Rate the Song: The Wanderer

[digitize]

And now for the second half of Zooropa!

Please rate The Wanderer on a scale from 0 to 10, using whatever criteria you feel allows you to best evaluate the song as a whole. I will not set criteria for people to based on, but if you feel like your best evaluation of the merits of a song comes from voting only based on, say, the studio version, go right ahead and vote that way. Full information on the Rate The Song series may be found in this thread.

Have fun! This poll will close in 96 hours.

 

[coolian2]

if i wasn't voting solely on album cuts it'd have gone a lot higher.

90s playstation music and johnny cash = wtf?

 

[LemonMelon]

10
7
7
10
10
8
9
9
8
7

I'm pretty sure I love this album.

 

[An Cat Gav]

U2 AND Johnny Cash, doesn't get much better for me.

10

 

[prbiker15]

Excellent album closer, Johnny Cash's vocals just add to it. It wouldn't have been the same if Bono sang The Wanderer, but I love the live version they did for that Johnny Cash tribute special in 2005. Giving it a 9.

 

[silkensky]

Johnny Cash's vocal on this gives me goosebumps. I love this song. Musically it's uplifting to me, and I love Bono's little appearance near the end. Fantastic album closer.

 

[nielsgov]

The vocals are great, the lyrics are great. The music is incredibly boring though. 6

 

[Nick66]

The vocals are great, the lyrics are great. The music is incredibly boring though. 6

90s playstation music and johnny cash = wtf?

The "boring" background is part of the brilliance of The Wanderer, and is quite intentional. Johnny f**king Cash singing over non-descript electronic music. That's inspired. And after the (undeserved) R&H backlash of just a few years prior, U2 was not about to open themselves up for criticism again and wisely let Cash do the Americana, and they stuck with electronica.

The contrast is sheer genius.

 

[LemonMelon]

Yeah, but I don't like listening to it. Give the man in black something better to work with.

Great song by most standards though, definitely one you could play in nearly any arrangement or at any amplitude and it would still sound good.

 

[The Sad Punk]

Controversial opinion ahead: This is U2's most genuinely American song. Straight up. This is a dusty, post-apocalyptic prairie with a Jesus-sticker'd whiskey flask, a decade or so before The Road. And, though it took me a while to understand, now I think it's fucking great.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Tune.

Every time I hear it now I feel compelled to sing Edge's "WAH WAH WAH WAH WANDERING" backing vocal from that tribute performance. Every. Time.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

The "boring" background is part of the brilliance of The Wanderer, and is quite intentional.

oh, so you were there when they recorded this song?

 

[Nick66]

oh, so you were there when they recorded this song?

Um...what?

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

you seem to like to pass off your opinion as fact, as if you were there when the band recorded these songs, or if you had a long chat with u2 about why they did this and that for each song, or i guess just that your finger is that much more on the pulse of what they must've been thinking than the rest of us.

 

[Nick66]

you seem to like to pass off your opinion as fact, as if you were there when the band recorded these songs, or if you had a long chat with u2 about why they did this and that for each song, or i guess just that your finger is that much more on the pulse of what they must've been thinking than the rest of us.

Wow.

 

[LemonMelon]

The least Larry could do for Nick after he saved his fucking life is share his Playstation with him.

 

[gvox]

 

[flybabe]

That burn has to have a blister right about now.

 

[trevgreg]

Controversial opinion ahead: This is U2's most genuinely American song. Straight up. This is a dusty, post-apocalyptic prairie with a Jesus-sticker'd whiskey flask, a decade or so before The Road. And, though it took me a while to understand, now I think it's fucking great.

Word. Cash's vocal and the instrumentation are pretty much terrific all-around.

 

[Aardvark747]

bono version better. 7