Best Non-Album Track Survivor -2000-Present Preliminary Quarterfinal Tiebreaker Round

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Vote for your LEAST FAVORITE track!


  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .

namkcuR

ONE love, blood, life
Joined
Sep 7, 2004
Messages
10,770
Location
Kettering, Ohio
We've had an amazing six-song tie!

Instructions: Because, after the top-ten vote-getters from the 2000-Present Preliminary Quarterfinal, six tracks - Always, Fast Cars, Smile, Native Son, Winter, and Soon - have tied, with 11 votes a piece, and only five more tracks can advance with the top 10, this is a tiebreaker round.

In the first tiebreaker round we had, when it was only two tracks that tied, you voted for your favorite track. This time, however, it's six tracks that tied and five of them will advance. Therefore, You will vote for your LEAST FAVORITE of these six tracks.. The track with the most votes will be eliminated and the other five will advance with the ten that have already advanced.

This poll will be open for 48 hours concurrent to the 1979-1989 Preliminary Semifinal since the latter is not dependent on the former's results.

Here are the links again:

2000-Present tiebreaker
Always
Smile
Native Son
Fast Cars
Winter / Brothers Soundtrack Version
Soon

Break the tie!
 
Strongly tempted to go for Soon just because of its intro status, but it's decent enough in its own right. Always it is.
 
Soon is insubstantial fluff that I'm sure gets a little over-rated here because it reminds people of the thrill of U2 taking the stage on 360.

But Winter has some of the most egregiously awful lyrics in U2 history. It's got to go.

The other four songs here are great. Smile is one of the top five songs they've made post-Pop, Native Son too (and heaps better than Vertigo, if less likely to have become as successful a single), Always has some of the good qualities of Beautiful Day, and Fast Cars is good fun.
 
Soon is insubstantial fluff that I'm sure gets a little over-rated here because it reminds people of the thrill of U2 taking the stage on 360.

But Winter has some of the most egregiously awful lyrics in U2 history. It's got to go.

The other four songs here are great. Smile is one of the top five songs they've made post-Pop, Native Son too (and heaps better than Vertigo, if less likely to have become as successful a single), Always has some of the good qualities of Beautiful Day, and Fast Cars is good fun.

There's one bad lyric in Winter(butter on toast). Otherwise it's lyrically fine, but more importantly, it's musically gorgeous. The choral stuff. How can you people want it gone? Already bad enough that Hands didn't make the cut.
 
That butter on toast line is literally the only thing I think of when it comes to Winter. Well, except that it's otherwise Coldplay by numbers, which is weird coming from the band that Coldplay wants to be.

And I'm delighted Hands is gone. What an excruciatingly embarrassing song. U2's America schmaltz is always unpalatable.
 
I don't like picking out lyric snippets and saying they're bad, but I could do without 'Always wear a safety belt'.
 
That butter on toast line is literally the only thing I think of when it comes to Winter. Well, except that it's otherwise Coldplay by numbers, which is weird coming from the band that Coldplay wants to be.

And I'm delighted Hands is gone. What an excruciatingly embarrassing song. U2's America schmaltz is always unpalatable.

You are on both counts putting far too much importance on lyrical content and letting it sabotage any chance you might have of enjoying the musical content. For me, there is no lyric in any song so bad that it could ruin something that otherwise might be musically enjoyable. Hands is musically gorgeous with the strings(especially in the orchestral version) and the faux-operatic stuff. And it does actually have one lyric that I've always loved(of all of the promises, is this one we could keep, of all of the dreams, is this one still out of reach). I just can't understand why some of you guys hate it so much. I'm sorry if you can't get past the "America" schmaltz part of it.

And literally the only thing in Winter that has anything to do with Coldplay is the intro to the Linear version which admittedly sounds like the intro to Viva La Vida.

Oh well, different strokes for different folks.
 
Oh, let's not forget Winter also has such lyrical turns of genius like putting bullets in the guns to protect the ones. Put it this way: we dodged a bullet when U2 didn't put it on the album.

As for Hands, I will concede it has some pretty moments and a few good lines. But all in all it's a song I do not care to hear.

I get what you're saying about considering a song as a whole, but when specific lyrics are so bad that they are the first and last thing that come to mind about a song, that's the very definition of a clunker and it detracts from any positive qualities.
 
Oh, let's not forget Winter also has such lyrical turns of genius like putting bullets in the guns to protect the ones. Put it this way: we dodged a bullet when U2 didn't put it on the album.

As for Hands, I will concede it has some pretty moments and a few good lines. But all in all it's a song I do not care to hear.

I get what you're saying about considering a song as a whole, but when specific lyrics are so bad that they are the first and last thing that come to mind about a song, that's the very definition of a clunker and it detracts from any positive qualities.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about the last part - good music can always overcome a bad lyric, imo.

Eno thought the band was nuts to leave Winter off NLOTH, and I agree.
 
Do you even give Stand Up Comedy a pass?

But see, I said good music can overcome a bad lyric. I wouldn't really call Stand Up good music. I don't dislike it as much as others do, but it's still musically fragmented, all over the place, unable to decide on what it is.
 
Winter is possibly the most overrated song on this board besides Original of the Species. Bad lyrics are one thing, but bad lyrics attached to a dark, thoughtful instrumental are that much more obvious.
 
You just described it yourself as a "dark, thoughtful instrumental". I just can't see describing a song that way and then considering it moot because of a bad lyric.
 
Best Non-Album Track Survivor -2000-Present Preliminary Quarterfinal Tiebreak...

I have a sensitivity to bad lyrics. They can and do ruin songs for me all the time. It's why I've never gotten into RHCP despite their obvious instrumental talent.
 
Has to be Always, I really like the other 5, three of which should have been on albums. Fast Cars would have been a stand out track on HTDAAB and Soon and Winter would have really improved NLOTH.
 
Why do you love Smile so much Axver? That's nice to read. I've always thought it's an incredibly nice song. Big fan.

Why anyone likes The Hands That Built America is beyond me. Would comfortably be in my bottom 10 or so U2 songs. Interminable, boring, dreary. But those of us who had to sit through it and Bullet on the Vertigo Tour probably hate it more than most.
 
U2 - Winter: "Rhymes they sprang in me, summer sang in me"
Neil Diamond - Play Me: "Songs she sang to me, songs she brang to me"

For some it might seem marginal, like a bow too long. Unfortunately, as a kid I grew up listening to Neil Diamond and whenever I hear Winter I cringe. I mentioned this on here years ago when Winter came out and I don't think a single person agreed with me.
Nevertheless, for me, Winter is a goner.
 
I really like Winter on the Linear version, particularly as part of that bonus film. I wish it had been included over Crazy Tonijght on the album proper.

Soon for me.


Sent from a barge floating through the docks of Dublin
 
Back
Top Bottom