Best Song Survivor: Atomic Bomb, Round One

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What is your least favorite song?


  • Total voters
    56
  • Poll closed .

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ONE love, blood, life
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Walk On walked on out of the contest in All That You Can't Leave Behind's final round. Thus, Beautiful Day and Kite shall represent ATYCLB in the 2000s quarterfinal. Now we move onto How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which shall also have two representatives in the 2000s quarterfinal, from eleven tracks. You have 24 hours to vote for your least favorite song, the next song to be eliminated from this contest. For anyone just joining us, rules may be found here.
 
OOTS is just terrible. Really horrendous lyrically and awfully saccharine musically. Bono shouts over Edge's solo for no reason, and that's one of the only redeemable parts.

I want Crumbs and AMAAW to stick around but wouldn't vote strategically for anything else here.
 
Bomb is U2 on cruise control. It's not even bad, it's a shining example of mediocrity, which is worse than bad.

There's one exceptional song on this record, City of Blinding Lights (admittedly one of 00's U2's best), a couple other halfway decent ones, and of course Vertigo, which was obviously a very big and important single for U2. The rest is just U2 muzak.

As it's difficult to say which is the worst between competing mediocrities, I regret to announce I'll be skipping voting on the Bomb round, unless I'm needed to break a tie (or force one), depending on the song.

What a massive, massive disappointment this record was.
 
Bomb is U2 on cruise control. It's not even bad, it's a shining example of mediocrity, which is worse than bad.

There's one exceptional song on this record, City of Blinding Lights, a couple other decent ones, and Vertigo, which was obviously a very big and important single for U2. The rest is just U2 muzak.

As it's difficult to say which is the worst between competing mediocrities, I regret to announce I'll be skipping voting on the Bomb round, unless I'm needed to break a tie (or cause) one, depending on the song.

What a massive, massive disappointment this record was.

Pretty much.
 
Why would anyone vote for A Man And A Woman?

One of the few good songs actually on this record.

Yahweh needs to go away :down:
 
I really don't think this album is as bad as many make it out to be. The songs alone are all very solid and prefer it to anything pre-Joshua Tree.

The problem with this album really comes down to the harsh, hot production, the lack of any sort of cohesiveness or theme, not to mention an attrocious running order(U2's worst ever, in my opinion). Some really great songs, but overall not a good album.

COBL and Vertigo should definitely be the top 2, with SYCMIOYO and OOTS as runner's up.

Funny, I was just looking at some old posts from 2005 where I was one of the very few arguing that ATYCLB was a better album than HTDAAB(some people were still in the OMGZNEWU2! phase)...looks like time has shifted people's opinions!
 
I think that Bomb is pretty good, but the band is right when they say that the sum of its parts is better than the whole. The songs themselves are good, I like all of the songs on here except for OSC, but the album as a whole just isn't cohesive. Plus the album has the worst production of any U2 record.
 
^ That's all very true. I. Don't flat out hate any of these songs. They're all ok. But the album seems like it was cobbled together from a bunch of leftover songs. No pun intended ;)

Going with Yahweh, but could get behind OSC or ABOY at this point, too.
 
Why would anyone vote for A Man And A Woman?

Definitely isn't the worst song on the album, but in my opinion the song is simply too long...should not be 4 and a half minutes....cut 30 seconds out and it could keep my attention. I have the same feelings about Flower Child...great acousticy song, but way too long.

IMO it would be great if after the bridge ("brown eyed crossed the street...she was already mine"), there would be a few seconds of instrumental, cut out this section:
"little sister/ I've been sleeping in the street like a stray dog/little sister I've been trying to feel complete again/but your gone and so is god."

Instead, break into the "the soul needs a beauty for a soulmate" part/chorus/end. The "you'll see" part is fantastic...the song just gets bogged down in the section after the bridge IMO.
 
I disagree. The bass line during that section of the song is my favorite moment of the entire track. After a half hour of noise, noise and more noise, hearing Adam play along with Bono is a great, subtle moment.

If you want to trim the song, feature the chorus a little less. It's the worst part of the song anyway.
 
All Because Of You. It's the first to go if I'm in a mood to skip songs. Though it does feature one of Bono's great little "mixing up God and sex" lines.
 
Funny, I was just looking at some old posts from 2005 where I was one of the very few arguing that ATYCLB was a better album than HTDAAB(some people were still in the OMGZNEWU2! phase)...looks like time has shifted people's opinions!

:lol: I recall browsing the fan sites back then, and there were commenters saying SYCMIOYO was as good as One (I shit you not) and there were also a fair amount of "COBL is the new Steets." When the new album hits, I'll probably stay the hell out of here for the first few months. Whenever new U2 material arrives, dissenters tend to be piled upon by bipedal sheep :wink:
 
I disagree. The bass line during that section of the song is my favorite moment of the entire track. After a half hour of noise, noise and more noise, hearing Adam play along with Bono is a great, subtle moment.

If you want to trim the song, feature the chorus a little less. It's the worst part of the song anyway.

Agreed. The reason why I love the song is the bass. This and Miracle Drug are my favourites off the record.
 
When the new album hits, I'll probably stay the hell out of here for the first few months. Whenever new U2 material arrives, dissenters tend to be piled upon by bipedal sheep :wink:

:applaud::applaud::applaud:

This pretty much goes for dissenting with the mob on any U2-related topic here. Once Interference decides what the conventional wisdom is, right or wrong, Yahweh help those who disagree.
 
I disagree. The bass line during that section of the song is my favorite moment of the entire track. After a half hour of noise, noise and more noise, hearing Adam play along with Bono is a great, subtle moment.

If you want to trim the song, feature the chorus a little less. It's the worst part of the song anyway.

:up:

That opening bass really is a HUGE relief from the noise of the songs that come before it! esp. the noise of All Because Of You! :yikes:
 
:applaud::applaud::applaud:

This pretty much goes for dissenting with the mob on any U2-related topic here. Once Interference decides what the conventional wisdom is, right or wrong, Yahweh help those who disagree.

You should just keep a copy of this and then paste it every time you post on this forum to save yourself the hassle of having to type the same thing over and over again. Or are you doing that already? Its hard to tell...
 
I prefer Atomic Bomb to ATYCLB, but that isn't saying much. I think the album gets more hate than it deserves, but at the same time, its flaws are obvious: Bono's lyrics hadn't improved much from ATYCLB, and it was a sort of schizophrenic album in mood. It's a poor tracklisting for an album that would have been tough to make very cohesive in the first place.

That said, there's a lot more interesting stuff on here than ATYCLB, for my money. While production hurt some tracks (All Because of You could have been a much tighter rock song and Crumbs has that weird popping at the beginning), there's a lot to like.

My first vote goes to One Step Closer, which seems like an attempt to be another The First Time but ends up being more like Grace.
 
I too prefer this to ATYCLB.

Disappointed to see Yahweh and One Step Closer on the chopping block, this early.. I'd say the latter is the only song on the album that has improved with age, and is really well executed.

All Because Of You is an easy choice, a mindless concerted rocker for the "fuck yeah, rock music" crowd. Very ordinary track with horrific vocals. Love and Peace hasn't aged well for me either.
 
Oh I easily prefer it to ATYCLB, this album has two, maybe three songs that I love(if I include COBL). While ATYCLB has only one, WILATW. Then there's a couple tunes I like, Vertigo, SYCMIOYO, LAPO, ABOY, Crumbs, and the three duds in the end. While ATYCLB has two songs I absolutely loathe, the obvious duds, and a couple likable songs. So in the end I like more songs of Bomb.
 
Miracle Drug for me. Everything about this song is boring. I'd be happy to see the back of Yahweh too.
I quite like One Step Closer and really like AMAAW so hope they stay a bit longer.
 
Eliminate them all at once, including the beloved COBL, which is overrated.
 
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