely odd but appealing lyrics, I don't know. All I know is it ends up in that top ten u2start list and that's all that matters. Eno was right when he said it should have been part of the album, but I think taking away either Magnificent, Stand Up or Crazy Tonight would have taken away the rock vibe of the album - not that there's as much as some would like there.

    Like Levitate, I cannot get enough of how nice and how interesting it is - and like some other songs which got absolutely no attention or radio play last or this year - released around the same time as Horizon was going to be last year, it's well worth the listen. The same can't be said for me for a lot of the other 2000s tracks besides eight tracks on No Line (minus Magnificent, Crazy Tonight and Stand Up). If U2 continued like they are with their current direction I reckon the next album, whatever it is, could be yet another passer-by of the general public, but the one where the fans notice it and lap it up.

    If the best of ATYCLB was combined with the best of HTDAAB you'd have a killer ten-track album and would have been even more popular. You could not get a better combo, for me, than the 10 best songs from both the albums. Well, six from HTDAAB and five from ATYCLB. Yeah, people won't agree and say some of the songs suck and should have been left behind and maybe they're right, and maybe they're not.


    City Of Blinding Lights
    Miracle Drug
    In A Little While
    Wild Honey
    Crumbs From Your Table
    When I Look At The World
    Peace On Earth
    One Step Closer
    Original Of The Species
    Yahweh

    Both albums cemented U2's appeal for the early to mid-2000s, but it seems it's gone once again because they've made an album where people have to think harder than they did with mindless, dead, uninspired and fucking boring songs and actually challenges you with more mature themes than what the others had - isn't death and love a part of every other album, anyway?

    I hope Songs of Ascent or the next album, if it's not Ascent has no appealing rock songs or at least a few instrumentals or extra 'bolted-on' pieces like Viva La Vida. That's an interesting train of thought and I love that album because while I hear no rock, I heard guys with balls trying things and up to 2008 making the best album of the decade and probably it'll still be popular in 20 years. Will No Line achieve that, or will people look beyond the horizon to further, but more experimental, a la Passengers / Zooropa hybrid?

    Whatever they do, is sure to be interesting but I hope their worries about the album doing supposedly 'poorly' hasn't reduced them back to guys scared of branching out and making crap tunes worthy of a trash compactor. I think they've done more than well enough for this decade, more than most bands have achieved in 20 years, so why should a poor-selling album worry them? They have to remember the songs they made won't appeal to radio and I can't fault them for finally trying something as good as Zooropa or OST1, if not better.
  3. Originally posted by drewhiggins:[..]City Of Blinding Lights
    Miracle Drug
    In A Little While
    Wild Honey
    Crumbs From Your Table
    When I Look At The World
    Peace On Earth
    One Step Closer
    Original Of The Species
    Yahweh
    I like all of them, some even LOVE... Except One Step Closer and When I Look. Unbereable for me


  4. Congratulations. You've just dumped on two of my favourite U2 tunes from a great height in one day!



    What's next on your hitlist? NLOTH?
  6. Still not sure if I like this song.
  7. Originally posted by drewhiggins:[..]




    If the best of ATYCLB was combined with the best of HTDAAB you'd have a killer ten-track album and would have been even more popular. You could not get a better combo, for me, than the 10 best songs from both the albums. Well, six from HTDAAB and five from ATYCLB. Yeah, people won't agree and say some of the songs suck and should have been left behind and maybe they're right, and maybe they're not.


    City Of Blinding Lights
    Miracle Drug
    In A Little While
    Wild Honey
    Crumbs From Your Table
    When I Look At The World
    Peace On Earth
    One Step Closer
    Original Of The Species
    Yahweh





    this would make a good topic on its own, but id need the album to be a 2 disc set, Disc 1 ATYCLB, disc 2: HTDAAB
  8. I didn't really like the song at first, but man, did it grow on me. Lots of Eno in there, and a great progression. Love it.
  9. Rediscovered it recently, had not listened to it for months.


  10. I like the progression as well. The slow build is great. The Eno vibe is great too, sadly lacking in many other places on NLOTH. I can understand complaints about some lyrics such as "Butter on toast", but seriously is that any worse than some of the other lyrics on the actual album? I don't think so. Lyrically, the whole album's pretty disappointing. Actually, Winter has some lyrics which are better than most of the lyrics on the album.

    At twenty-one
    I was born a son
    And on that day I knew
    I could kill

    To protect the ones
    We put bullets in guns
    Or anything it takes
    To take a life until it's still

    Hardly top-drawer stuff, but that section hits home a lot harder than most of the lyrics on the actual album do. I think the track would have made a good entrance point for the war journo lyrics of COL instead of that track thematically just seeming to have wandered in from nowhere at the end. Winter starts out the narrative of a boy becoming a man and heading out to war, while COL closes that story. Winter is a big, slow, contemplative song, a perfect track to begin winding down the album. I'd close the album with the quartet of Being Born, White As Snow, Winter & Cedars Of Lebanon in that order. The album winds down better and more properly that way, plus Winter thematically sits a lot better next to COL than Breathe does. Breathe revs the album back up at a point when it should be winding down. I think that's one of the many reasons I come away from listening to NLOTH really wanting something more.


  11. Some of the lyrics could be a less clunky, but post 00s Bono seems to have a predilection for hammy lyrics.

    The only thing I dislike about the song atm, is the way he launches into the chorus
    Does anyone else think they way he sings the first chorus line ("Looking at the bruised") sounds incredibly harsh and rough?
  12. Yep, the track's unfinished in that regard. But I still find it worthy of inclusion, even in it's unfinished state. Heck, most of the album sounds rushed or unfinished anyway to me.
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Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.