Book Of Your Heart (U2 saved the best for last)!

[Yahweh_OMG]

It is easily among the 3 best songs of SOE and i don t understand why it s not included in the proper album. Beautiful haunting song with Bono s best vocals in 25 years.... The book, the book of your hearrrrrrt !!!!

 

[YBORCITY]

I actually like the edges guitar work in this song also. Underrated song for sure.

 

[Hollow Island]

I actually like the edges guitar work in this song also. Underrated song for sure.

Agreed, Edge's playing is great. Larry and Adam too. It sounds like it was recorded live off the floor.

 

[mikal]

It is easily among the 3 best songs of SOE and i don t understand why it s not included in the proper album. Beautiful haunting song with Bono s best vocals in 25 years.... The book, the book of your hearrrrrrt !!!!

I would agree if the end was better. The song kind of gets lost at the guitar solo. I can see why it didn’t make the cut. I do like it though.

 

[AtomicHorizon]

Book of Your Heart is an excellent song. Its omission, however, from the album proper is more understandable than leaving The Crystal Ballroom off Songs of Innocence. Crystal's omission was baffling and a big mistake.

 

[dazzledbylight]

It rings more AB for me. Quite a stunner all around. Edge's guitar is sparer than some but beautiful. As I'm 'hearing it' in my head to catch any thing for commenting on - it occurs to me that as part of Larry's percussion there a little tick/click beat within the other sounds going on. Like a metronome equalling 'beats' (of the heart). Bono's low register there is intimate, lovely. Then he takes off at the end very expressive at the challenge of this love.

 

[U2freakboy]

After a couple of months with the album now, I truly love this song. Would rank it among their best of the 2000's and certainly superior to SOI's bonus track Crystal Ballroom. Few recent U2 song's have had this kind of passion. Bono really brings it on this one. Definitely should have been on the album.

 

[Gonna Run 2 U]

Great effort from Bono here. Edges guitar and barlow’s atmospherics are what much of the album is missing. I think it suffers particularly within the elements of the rhythm section here. Larry’s execution and how it’s mixed during the chorus is quite boring and I think for it to have made the album they should have improved that part.

 

[An Cat Gav]

This is my favourite song from the SoE sessions and it's such a shame that it didn't make the album cut. I think it's the song where The Edge really lets go and Bono's performance is stunning.

U2's selection of songs to make it onto albums recently has been really odd. Leaving this off SoE and Invisible and Crystal Ballroom off SoI in favour of seriously inferior efforts is a real shame.

 

[YBORCITY]

^ Agreed to both your points, I'm crazy especially about Edge's guitar work. If not for Landlady and Little Things this would be my favorite. It's borderline criminal that it didn't make the album proper. Easily could have replaced AS. It's sad to think that the people that bought just the regular copy of this album couldn't hear this gem.

 

[womanfish]

Book of Your Heart is an excellent song. Its omission, however, from the album proper is more understandable than leaving The Crystal Ballroom off Songs of Innocence. Crystal's omission was baffling and a big mistake.

Crystal Ballroom was a tragedy. Not only was it in the top 3 songs off of SOI period for me, but it would have made a great first single IMO.

Book of Your Heart is incredible. There are a couple of lyric/vocal parts that don't hit me just right in the beginning, but I've grown to love this song so much. I think it would have fit better on the album than the dreadful Showman.

It has that feeling of the band between the Rattle and Hum and AB years. Love the back end of the song with Edge solo and Bono bringing it. I think with just a little more time spent tweaking this song, it would have been even more incredible. I love it.

 

[Montrose]

I really like this song, but I think I get why it wasn't on the album proper - and I'm not mad at it. I actually prefer that songs like Book of Your Heart remain more hidden gems or near-classics for us to appreciate on the side rather than receiving the spit-and-polish treatment it would have required to make it on the regular length album.

It finishes properly and in full form, but wiggles around a little bit early on to find its coherent voice. Just a little, but enough, and I actually prefer that it has rough edges. It sits up there, for me, with Always and Mercy as songs that are little imperfect gems that would suffer through the process of 'perfecting' them, whatever that might mean for U2.

I have an uncle-in-law (is that a thing?) who's a painter in France, and in a book he wrote collecting his works he said something like,

"Any piece of art has to be imperfect. It has to have the feel of the artist struggling to create something new, because you cannot create a new thing and know what you're doing. The work itself will bear the marks of that creative process, otherwise it's just repetition and craft."

And I think U2 for me are the best examples of hearing the whole spectrum of that idea.

Book of Your Heart still contains all the scrapes and scuffs and tries of making a new song. I love that. I wouldn't want it to undergo the same treatment Best Thing or Get Out of Your Own Way got to be album-ized.

Sometimes they get the balance right for a song or a whole album of songs - Achtung Baby still resonates with me as a masterpiece of creative struggle that emerged perfectly. Other albums had more of a mix, where there are songs that are perfect craftwork, but lack the feel of the struggle, while others are all beautiful struggle yet fail to fully crystalize.

Then there are songs like this - too nearly-perfect to shelve, too perfectly imperfect to ruin by any more work. I think the extended version, the b-side, the unreleased jewel is the perfect home for it.

 

[AtomicHorizon]

Crystal Ballroom was a tragedy. Not only was it in the top 3 songs off of SOI period for me, but it would have made a great first single IMO.

Book of Your Heart is incredible. There are a couple of lyric/vocal parts that don't hit me just right in the beginning, but I've grown to love this song so much. I think it would have fit better on the album than the dreadful Showman.

I agree with everything you said except for the Showman dislike. I did not care for The Showman the first four or five listens, but then the song clicked for me. While I am not saying it is better than countless U2 classics, I really enjoy the song. It sounds unlike anything U2 have done before and they managed to capture joy without sounding contrived. I agree with Noel Gallagher's sentiment that The Showman could be considered as one of the best things they have done, well at least in the 2000s. It also makes a fantastic pair with Little Things on the album.

 

[Montrose]

Crystal Ballroom was a tragedy. Not only was it in the top 3 songs off of SOI period for me, but it would have made a great first single IMO.

Book of Your Heart is incredible. There are a couple of lyric/vocal parts that don't hit me just right in the beginning, but I've grown to love this song so much. I think it would have fit better on the album than the dreadful Showman.

I agree with everything you said except for the Showman dislike. I did not care for The Showman the first four or five listens, but then the song clicked for me. While I am not saying it is better than countless U2 classics, I really enjoy the song. It sounds unlike anything U2 have done before and they managed to capture joy without sounding contrived. I agree with Noel Gallagher's sentiment that The Showman could be considered as one of the best things they have done, well at least in the 2000s. It also makes a fantastic pair with Little Things on the album.

Showman = How all Bono's doubt and insecurity gets projected to the outside world through his public persona.

Little Things = How it really feels inside. Sometimes.

It's a perfect sequence.

 

[womanfish]

The Showman could ruin any sequence. Also don't like the bouncy Showman into Little Things. Doesn't settle right on my ears at least.
Luckily it has been removed from my tracklisting, so I won't need to worry about it any more.

 

[AtomicHorizon]

Showman = How all Bono's doubt and insecurity gets projected to the outside world through his public persona.

Little Things = How it really feels inside. Sometimes.

It's a perfect sequence.

Well said! I agree!

 

[AtomicHorizon]

The Showman could ruin any sequence. Also don't like the bouncy Showman into Little Things. Doesn't settle right on my ears at least.
Luckily it has been removed from my tracklisting, so I won't need to worry about it any more.

The Showman is brilliant and is perfectly sequenced on the album! I guess it is just not your cup of tea.

 

[trainmaniac]

I love The Showman. One of my favourite songs.

 

[Rachel D.]

Showman = How all Bono's doubt and insecurity gets projected to the outside world through his public persona.

Little Things = How it really feels inside. Sometimes.

It's a perfect sequence.

I never thought about it like that, but it makes perfect sense!

 

[J_Frank_Parnell]

You know how certain U2 songs you can feel "eh" about them forever and then suddenly one day "boom!"? That just happened to me, like today, with Book of Your Heart. Great song.

Showman is gonna divide U2 fans, lol. I think it's fun though -- with some potential self-loathing beneath it that adds a whole 'nuther layer to it. On the surface, anyway, it may be their first attempt at recorded lightheartedness that works.

 

[Catman]

I love everything about the song... minus the chorus lol (which is kind of an important component part of the tune). I dunno--if I had my way (and I should), U2 would've held onto this one, reworked the chorus a bit so it becomes less sucky to my earholes, and then unleash its ethereal beauty upon our collective cochlea.