Top Ten Lyrics for a U2 Song(excluding One)

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Running to Stand Still is far and away my favourite, i'm still amazed by it to this day. i wrote a short story based on it. "if you don't like the world you're living in, see it through different eyes..." i love that.

i've always liked Shadows and Tall Trees, Is That All?, Drowning Man, ASOH, Bad, One Tree Hill is spellbinding, Exit, Until the End of the World (a close second), Zoo Station, Acrobat, Love is Blindness, actually all of AB, Zooropa, Lemon, Stay, Gone, Beautiful Day, WILATW, Kite will always hold a special place in this heart, Fez...

Dirty Day - Should be in the top five of everybody and anybody, in my opinion. Bono is not often this poetic while at the same time being so economical and clear in his meaning. I mean, I get why some people would say something like "A Sort of Homecoming," but a lot of the lyrics in that song boil down to college-aged-kid-wannabe poet-mumbo-jumbo - as Bono himself has more or less admitted.

what's so special about Dirty Day? i'm open in my dislike for it, but there's nothing brilliant in it in my opinion, save for a few cool-sounding lines. definitely wouldn't rate it above ASOH, which i think is a little more than a wannabe poet.
 
I might as well make a list. It's something like this:

1) Lemon
2) Please
3) Moment of Surrender
4) Bad
5) The Unforgettable Fire
6) Mofo
7) One (sue me)
8) Unknown Caller
9) Your Blue Room
10) Ultraviolet

Extremely Honorable mentions (I consider all of these songs lyrical masterpieces, along with the top-ten list): WOWY, Zooropa, Magnificent, Breathe, Even Better Than The Real Thing, The Fly, Fez-Being Born, White As Snow, Love Is Blindness, One Tree Hill, ASOH, Stay, UTEOTW.
 
Going chronologically,

One tree hill
One
Acrobat
Until the end of the world
Even better than the real thing
The wanderer
Hold me thrill me kiss me kill me
One step closer
Moment of surrender
Cedars of Lebanon
 
Honourable mention Uknown caller....were it not for the chorus techno-speak.
 
Running to Stand Still is far and away my favourite, i'm still amazed by it to this day. i wrote a short story based on it. "if you don't like the world you're living in, see it through different eyes..." i love that.

I'm a little confused. Is this a line from your short story?
 
I'm a little confused. Is this a line from your short story?

no, this is a comment Bono made about the song.

From Niall Stokes' book:

"...and so if you can't change the world you're living in, seeing it through different eyes is the only alternative. And heroin gives you heroin eyes to see the world with."
 
In no particular order:

The Fly
Acrobat
Unforgettable Fire
Bad
Running To Stand Still
One Tree Hill
Dirty Day
Please
Moment of Surrender
White As Snow
 
It's very hard to choose only 10 songs, Bono has written quite a few really good lyrical pieces, it's very interesting to watch his development as a writer too, but ok I will mention some of my favourite. No particular order, I don't like ranking, I never agree with myself after a few seconds.

Bad - The Unforgettable Fire - A Sort Of Homecoming
With or Without You - Running to Stand Still - Where the Streets Have No Name
One - Love is Blindness - So Cruel
Do you feel Loved - Gone - Please
Moment Of Surrender - Breathe - Cedars of Lebanon
In A Little While
One Step Closer
October

I love many more songs, most of Pop and Achtung Baby and a few more from No Line, for example.
One is a great song, and it's got great lyrics too, so I'm afraid I can't follow the instructions of the First Poster.
 
This isolating pop-lyrics from the music thing is tricky -- it only started in the mid- to late-60s when white people started writing non-"moon/June/spoon" lyrics for the first time.

If our standard is analyzing the lyrics as written/printed/read-orally poetry, then, as with any group, U2's lyrics are largely awful. There are a few that would more-or-less work on the printed page and not be laughable, such as "Stay (Faraway So Close!)" or maybe "One Tree Hill" although it has some of those JT-clichés with stars, seas, etc. (effective, but perhaps slightly overdone on the JT album).

In the 70s or 80s, people started calling this sort of thing "pop poetry", and then treating it (not only song lyrics) as its own genre. In that capacity, U2 are very good of course.

But as far as lyrics that work on the printed page, U2 are not in the league of someone like Joni Mitchell -- but then again, they never wanted to be, nor asked for their lyrics to be separated from the music.
 
This isolating pop-lyrics from the music thing is tricky -- it only started in the mid- to late-60s when white people started writing non-"moon/June/spoon" lyrics for the first time.

If our standard is analyzing the lyrics as written/printed/read-orally poetry, then, as with any group, U2's lyrics are largely awful. There are a few that would more-or-less work on the printed page and not be laughable, such as "Stay (Faraway So Close!)" or maybe "One Tree Hill" although it has some of those JT-clichés with stars, seas, etc. (effective, but perhaps slightly overdone on the JT album).

In the 70s or 80s, people started calling this sort of thing "pop poetry", and then treating it (not only song lyrics) as its own genre. In that capacity, U2 are very good of course.

But as far as lyrics that work on the printed page, U2 are not in the league of someone like Joni Mitchell -- but then again, they never wanted to be, nor asked for their lyrics to be separated from the music.

We are talking about lyrics, this is a subgenre and they are never isolated from the music, if they were, we would be talking about poetry. Lyrics are an independent language with resources that are never used in nowadays poetry, but they are in fact quite close to medieval European poetry which was an oral traditon as lyrics are. Why are you comparing them to poetry? that's not a fair comparison, I could be comparing your post to an essay on literature and I would have to conclude that it has no value at all, as you are just speaking subjectively, but I don't, as a post in a forum it is ok, it's your opinion and everybody is free to express his opinion.
 
We are talking about lyrics, this is a subgenre and they are never isolated from the music

Well, no. Clearly, this post is talking about lyrics, not music. If we were talking about music as well as lyrics, that would be the best "songs". By identifying lyrics, we are logically separating them from the music.

Why are you comparing them to poetry? that's not a fair comparison

I agree (though a lot of people disagree with you -- for example, some of my university professors, who taught song lyrics from the printed page). Which is why I said that as pop poetry, or within their own genre, U2 are very good. I'm just pointing out some of the different ways people can interpret "song lyrics" -- written poetry, oral poetry, pop poetry, melodic singing, whatever. For me, though, they are inseparable from the music. Nevertheless, there are some rare examples of popular songs whose lyrics still work well on the printed page, although I don't think U2 are a group that have a lot of such songs.

I think you've misunderstood my post -- we actually agree here.
 
No sarcasm. I just hadn't heard the quote before, and I agree it's fascinating...

:up:

i've always found lyrics far more interesting than poetry. some of the best lyrics are poetry, some of them aren't, but they always mean more and get through to me more than poetry, which i've never enjoyed.
 
Well, no. Clearly, this post is talking about lyrics, not music. If we were talking about music as well as lyrics, that would be the best "songs". By identifying lyrics, we are logically separating them from the music.



I agree (though a lot of people disagree with you -- for example, some of my university professors, who taught song lyrics from the printed page). Which is why I said that as pop poetry, or within their own genre, U2 are very good. I'm just pointing out some of the different ways people can interpret "song lyrics" -- written poetry, oral poetry, pop poetry, melodic singing, whatever. For me, though, they are inseparable from the music. Nevertheless, there are some rare examples of popular songs whose lyrics still work well on the printed page, although I don't think U2 are a group that have a lot of such songs.

I think you've misunderstood my post -- we actually agree here.

I say that lyrics are never or, better, should never be isolated from the music because, from my point of view, part of their expressive force comes from the music and because they form an artistic whole with it, that is "the song", but we can speak about the lyrics as we can speak about the bass line and analyse them, then we can find good bass lines or good guitar riffs in a poor overall song, when I talk about favourite lyrics it doesn't equal favourite songs, although in my particular case lyrics are quite important for the assessment of the song.

When I say the lyrics - poetry comparison is unfair it is because they are different genres and they evolve from different literary traditions, they have different resources, different technical features that fulfill different necessities , different audiences and most importantly they aren't written to be read, but to be listened with their music. When professors analyse lyrics from the written page, and I've seen some, they are making the same mistake as if I try to judge if a car is good by trying to watch a dvd in it, the fact that some cars have some very good dvds players doesn't affect the overall quality of the car, the fact that some lyrics stand alone quite well in the written page doesn't qualify them as good lyrics if they don't work well within the song. I don't know if you have ever had the experience of listening to a song that is just a melody composed for a well known piece of poetry, in my country it was on fashion some years ago, well, most of the times it didn't work, because a good poem doesn't equal good lyrics either.

Just to finish, I don't think I misunderstood your first post, I hope you didn't feel attacked by its comparison to an essay, it was only to support my point that you can't compare two things whose nature is basically different.
 
"She is the gun fire, she is the car crash
She is a avalanche, she is the thunder
She is the waves and she pulls me under
I love you cause I need to
Not because I need you
I love you cause I understand
That God has given me your hand
He holds me in a tiny fist
And still I need your kiss
Hold on to love"

Luminous Times (Hold on to Love). My favourite lyrics ever.

I also love lyrics for:
One
Walk to the Water
Drowning Man
The Unforgettable Fire
Moment of Surrender
Promenade
 
The Fly, Until the End of the World, Acrobat, The Wanderer....

"It's no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest
It's no secret ambition bites the nails of success
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief"

"In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows, they learned to swim
Surrounding me, going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You, you said you'd wait
'Til the end of the world"
 
This thread is dead, but I just thought I'd add Keith Richards take on it (from his website):

"What I like about writing songs is it's not a sheet of paper. The lyrics and music are not two different things, a song is where the two integrate, and, in a way, vowel movement is the way to write a song. It depends on what sound goes with the music. And then figure out what words fit with those vowels. Now this is why you have Doo-Wop. You have boo boo boo boo boo, wah wah ooo. It's all built around vowel movement, as opposed to bowel movement, which is another thing. So that's song writing for you."
 
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