Best Song Survivor: Boy Round One

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What is your least favorite song?


  • Total voters
    39
  • Poll closed .

digitize

ONE love, blood, life
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
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Welcome to the 2012 Best Song Survivor! After discussing it with Axver (thank you, thank you, thank you, Axver), I have decided on a slightly new format for this year's Survivor. The new format will work like this:

Each album will have a series of rounds. We will vote off songs until the top two, three, or four songs from each are determined. That number is determined from the recent Best Album Survivor. From All That You Can't Leave Behind, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, Original Soundtracks 1, and October, we go to the top two tracks. From Pop, Boy, No Line on the Horizon, War, and Rattle and Hum, we go to the top three tracks. From Achtung Baby, The Joshua Tree, Zooropa, and The Unforgettable Fire, we go to the top four tracks. In addition, from each era (early 80s, late 80s, 90s, 2000s), we will have a single non-album song round. Those rounds will allow multiple choices, and you will be asked to choose your favorite five (or fewer). The top two songs from each of those rounds will move on.

Then we will move on to quarterfinals. Each era (again, early 80s, late 80s, 90s, 2000s) will have its own quarterfinal round, consisting of album songs and the top two non-album songs. Each quarterfinal round will get one song per album out to semifinals, plus two songs per album in the top four of the Best Album Survivor, plus one song per album in the middle five of the Best Album Survivor. In other words...
Early eighties: 3 base songs + 1 bonus for Boy + 1 bonus for War = 5 semifinalists
Late eighties: 3 base songs + 2 bonus for UF + 2 bonus for JT + 1 bonus for RAH = 8 semifinalists
Nineties: 4 base songs + 2 bonus for AB + 2 bonus for Zooropa + 1 bonus for Pop = 9 semifinalists
2000s: 3 base songs + 1 bonus for NLOTH = 4 semifinalists

Then we will have two semifinal rounds: one for the 80s, and one for the 90s and 2000s combined. They will each have 13 songs, and we will take the top 5 from each to finals. That will lead to a nice, clean 10-song final round.

Sound good? Hopefully this isn't too complicated!

One other note: in the past Survivor, quarterfinal and semifinal rounds were held after album and non-album-song voting for their respective voting. I probably will keep it that way, but I'm considering doing all preliminary rounds first, then all quarterfinal rounds, then all semifinal rounds, then the final round. Thoughts?

At any rate, let's begin with round one for Boy. You have 24 hours to vote for your least favorite song. Enjoy!
 
Gaahhh, I tapped on my favorite song without thinking and them realized what I was doing as soon as I selected vote! :reject: I'm stupid. So sorry, digitize... Could you please change it to The Ocean for me?
 
FlyontheHorizon said:
Gaahhh, I tapped on my favorite song without thinking and them realized what I was doing as soon as I selected vote! :reject: I'm stupid. So sorry, digitize... Could you please change it to The Ocean for me?

Sure :)
 
You know what really grinds my gears? The fact that An Cat Dubh and Into The Heart are 2 separate tracks. Especially when I add it to my top U2 songs play list and put it on shuffle.

Dammit!
 
The track I've gone to the least over the years would be either "The Ocean" or "Shadows And Tall Trees."
 
gvox said:
I'd vote that An Cat Dubh and Into the Heart be listed as one track. Pretty illogical otherwise.

That's how I did it in Rate the Song, and most posts were something like "I give ACD an 8 and ITH a 6 so I'll average it to a 7", which implied to me that Interference thought of them separately. But I'm willing to combine them.
 
I'm surprised that The Ocean is getting so many votes. That's one of the songs I always come back to.
 
Sounds good, looking forward to it all, thanks again Digitize! :hyper:


I sure hope U2 doesn't interrupt our fun by dropping an album on us or something. :shifty:
 
Shadows and Tall Trees. Just never came around to it.

And yes, The Ocean is a great little song.

And I felt like a star
I felt the world could go far
If they listened to what I said.


:up: Bono
 
I like Shadows and Tall Trees. The Ocean is nice, but kind of only half a song, that's why it got my vote. Would have liked to hear it flushed out a bit more.
 
I'm surprised that The Ocean is getting so many votes. That's one of the songs I always come back to.
It's one of my favourites as well.

Voted for A Day Without Me. That song irritates me sometimes.
 
Stories For Boys. But I don't dislike it that much, this is U2's most consistent album. It's just that the highs aren't nearly as great as most of their other albums.
 
Tough call here, mainly for the same reason that djerdap mentioned. I'm going to have to go with A Day Without Me, which doesn't really match the sonic or emotional intensity of the rest of the album.
 
I haven't listened to this album since the remaster came out. I've been on an 80s kick lately so now would be good to remind myself how Twilight goes I guess.
 
I love this album so much. Even the two tracks I put at the bottom of any ranking of Boy's songs are good. So my vote for The Ocean isn't really a slight upon it. It's a nice little track, sort of an interlude ... it would've been better if 11 O'clock Tick Tock had been recorded for the album and The Ocean used as a sort of outro for it like they did live. As it is, its placement on the album is slightly awkward.

One other note: in the past Survivor, quarterfinal and semifinal rounds were held after album and non-album-song voting for their respective voting. I probably will keep it that way, but I'm considering doing all preliminary rounds first, then all quarterfinal rounds, then all semifinal rounds, then the final round. Thoughts?

I don't really think it's a big deal which way around it's done. I liked doing the finals right after the album rounds partly just to keep the theme going (e.g. we were already thinking of the nineties, so might as well do its final), and partly to be able to post some more results and to condense the list of finalists I posted in every OP. But building up to a big series of finals rounds at the end would be good too.

You know what really grinds my gears? The fact that An Cat Dubh and Into The Heart are 2 separate tracks. Especially when I add it to my top U2 songs play list and put it on shuffle.

Dammit!

Seconded! I mentally think of them as one song. I don't recall what I did in past Survivors ... I think I went by the official tracklisting and put them separately?

I sure hope U2 doesn't interrupt our fun by dropping an album on us or something. :shifty:

:lol:

At least that's only a remote possibility!

I'm going to have to go with A Day Without Me, which doesn't really match the sonic or emotional intensity of the rest of the album.

Really? I've always thought it fit rather well. Unless I'm grossly misremembering, isn't it meant to be about Ian Curtis somehow?
 
As much as I don't understand this forum's general dislike for Shadows & Tall Trees, I must admit it's second in the firing line for me after The Ocean. It'd do better in my rankings on most other albums.

Another Time, Another Place is a gem. I know it won't be, but I'd love it to be one of the top three proceeding to the finals, with Twilight and The Electric Co.
 
I did not know ppl rated Stories For Boys so low around here. It's one of the best for me.
 
I once found an old ranking of mine from not long after I became a serious U2 fan, where I put Stories For Boys in my top twenty songs. :lol:

I don't think I rated it that high for very long, but it's still a cool tune. I wish they'd done more than just snippet it on tour in 2005.
 
Axver said:
I once found an old ranking of mine from not long after I became a serious U2 fan, where I put Stories For Boys in my top twenty songs. :lol:

I don't think I rated it that high for very long, but it's still a cool tune. I wish they'd done more than just snippet it on tour in 2005.

Maybe not top 20 material, but top 40. I also think Twilight and Another time, another place are excellent. There's a sense of drama, urgency and an almost operatic quality about Bono's vocals in those songs that really appeal to me. I also love that one bending note part of the solo in Twilight.
 
Unless I'm grossly misremembering, isn't it meant to be about Ian Curtis somehow?

I believe it is. I just think it is lacking a certain resonance compared to the rest of the album, even though I do appreciate the sentiment.
 
As far as Another Time Another Place goes, that's my favourite song from the record, along with Electric Co. Great guitar track.

The fact that 11 O'Clock Tick Tock was omitted from the album may be U2's worst mistake of that period. If that song was on the record, I'd definitely look at the album differently.
 
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