namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
Welcome to the U2 Best Non-Album Track Survivor!
I've been meaning to do this for a while, and now seems like as good a time as any, with it being the holidays and there being no U2 news on the horizon.
Best U2 Song survivors have become boring because everyone knows what the final few contenders will be before the thing even starts, but I think this will be much more interesting, as we will only be looking at non-album tracks.
First off, I should define exactly what a non-album track is for the purposes of this competition: It is any track that did not appear on a proper U2 album(and we will consider Passengers to be a proper U2 album, so those tracks will not be competing) but that were officially released or that we have at least one complete version of. This includes:
1. B-Sides(traditional b-sides, newer albums' 'bonus tracks', 'Unreleased & Rare' stuff, and later-finished b-sides from the re-issues)
2. A-Sides from standalone singles(i.e. Another Day, 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, A Celebration, HMTMKMKM, Ordinary Love, Invisible)
3. Tracks that were never released but that we have more-or-less finished leaked studio versions of(i.e. Be There, Wild Irish Rose, Mercy, a whole handful of pre-Boy demos)
4. MDH tracks(TGBHF, Stateless)
5. Tracks that were included on previous best-ofs(i.e., Sweetest Thing, Electrical Storm, THTBA, WITS)
6. Songs that were preformed either at a tour gig or for a television broadcast, but that never had studio releases(i.e. Womanfish, She's A Mystery To Me, We Love You, North Star, Glastonbury, Return Of The Stingray Guitar, some pre-Boy stuff)
We will exclude songs that were only ever heard in soundcheck or beach clips, and the Salome outtakes material(because it's just too subjective deciding what's 'finished' and what's not from those recordings). Additionally, we will also exclude covers - this survivor will be for original material only.
It is important to note that some of these tracks have multiple versions. With one exception, each song will only have one instance competing - so for example, Electrical Storm gets one entry in the competition, not two. Same for Slow Dancing, Holy Joe, I'm Not Your Baby, Sweetest Thing, Winter, etc. The one exception is Fast Cars/Xanax & Wine, which I feel are different enough in structure and sound to warrant separate entries.
It is important to note that you will be encouraged to consider each song on its merits as a song and not on any particular version or recording of it. This means you can vote for Party Girl or 11 O'Clock Tick Tock based on a live version and not steer away from it because the studio version might be sub-par to you, for example, or that you can vote for Lady With The Spinning Head regardless of which version you prefer, or that you can vote Sweetest Thing regardless of whether you prefer the single version or the original version. That kind of thing.
With all this in consideration, we have a list of 94 tracks. Before you groan about how long it would take to get through 94 tracks, worry not, we're going to eliminate a lot of them quickly. We won't even get to a 'traditional' survivor until there's only 15 tracks left. I don't want this to drag on and on, as history shows participation trails off the longer these things go on. So I've come up with a competition structure that I think can play out in about a month.
1. The 94 tracks will be divided into four separate 'eras' - 1979-1983, 1984-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-present. Yes, there was almost as much material in the five years between 84 and 89 as there has been in the 16 years between 2000 and now. I will post a full spoiler-tagged list of the songs in the competition by era at the bottom of this post.
We will run a three-day traditional, vote-for-your-LEAST-favorite, survivor just for these eras themselves(not on the individual tracks), in order to determine the forum's order of preference of the eras in terms of non-album material. We will use this order of preference to weight how many tracks from each era advance.
2. We will run four polls, one for each era, each lasting 2 days, in which users will vote for their top 10 FAVORITE tracks from that era. Depending on the weighting established in #1, a certain number of tracks will advance for each era.
Most Popular Era = 10 tracks advance
Second Most Popular Era = 7 tracks advance
Third Most Popular Era = 7 tracks advance
Least Popular Era = 6 tracks advance
3. Once those four polls are done, we will have a total of 30 tracks that will have advanced, and they will all be put into one 2-day poll where everyone will vote for their top 15 FAVORITE tracks out of the 30, and the top 15 overall vote-getters will advance.
4. At this point, we will have a final 15, and a traditional, vote-for-your-LEAST-favorite, one-elimination-a-day survivor will commence, and take two weeks to finish.
If participation is high enough, I might consider starting the 'traditional' survivor at the final 30 instead of the final 15, but that would take longer, and people would really have to be in favor of it. It probably won't happen, but I'm leaving the possibility open.
I think this structure will prevent the whole thing from going on for too long, and protect against superior tracks from more preferred eras being left behind while other tracks from less popular eras advance, and also against the tedium of having to eliminate a fair number of tracks that not-so-many-people are that familiar with one-by-one. I'm open to changing the distribution of the weighting if 10-7-7-6 isn't to peoples' liking. On the whole though, I'm pretty happy with the format laid out here.
Each poll will contain YT links for all unreleased, demo, and live-only material so that people can familiarize themselves/jog their memory. I'll probably include links to the 'finished later' b-sides from the re-issues as well as not everybody is familiar with all of them.
Any questions/comments/suggestions can be posted here, but I'm looking to start this on Monday(I want this thread to have a couple days and I don't want to start on a weekend). I hope you will all participate.
Full list of eras and songs:
I've been meaning to do this for a while, and now seems like as good a time as any, with it being the holidays and there being no U2 news on the horizon.
Best U2 Song survivors have become boring because everyone knows what the final few contenders will be before the thing even starts, but I think this will be much more interesting, as we will only be looking at non-album tracks.
First off, I should define exactly what a non-album track is for the purposes of this competition: It is any track that did not appear on a proper U2 album(and we will consider Passengers to be a proper U2 album, so those tracks will not be competing) but that were officially released or that we have at least one complete version of. This includes:
1. B-Sides(traditional b-sides, newer albums' 'bonus tracks', 'Unreleased & Rare' stuff, and later-finished b-sides from the re-issues)
2. A-Sides from standalone singles(i.e. Another Day, 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, A Celebration, HMTMKMKM, Ordinary Love, Invisible)
3. Tracks that were never released but that we have more-or-less finished leaked studio versions of(i.e. Be There, Wild Irish Rose, Mercy, a whole handful of pre-Boy demos)
4. MDH tracks(TGBHF, Stateless)
5. Tracks that were included on previous best-ofs(i.e., Sweetest Thing, Electrical Storm, THTBA, WITS)
6. Songs that were preformed either at a tour gig or for a television broadcast, but that never had studio releases(i.e. Womanfish, She's A Mystery To Me, We Love You, North Star, Glastonbury, Return Of The Stingray Guitar, some pre-Boy stuff)
We will exclude songs that were only ever heard in soundcheck or beach clips, and the Salome outtakes material(because it's just too subjective deciding what's 'finished' and what's not from those recordings). Additionally, we will also exclude covers - this survivor will be for original material only.
It is important to note that some of these tracks have multiple versions. With one exception, each song will only have one instance competing - so for example, Electrical Storm gets one entry in the competition, not two. Same for Slow Dancing, Holy Joe, I'm Not Your Baby, Sweetest Thing, Winter, etc. The one exception is Fast Cars/Xanax & Wine, which I feel are different enough in structure and sound to warrant separate entries.
It is important to note that you will be encouraged to consider each song on its merits as a song and not on any particular version or recording of it. This means you can vote for Party Girl or 11 O'Clock Tick Tock based on a live version and not steer away from it because the studio version might be sub-par to you, for example, or that you can vote for Lady With The Spinning Head regardless of which version you prefer, or that you can vote Sweetest Thing regardless of whether you prefer the single version or the original version. That kind of thing.
With all this in consideration, we have a list of 94 tracks. Before you groan about how long it would take to get through 94 tracks, worry not, we're going to eliminate a lot of them quickly. We won't even get to a 'traditional' survivor until there's only 15 tracks left. I don't want this to drag on and on, as history shows participation trails off the longer these things go on. So I've come up with a competition structure that I think can play out in about a month.
1. The 94 tracks will be divided into four separate 'eras' - 1979-1983, 1984-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-present. Yes, there was almost as much material in the five years between 84 and 89 as there has been in the 16 years between 2000 and now. I will post a full spoiler-tagged list of the songs in the competition by era at the bottom of this post.
We will run a three-day traditional, vote-for-your-LEAST-favorite, survivor just for these eras themselves(not on the individual tracks), in order to determine the forum's order of preference of the eras in terms of non-album material. We will use this order of preference to weight how many tracks from each era advance.
2. We will run four polls, one for each era, each lasting 2 days, in which users will vote for their top 10 FAVORITE tracks from that era. Depending on the weighting established in #1, a certain number of tracks will advance for each era.
Most Popular Era = 10 tracks advance
Second Most Popular Era = 7 tracks advance
Third Most Popular Era = 7 tracks advance
Least Popular Era = 6 tracks advance
3. Once those four polls are done, we will have a total of 30 tracks that will have advanced, and they will all be put into one 2-day poll where everyone will vote for their top 15 FAVORITE tracks out of the 30, and the top 15 overall vote-getters will advance.
4. At this point, we will have a final 15, and a traditional, vote-for-your-LEAST-favorite, one-elimination-a-day survivor will commence, and take two weeks to finish.
If participation is high enough, I might consider starting the 'traditional' survivor at the final 30 instead of the final 15, but that would take longer, and people would really have to be in favor of it. It probably won't happen, but I'm leaving the possibility open.
I think this structure will prevent the whole thing from going on for too long, and protect against superior tracks from more preferred eras being left behind while other tracks from less popular eras advance, and also against the tedium of having to eliminate a fair number of tracks that not-so-many-people are that familiar with one-by-one. I'm open to changing the distribution of the weighting if 10-7-7-6 isn't to peoples' liking. On the whole though, I'm pretty happy with the format laid out here.
Each poll will contain YT links for all unreleased, demo, and live-only material so that people can familiarize themselves/jog their memory. I'll probably include links to the 'finished later' b-sides from the re-issues as well as not everybody is familiar with all of them.
Any questions/comments/suggestions can be posted here, but I'm looking to start this on Monday(I want this thread to have a couple days and I don't want to start on a weekend). I hope you will all participate.
Full list of eras and songs:
1979-1983
The Dream Is Over
Lost On A Silent Planet
Alone In The Light
Jack In The Box
False Prophet
Inside Out
Pete The Chop
Father Is An Elephant
Boy-Girl
11 O'Clock Tick Tock
Touch
Another Day
Things To Make And Do
Speed Of Life
Saturday Night
Cartoon World
Street Mission
The Fool
Carry Me Home
J.Swallo
A Celebration
Party Girl
Endless Deep
Treasure(Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop)
Be There
Angels To Tied To The Ground
1984-1989
Boomerang I
Boomerang II
Love Comes Tumbling
The Three Sunrises
Bass Trap
Sixty Seconds In Kingdom Come
Disappearing Act
Yoshimi Blossom
Womanfish
Silver And Gold
Sweetest Thing
Race Against Time
Spanish Eyes
Deep In The Heart
Luminous Times
Walk To The Water
Beautiful Ghost
Wave Of Sorrow
Desert Of Our Love
Rise Up
Drunk Chicken
She's A Mystery To Me
Hallelujah Here She Comes
A Room At The Heartbreak Hotel
Wild Irish Rose
1990-1999
Alex Descends
Lady With The Spinning Head
Salome
Where Did It All Go Wrong
Blow Your House Down
Oh Berlin
Heaven And Hell
Near The Island
Down All The Days
Slow Dancing
Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me
Viva Davidoff
Holy Joe
North And South Of The River
I'm Not Your Baby
Two Shots Of Happy, One Shot Of Sad
2000-Present
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Stateless
Always
Summer Rain
Big Girls Are Best
We Love You
Electrical Storm
The Hands That Built America
Are You Gonna Wait Forever
Levitate
Love You Like Mad
Flower Child
Smile
Native Son
Xanax And Wine
Fast Cars
Mercy
Window In The Skies
Winter
Soon
Glastonbury
North Star
Return Of The Stingray Guitar
Ordinary Love
Invisible
The Crystal Ballroom
Lucifer's Hands
The Dream Is Over
Lost On A Silent Planet
Alone In The Light
Jack In The Box
False Prophet
Inside Out
Pete The Chop
Father Is An Elephant
Boy-Girl
11 O'Clock Tick Tock
Touch
Another Day
Things To Make And Do
Speed Of Life
Saturday Night
Cartoon World
Street Mission
The Fool
Carry Me Home
J.Swallo
A Celebration
Party Girl
Endless Deep
Treasure(Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop)
Be There
Angels To Tied To The Ground
1984-1989
Boomerang I
Boomerang II
Love Comes Tumbling
The Three Sunrises
Bass Trap
Sixty Seconds In Kingdom Come
Disappearing Act
Yoshimi Blossom
Womanfish
Silver And Gold
Sweetest Thing
Race Against Time
Spanish Eyes
Deep In The Heart
Luminous Times
Walk To The Water
Beautiful Ghost
Wave Of Sorrow
Desert Of Our Love
Rise Up
Drunk Chicken
She's A Mystery To Me
Hallelujah Here She Comes
A Room At The Heartbreak Hotel
Wild Irish Rose
1990-1999
Alex Descends
Lady With The Spinning Head
Salome
Where Did It All Go Wrong
Blow Your House Down
Oh Berlin
Heaven And Hell
Near The Island
Down All The Days
Slow Dancing
Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me
Viva Davidoff
Holy Joe
North And South Of The River
I'm Not Your Baby
Two Shots Of Happy, One Shot Of Sad
2000-Present
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Stateless
Always
Summer Rain
Big Girls Are Best
We Love You
Electrical Storm
The Hands That Built America
Are You Gonna Wait Forever
Levitate
Love You Like Mad
Flower Child
Smile
Native Son
Xanax And Wine
Fast Cars
Mercy
Window In The Skies
Winter
Soon
Glastonbury
North Star
Return Of The Stingray Guitar
Ordinary Love
Invisible
The Crystal Ballroom
Lucifer's Hands