Best Song Survivor: ATYCLB Round One

[An Cat Gav]

Peace On Earth. Nice melody but the line about growing up without many trees and tearing them down to use on his enemies is the worst lyric Bono ever wrote.

 

[the tourist]

Peace On Earth. Nice melody but the line about growing up without many trees and tearing them down to use on his enemies is the worst lyric Bono ever wrote.

 

[intedomine]

Grace is garbage. The idea behind the song as a closer is good, just very poorly and unpleasantly executed.

Beaut Day to progress hopefully, and I wouldn't mind seeing New York go far.

 

[corianderstem]

Peace On Earth. Nice melody but the line about growing up without many trees and tearing them down to use on his enemies is the worst lyric Bono ever wrote.

Yeah, I agree. I think the song is too heavy-handed. Hard to disagree with the sentiment, but really disappointing execution.

 

[PennyLanePHINS]

Hope "Beautiful Day" doesn't get the "One" treatment...

 

[Galeongirl]

Hope "Beautiful Day" doesn't get the "One" treatment...

Well there are very few songs here that are good, so it has a high chance of going through as it's the best song on the album.

 

[Nick66]

Great, great album. At least half the songs are better than the survivors from the 90s round. Which says as much about how overrated 90s U2 is as it does about the attrocious voting here.

Both U2 and I agree with you. Especially their post AB 90's stuff.

While not their best record, ATYCLB certainly is one of the most important to their careers and legacy. Who knows what would have happened if they'd have had two flops in a row. This one put them back on top, commercially and more important artistically. This is U2 back to their essence. I'd put it somewhere in the bottom part of their Top 5. It's heaps better than Bomb, and much more balanced than NLOTH (but doesn't reach that record's highs).

And Grace is beautiful. Wild Honey, not so much.

 

[LemonMelon]

So, Peace On Earth is embarrassing but the song where Bono sings about SWINGING FROM THE TREES LIKE A MONKEY is not, and is somehow the fourth best on the album?

One track has pretense, the other does not. I'd rather Bono sound ridiculous singing a ridiculous song than sound ridiculous singing a heavy-handed song.

Grace sucks more than either anyway.

Tracks that must go through:

1. Beautiful Day
2. Kite
3. When I Look At The World

 

[mama cass]

Peace On Earth. Nice melody but the line about growing up without many trees and tearing them down to use on his enemies is the worst lyric Bono ever wrote.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

That's okay. So do you. With the whole Taylor Swift thing. The whole "I'm a baseball fan but baseball stats don't matter!" thing. The whole prepubescent girl thing. But that's the wonderful thing about differing opinions. You can have those crazy things that don't make sense to me and I can have these crazy things that don't make sense to you. Because we're different people.

And that's not even close to Bono's worst lyric. Not even close. And then there's Kite which is wildly overrated, so there's that.

1. Taylor

2. I've never said that baseball stats don't matter. I just don't think they should be pored over and depended on as much as many other people do, and I greatly prefer to judge baseball players by watching them play baseball.

3. I'm not sure you understand what the word prepubescent means.

4. I never said that it was Bono's worst lyric.

5. Thinking Wild Honey is better than Kite is tantamount to John Wayne's systematic slaughter of kittens on the set of the 1976 film THE SHOOTIST.

6. I love you. The new Strokes song rules.

 

[LemonMelon]

At least some degree of pubescence is required to attract GAF's attention.

 

[intedomine]

At least some degree of pubescence is required to attract GAF's attention.

You sure? Taylor Swift looks like a scrawny eleven year old graduating from
Primary school

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

You sure? Taylor Swift looks like a scrawny eleven year old graduating from
Primary school

Ehh, not sure I agree with that. I think she looks her age.

A better example that you could get me with is Selena Gomez who, despite being nearly 21 years old, still looks much younger than that. And is still fucking smoking hot.

 

[Axver]

So, Peace On Earth is embarrassing but the song where Bono sings about SWINGING FROM THE TREES LIKE A MONKEY is not...

That has never really struck me as a bad lyric - to me it's always sounded like an innocent metaphor for childhood.

Peace On Earth. Nice melody but the line about growing up without many trees and tearing them down to use on his enemies is the worst lyric Bono ever wrote.

Now this is one of the most fucking appalling lyrics ever. It's mindboggling to realise that in the space of three years, Bono went from penning one of his most articulate, insightful political lyrics ever - Please - to writing that inane, heavy-handed drivel.

This round is really hard for me to vote. I could pile in on any of Stuck, IALW, Peace on Earth, and Grace. Stuck has some nice vocals from Edge, IALW has the rocketship verse, and Grace hints at a good idea despite its shortcomings, so I guess it's POE for me just because those lyrics are so so fucking bad.

The two songs I want to proceed are WILATW and Walk On.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

That has never really struck me as a bad lyric - to me it's always sounded like an innocent metaphor for childhood.

I think I have a bad association with it now, as it reminds me of that sad and ill-advised sequence in INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL where Shia Labeouf swings on the vines like a monkey during the climactic car chase.

 

[LemonMelon]

That line in Come Sail Away where aliens fly down in their starship and fuck around with Dennis DeYoung reminds me of Crystal Skull.

 

[popacrobat]

I'm sorry that anything reminds anybody of Crystal Skull.

 

[Globo14]

Wild Honey. It's just... baaaaaaaaad.

 

[Axver]

Wow, there's already a vote for WILATW? For shame.

 

[brooklynmike]

I don't get the hate for Wild Honey. It's a fun song. Sure, it's a little light listening but every song can't be about cutting down trees and using them on our ena mees.

 

[Globo14]

Somebody voted for Beautiful Day?

Seriously?

 

[bonocomet]

Somebody voted for Beautiful Day?

Seriously?

Well this is the place where One has already been voted off.




What do you expect?

 

[Axver]

One still did better this time than last, when it didn't even make it out of the Achtung Baby round (though that was under a different system - single round, multi-vote for favourites). The last time we ran a tournament like this one, it was the edition where we took out Streets and One, so unfortunately no comparison can be made. In retrospect, perhaps the result would not have been as predictable as we feared and those two songs should've been left in.

 

[Globo14]

Well this is the place where One has already been voted off.

What do you expect?

Well, I did take that into consideration. But Beautiful Day over drivel like Wild Honey or Grace? C'mon, now.

Grace barely cracks the top 11 from this album for me.

 

[Flairix]

There can be no Peace on Earth with a song like that.

 

[dan_smee]

One track has pretense, the other does not. I'd rather Bono sound ridiculous singing a ridiculous song than sound ridiculous singing a heavy-handed song.

Grace sucks more than either anyway.

Tracks that must go through:

1. Beautiful Day
2. Kite
3. When I Look At The World

Agree with everything said here

 

[dazzledbylight]

So, Peace On Earth is embarrassing but the song where Bono sings about SWINGING FROM THE TREES LIKE A MONKEY is not, and is somehow the fourth best on the album?

Tourist, you amaze me. Consistently.

Rating Wild Honey above Kite is fucking preposterous.

well, i wouldn't rate WH above K either, for sure- tho there's nothing wrong with the actual line of "swinging from ...." And i don't think I'd rate POE as #4.

Funny thing-- i can't quite get the whole POE song for the moment bc i've gotten the Live ?9-11 concert version where the first 2 lines of POE and then they go into WO with the Choral Group...burned into my memory.
i voted for IALW ... never liked it much from the get go.

 

[Salome]

I really love the "Where I grew up there weren't many trees ..." lyric.
It manages to connect the event to Ireland's history, invokes an image of a place where life used to be but now isn't anymore, refers to the insanity of life ending other life and by using the word 'enemies' somehow underlines the innocence of the victims of the tragedy.

I think the lyrics of Please are truly great, but Peace on Earth I like even more.

 

[Vlaco]

Great: Beautiful Day
Good: Kite, Walk On, When I Look At The World
So-so: Stuck, New York, Elevation
Crap: everything else

 

[An Cat Gav]

It was a toss-up between Grace and Peace On Earth for me; I went with Grace.

The music is lovely. I don't like the lyrics or the vocal.

Yeah, I agree regarding Grace.

Beautiful music and melody etc but it's pretty piss-poor as an album closer. On the UK/Ireland copy I have The Ground Beneath Her Feet as the last song and in this context, Grace's position on the album makes a lot more sense.

Such a shame that TGBHF wasn't an official track on every edition, would have elevated the album from a 7/10 to an 8/10 for me, if they'd somehow squeezed Statless at the expense of Peace on earth it would be 9/10.