Originally posted by Macphistfly:[YouTube Video]
See you in Rome.
Originally posted by vanquish:[..]
Wow, wasn't expecting that. this is like a "they're actually playing Ultraviolet again!" moment.
For some u2 fans I'm pretty sure this is like the holy grail.
I don't actually think Mercy is standout, it is promising, the first part of the song (and the very last bit) is great but the middle sort of degrades into HTDAAB/GOYB/IGCIIDGCT style Bono 'trying to be earnest but coming off cheesy' with him shouting out lines like "love has got to be with the weak/only then love gets a chance to speak" or "love is the end of history/the enemy of misery".
Not very good - but I always hoped that it was just due to the song being a work in progress and Bono would eventually replace them with better lyrics like those in the extended intro verse, which are admittedly great.
Originally posted by vanquish:[..]
Not very good - but I always hoped that it was just due to the song being a work in progress and Bono would eventually replace them with better lyrics like those in the extended intro verse, which are admittedly great.
Originally posted by yeah:[..]
Interesting, you doubt Every breaking wave being work in progress but confirm that Mercy was/is...
Bono:
I would like to have one of our songs on the pop charts. It's my only disappointment [with No Line on the Horizon] People love, love the album it's had rave reviews, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. But I would like a few pop songs on it. So I would like, even on Songs of Ascent, songs that have a shot at that. I would like to come back with a new single in the spring — "Every Breaking Wave" was Jimmy Iovine's favorite song, and lots of people got upset when we took that off.
That idea will come to the forefront on U2's next album -- a sister release to No Line on the Horizon, a Zooropa to its Achtung Baby, which the band plans to put out in the next year. Bono already knows the title -- Songs of Ascent -- and the first single, a surging anthem called Every Breaking Wave that was left off No Line at the last minute.
It's never a smooth process, finishing off a U2 record, and this seems to have been no exception. Was there much chopping and changing down to the wire?
There was sort of an 11th hour scenario, because we got caught up on the running order towards the end, primarily because we'd all come to the conclusion that How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb had suffered by having a compromised running order, and we didn't want to make the same mistake this time around. So, we pulled White As Snow out of the 'maybe' file, and that seemed to balance some of the up-tempo rock tunes. It gave the listener a break.
We had another track called Every Breaking Wave which, if we'd included it, would have made for a very long record. Anyway, we decided that song just hadn't reached its potential, so, we put it back in the cupboard for the next record (laughs)."
Originally posted by vanquish:[..]
Well they weren't playing Mercy to press were they? I don't remember seeing it in any of the HTDAAB album previews.
Unlike EBQ, which we've been told that it was going to be on the album and that it was cut to shorten it's running length. So it's not quite the same.
Originally posted by yeah:[..]
Right, Mercy wasn't on any album review. But its lyrics were in the booklet of the Deluxe thingy and it was on a pre-release version of the album. Supposedly didn't make it on the album because it was too long. Not that different.
Anyway, I was just wondering, no harm intended.
Originally posted by yeah:[..]
Right, Mercy wasn't on any album review. But its lyrics were in the booklet of the Deluxe thingy and it was on a pre-release version of the album. Supposedly didn't make it on the album because it was too long. Not that different.
Anyway, I was just wondering, no harm intended.
Originally posted by vanquish:[..]
Hmm, didn't know that.
Were the lyrics on every deluxe set of HTDAAB or only the one that came with the track on it?
It is possible that it was also cut for being too long, I just never heard anything that suggested it.
All the talk around Mercy was focused on it being unfinished and still a work in progress (which would seem to be the case by some of the lyrics). IIRC the band also said it was still a work in progress too.
As it stands, the album is three seconds shy of an hour and, as Bono says, "too much of a good thing is a bad thing," so drastic measures need to be taken.
"I have a theory," Mullen begins, and a reverential silence descends as the drummer -- traditionally the first band member to be shouted down in these situations -- states his case. After just five minutes, it has been unanimously decided that the track "Mercy," a six-and-a-half-minute outpouring of U2 at its most uninhibitedly U2-ish, must go.
Originally posted by aussiemofo:I'm gonna piss my pants if they play Mercy.