Basically about once every year I listen to all of U2's discography in some sort of mega-binge. Last year it was sometime around August that I did it. But when I got to NLOTH I got interrupted with a really busy time at work and by the time I had time to listen, I didn't feel like it.
So, being back on a U2 high, but not wanting to overdo it, I felt like this was the safest album to listen to, since it's been the longest since I last heard it.
I've always been pretty hard on this album. It came out around the time when I began to get really jaded by U2 and their recording process and their bullshit. When the album wasn't perfect after all the time and talk, it was irritating, to say the least. Part of the reason I loved SOI so much, I think, was because I went in with no expectations and was rewarded by a surprisingly cohesive album for the number of hands on it. A nice unified theme can go a long way.
Anyways, the long and the short of it is this: I was really jarred by how much I hated Bono's vocal on the title track, but then I was equally surprised by how much I enjoyed Magnificent, one of my least favorite of their singles. I started to notice, for the first time, just how much that Moroccan sound they'd gone one about had infiltrated more of the album than was initially obvious to me. The next three songs are absolute favorites of mine, so that stretch is always fun.
Boots hit me in the face with how terrible it was like it was my first time hearing it again. I had really forgotten how bad a song it is. But, again, for the first time I noticed that it at least sounded like the rest of the album. I was beginning to feel like I'd given the production too much crap.
Then SUC happened.
My God.
That fucking song.
And the hell of the thing is that I like SUC. It's a mess, and it's nowhere near finished. It's a bad lyric, and not because the lyrics are bad, but because they make no damn sense. It's a bunch of ideas jumbled together, and some really are trash, but others aren't bad at all. Soul rocking people might be the worst phrase I've ever heard, but seriously, this song isn't done. It reminds me so much of Every Breaking Wave in that it's just a bunch of words on paper that Bono seemed to think sounded good in his head.
And of course the worst part is that it ruins the flow of the album. It just stops it dead in its tracks. And Boots still isn't a good song. So for about ten minutes the album comes to a screeching halt.
And you know what the worst thing about it is? Boots could go into Fez with zero problems. FFS Fez opens with the ending of Boots. It's like someone snuck SUC in there at the end as a prank.
The rest of the album is so good, too. Breathe is still a killer of a song, WAS is pretty and COL punches me in the gut.
It really sucks to step back and see that an album could seriously be just fine, if not great, were it not for one fucking song.
Wow.
. 
