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I think its mostly because of the acoustic version and their insistence on playing it that way live every night.
The album track isn't too bad, but having the acoustic version forced down our throats soured me on the song overall.

Yep, that acoustic version really didn't help EBW's reputation. I'd actually rank it in SOI's top five. I also think Iris belongs in the top five. This is, of course, a relative thing given my low opinion of U2's recent output. I'm pretty sure that if I could be fucked making a U2 top 100 the only SOI songs that would make it are Cedarwood Road and The Troubles.

And Song for Someone can go to hell.

There are tracks on TUF someone would say the same things about. As I said w/r/t Why Don't We Do It In The Road, the song doesn't have to follow verse-chorus-verse formula to be good. F-BB is evocative and has an impressionistic lyric that Bono should be doing more of these days. Some killer guitar sounds on there too, from the icy work on the verses and then that raging buzzing later on.

A real late-period standout for the band in an era of usually playing it too safe.

For once we're in total agreement.
 
I get why people like Iris (it's SO SAD) and appreciated it more live, but the album version is a mess. It's a Frankenstein of a song comprised of a bunch of OK ideas that don't jell at all. The transitions between each section are poorly thought through and it suffers from being a bit overwritten lyrically as well, which is a pretty common problem for Bono these days.

Definitely way, way, way behind the likes of Tomorrow, Lemon and Mofo as far as songs about Bono's mother are concerned. It's well-intentioned but all over the place.
 
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Yeah, I'll agree Iris is not exactly the finest song about Bono's mother. I'd rate it I Will Follow, then Mofo and Lemon, then Tomorrow, and a whole lot of daylight before you get to Iris.
 
I get why people like Iris (it's SO SAD) and appreciated it more live, but the album version is a mess. It's a Frankenstein of a song comprised of a bunch of OK ideas that don't jell at all. The transitions between each section are poorly thought through and it suffers from being a bit overwritten lyrically as well, which is a pretty common problem for Bono these days.

Definitely way, way, way behind the likes of Tomorrow, Lemon and Mofo as far as songs about Bono's mother are concerned. It's well-intentioned but all over the place.

See, I think you've made a similar criticism of The Miracle, and I just don't hear it in either case. :shrug:

But yes, like I said before, I too would take Lemon and Mofo, and probably Tomorrow, over Iris, despite liking Iris quite a bit.
 
I wonder how ripped to shreds Zooropa and Pop would get by people on here if this site had been around for 10-15 years when they first came out. It just seems so cool to trash on songs (or movies, or tv shows, etc.) people consider to be their favorites. I never quite see it about the arts as harshly as I do on here though. At least not with anyone I might ever consider a friend on any other site I visit (including social media). And I don't mean interference in general - I mean Lemonade Stand.
 
I had some trouble with both TUF and AB when they first came out because they were so different that the previous sets of albums. It took a very long time for me to warm up to TUF.

Staring at the Sun kept me away from Pop for a long time. To be fair, I had some other stuff going in IRL, though.
 
If U2 released another Zooropa or Passengers in 2016, I'd cry tears of joy. I really can't overestimate how much that era of U2 meant to me.
 
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They'd probably fare well generally speaking because they're great albums.

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe not. I know a lot of people who are not on this forum who hated those albums though, and consider the last good U2 album to be Achtung Baby. So they never would have been around to trash your favorite U2 songs and albums because the forums weren't around at a time they would have been interested in making an account.

I just think the whole trashing stuff/making fun of stuff people like is so overblown and full of elitism that I understand why I took basically a year away from this place. Maybe I'll do it again, I don't know. I'm sure no one will miss me like they do Imperor.

Back to your regularly scheduled U2-trashing.
 
Yeah, I'll agree Iris is not exactly the finest song about Bono's mother. I'd rate it I Will Follow, then Mofo and Lemon, then Tomorrow, and a whole lot of daylight before you get to Iris.



1 - Tomorrow (10/10)
2 - Lemon (10/10)
3 - Mofo (10/10)
4 - I Will Follow (8/10)
5 - Iris (7/10)
 
I don't think anyone here is out to trash shit people like, we just trash shit we find to be kind of trash. Don't take it personally.
 
I don't know why anyone who's been posting on a U2 message board for years would bash the band just to be cool (on a fucking U2 message board of all places), potentially alienating people they've grown quite attached to. What are they really gaining in doing so?

If anyone in here is bashing the band it's because they have a sincere and educated opinion on the band's work. Everyone frequenting this thread has heard their discography. It would be infinitely more convenient if everything the band put out was gold. Things would go a lot more smoothly.
 
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I've noticed there are those that will bash the current album until the new one comes out; then they'll relax their stance in order to rip apart the new songs. So much so that if you placed their posts side by side about certain songs it would be obvious they were just trying to get a rise or it's just easier to take the 'he/she/they don't have it anymore' stance.


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I guess I missed where this turned into album (or even song?) bashing for the purpose of getting a rise out of other posters because it's known that they love the song. That'd be pretty lame. Some may use some colourful adjectives to describe their distaste of a song, but I think it still remains their honestly-held opinion. Where it gets a little dicey is when people have a tendency sometimes to gang up on the poster themselves, deriding their opinion as crazy or not shared by the majority - and I've probably been as guilty of this as the next person. I think SFS is a great track. Commence calling me crazy! :lol:


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I guess I missed where this turned into album (or even song?) bashing for the purpose of getting a rise out of other posters because it's known that they love the song. That'd be pretty lame. Some may use some colourful adjectives to describe their distaste of a song, but I think it still remains their honestly-held opinion.


Well when you see some say this one day and then something completely opposite sometime later you start to question that sincerity.


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I'm such a liar tho. I included FBB in my post about tracks I skip solely to get a rise out of Laz

;winkeyface;




Well when you see some say this one day and then something completely opposite sometime later you start to question that sincerity


Maybe they just started liking/hating it recently or got sick of it. People's tastes shift right?

Not mine though. I still think LOLcano is dreadful

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I know this much. My opinions are so much better than those from "The Other Plaaaaaaaccceee"
 
I've noticed there are those that will bash the current album until the new one comes out; then they'll relax their stance in order to rip apart the new songs. So much so that if you placed their posts side by side about certain songs it would be obvious they were just trying to get a rise or it's just easier to take the 'he/she/they don't have it anymore' stance.

People's views can change over time. I used to think Zooropa was really out there experimentally 10 years ago, and then as I delved into other genres and acts, I realized it was actually pretty tame, though still full of great songs. If an album doesn't have staying power, I fail to see how that is somehow the listener's fault.
 
I wonder how ripped to shreds Zooropa and Pop would get by people on here if this site had been around for 10-15 years when they first came out. It just seems so cool to trash on songs (or movies, or tv shows, etc.) people consider to be their favorites. I never quite see it about the arts as harshly as I do on here though. At least not with anyone I might ever consider a friend on any other site I visit (including social media). And I don't mean interference in general - I mean Lemonade Stand.

Would you rather everything U2 related be a Rolling Stone-esque five-star rave?
 
Want to see those posts.


Nah, but if you pay attention you'll see it quite a bit. I have a near photographic memory, so I'll remember the oddest of things. But I've seen a poster come out and bash a movie calling it frozen and then when the next one comes out they'll say this was horrible it lacks the character development of the last one. Or completely tear apart a song then later agree with someone saying 'yeah I don't understand the bashing of this song...' when it's safe to say so.


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People's views can change over time. I used to think Zooropa was really out there experimentally 10 years ago, and then as I delved into other genres and acts, I realized it was actually pretty tame, though still full of great songs. If an album doesn't have staying power, I fail to see how that is somehow the listener's fault.


Oh I completely understand this, I'm talking about the ones that are not organic in nature and seem to happen overnight once there is new material to not like.


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I personally am relatively consistent I think, not that anyone's asking. I pegged HTDAAB as disastrous about five minutes after it came out and have seen no reason to revise that view. I think there's about half of a quite interesting album buried in NLOTH, although outside of Moment of Surrender and Cedars of Lebanon, maybe the title track also, I find there to be a worrying aimlessness to Bono's lyrics there. SOI I get what they were doing and it doesn't really interest me. A 'where we came from' tribute/retrospective thirty five years after the fact, much of it ultra-glossy and airbrushed in a way that the music they were hearing back then was not. A few pretty good songs but not where I feel that I want to see this band, and not giving me much hope for the future.
 
If that's what they're doing on SOI it's notable how much better R.E.M. did it with their last album.
 
Where I will agree to an extent with BVS is there is a tendency to talk about decent albums as though they are complete and utter garbage. I think SoI at worst estimation is simply inoffensive, but some will look at it as an affront to music.
 
Possibly the harshness of some of that comes from a sense, and i'm just guessing here, that merely inoffensive is, for a band of U2's stature, kind of an affront to music.
 
It's just disappointing more than anything, to see such a good and innovative (for so long) band start turning in "Old Rock Band in their 3rd/4th Decade" kind of efforts. At least to me. ATYCLB is their last truly great album to my ears before they all started to sound a little desperate or out of touch. Though to be fair, No Line is the only album of the last three I'd call outright bad.
 
For me the thing about post-Pop U2 is I generally find enough to like on each album, but I tend to think about those albums as a whole (even if they're more a 'collection of songs' as opposed to a cohesive album), rather than identifying how much I like a particular song. I'd rate about half of SoI + Invisible and Crystal Ballroom as great individual songs, so that's a definite improvement over the previous 3 albums. The original 'leaked' version of Mercy is still unabashedly my favourite thing that U2 have done since Pop.
 
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