What is U2's most popular song ever?

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Jarvio

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A simple question but probably complicated answers.

It's a hard one to call, but I think.... With Or Without You.

Popular with fans, non-fans, did well on the charts, and very well-known.

It could easily be something else though, but that's the one I'm going with... WOWY.

What do you think is the most popular U2 song ever?
 
I kinda feel like I would guess "One" would be my number 2 prediction. Only thing with that is, it wasn't a lead single. If it was, it would have had more of an impact on the charts (which was still very good anyway)
 
I think it's probably With or Without You...an incredibly popular song among both die hard fans & casuals.

Beautiful Day & Vertigo were big hits, and the latter a monster b/c of the Apple commercial, but that song isn't very well regarded among die hard fans, and I think most casuals like it but wouldn't call it their favourite U2 song.

There's a case to be made for One as well.
 
Let's put it this way.

If you put a bunch of die hards and casuals into a room together and asked them each to write down their favourite U2 song, the results would be a mess. The casuals would all chose probably one of three to four songs, and each of the die hards would choose whatever their personal favourite is...something like Acrobat or MOFO or Zooropa (or in my case, ASOH).

But if you just asked the casuals to list their favourites, you'd probably end up with something like WOWY, One and Beautiful Day or Vertigo. And if you gave those 3-4 songs to the die hards and asked them to choose among those, I think the consensus would probably be WOWY.

Though now that I think about it, I believe perhaps All I Want is You is a dark horse. Everyone I know loves that song. And people who used to be really into U2 but are more casual fans now would probably say Bad. It's the hip choice if you think you know the deep cuts (but really don't). Plus in fact it is one of their best songs.
 
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Nick66 said:
Let's put it this way.

If you put a bunch of die hards and casuals into a room together and asked them each to write down their favourite U2 song, the results would be a mess. The casuals would all chose probably one of three to four songs, and each of the die hards would choose whatever their personal favourite is...something like Acrobat or MOFO or Zooropa (or in my case, ASOH).

But if you just asked the casuals to list their favourites, you'd probably end up with something like WOWY, One and Beautiful Day or Vertigo. And if you gave those 3-4 songs to the die hards and asked them to choose among those, I think the consensus would probably be WOWY.
Click to expand...

I'd agree, though I think Where The Streets Have No Name might sneak into that casual list too, and maybe Pride, and ISHFWILF.

Edit: Nice choice with ASOH. I was really hoping they'd play it when I went to see them this year, first night of London so I thought it'd fit with their homecoming theme, but alas they didn't.

Mine is WGRYWH, not really sure if that's a controversial choice or not.
 
Well yeah. Streets is the elephant in the room. Everyone loves that song, even the most jaded die hards.

I just have a hard time gauging how popular Streets really is among casuals, and for some reason I second guess myself and decide it must not be as popular as I'd suppose it is (I don't think it was ever a hit). Everyone obviously goes nuts for it at the shows, but I just don't know if casuals regard it as a favourite (and I genuinely have no idea outside of anecdotes). But at this point, yeah you're right that's the obvious consensus pick.

Rolling Stone did this poll a while back and I think #1 was One.
 
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CosmoKramer said:
Good question:

With or Without you
Beautiful Day
One
Vertigo
Pride
Click to expand...



Wouldn't rank one vertigo or pride above still haven't found what I'm looking for. I'd say that could possibly be the most popular song outside of beautiful day and wowy
 
In terms of recognition of 'that U2 sound', married to overwhelmingly positive views, I'd say the Streets intro would be their most popular piece of music. In terms of whole song, agree with WOWY.
 
I would actually say Beautiful Day.

With or Without You behind by an inch.

Then Vertigo in third, ISHFWILF, One and Pride.

Streets is not even in the conversation.
 
WOWY, One, Pride, ISHFWILF, probably in that order.

Then Beautiful Day, Vertigo, NYD, SBS, and Mysterious Ways, again probably in that order. Desire and AIWIY would be the two remaining contenders to round out the "most popular" top ten.

After writing this, I had a look to see what the all-time top ten is on last.fm. Nine of the eleven songs I named above make it - Streets is there instead of AIWIY and Desire. Keep in mind this is based on over a decade of listens by hardcore fans and casuals alike, across the globe:

With or Without You: 983007 plays
Beautiful Day: 957124
One: 791389
Sunday Bloody Sunday: 686778
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For: 677359
Vertigo: 596097
Pride (In the Name of Love): 557614
Where the Streets Have No Name: 534746
New Year's Day: 473653
Mysterious Ways: 425193

Also note that some statistics are distorted by people entering different titles. For example, there are an additional 70,824 listens for "With or Without You - remaster" and almost 70,000 combined for "Pride" and "Pride (In the Name of Love) - remastered". This doesn't take into account all the listens to tracks with "live" in the title field either.

Dig deeper here: https://www.last.fm/music/U2/+tracks

Some curiosities I've noticed from the all-time chart: Crumbs, One Step Closer, and Yahweh are all above Acrobat, possibly reflecting that last.fm (as Audioscrobbler) first became popular when HTDAAB was the new album; Stand Up Comedy somehow has more listeners than Ultra Violet; Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) outdoes gems like A Sort of Homecoming, Zooropa, and Gone. But in better news Love Comes Tumbling beats Miss Sarajevo!
 
Axver said:
WOWY, One, Pride, ISHFWILF, probably in that order.

Then Beautiful Day, Vertigo, NYD, SBS, and Mysterious Ways, again probably in that order. Desire and AIWIY would be the two remaining contenders to round out the "most popular" top ten.

After writing this, I had a look to see what the all-time top ten is on last.fm. Nine of the eleven songs I named above make it - Streets is there instead of AIWIY and Desire. Keep in mind this is based on over a decade of listens by hardcore fans and casuals alike, across the globe:

With or Without You: 983007 plays
Beautiful Day: 957124
One: 791389
Sunday Bloody Sunday: 686778
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For: 677359
Vertigo: 596097
Pride (In the Name of Love): 557614
Where the Streets Have No Name: 534746
New Year's Day: 473653
Mysterious Ways: 425193

Also note that some statistics are distorted by people entering different titles. For example, there are an additional 70,824 listens for "With or Without You - remaster" and almost 70,000 combined for "Pride" and "Pride (In the Name of Love) - remastered". This doesn't take into account all the listens to tracks with "live" in the title field either.

Dig deeper here: https://www.last.fm/music/U2/+tracks

Some curiosities I've noticed from the all-time chart: Crumbs, One Step Closer, and Yahweh are all above Acrobat, possibly reflecting that last.fm (as Audioscrobbler) first became popular when HTDAAB was the new album; Stand Up Comedy somehow has more listeners than Ultra Violet; Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) outdoes gems like A Sort of Homecoming, Zooropa, and Gone. But in better news Love Comes Tumbling beats Miss Sarajevo!
Click to expand...

Thanks for that list.

Yeah, things like "Twylights" have about 6000 plays lol
 
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You probably would need to add the number of listens the One collaboration with Mary J. Blige has.
For some reason it's the U2 song I have heard most often on radio the last year.
Which also says a lot about radio as a medium.
 
A correction to my post above: the numbers are not total plays of the song, but the total listeners - whether they've played it once or many times. For WOWY, the average listener has played it over six times. It has 6.5 million plays from its 983,007 listeners.

Jarvio said:
Thanks for that list.

Yeah, things like "Twylights" have about 6000 plays lol
Click to expand...

Oh my god, you really aren't joking: https://www.last.fm/music/U2/_/Twylights :lmao:

Salome said:
You probably would need to add the number of listens the One collaboration with Mary J. Blige has.
For some reason it's the U2 song I have heard most often on radio the last year.
Which also says a lot about radio as a medium.
Click to expand...

That one's a bit messy because of all the different ways to credit it. The most popular version - artist as "Mary J. Blige", title as "One", no mention of U2 - has 88,800 listeners; the second most popular version - artist as "Mary J. Blige & U2", song as "One" - has 11,700 listeners. Crediting "One (feat. U2)" to "Mary J. Blige" adds another 2,600; no other permutations that I checked have a meaningful amount of listeners.

So just the main version of WOWY remains ahead of the two versions of One combined (as does Beautiful Day). And then there are plays of the remastered version of WOWY that mention this fact in the title field - the three most prominent ways of doing that clock in at over 100,000 individual listeners. Some would cross over with listeners of plain old "With or Without You", but not all of them. The top result when you search for WOWY on Spotify, for example, is "With or Without You - Remastered 2007", and doubtlessly that is the only encounter with the song for some people.
 
The correct answer is Until the End of the World. Just kidding, but I certainly think that's popular among bigger fans, it's one of my favorite ever songs. Or the entirety of their 90s output, kidding again just being obnoxious.

WOWY, Pride, Sunday Bloody Sunday, One, Beautiful Day, Vertigo (among a few others) are all potential candidates.
 
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