Non-album songs in Rate The Song series

[digitize]

Tentative list of 2000s non-album songs:

Stateless
Summer Rain
Always
Levitate
Love You Like Made
Smile
Flower Child
Big Girls are Best
Electrical Storm
Xanax and Wine
Are You Gonna Wait Forever?
Window in the Skies
Soon
Winter
[Mercy - 2004 version]
[Mercy - 2010 version]
[Return of the Stingray Guitar]
[North Star]
[Glastonbury]
[Every Breaking Wave]
[Boy Falls From The Sky]
(The Ground Beneath Her Feet - in the ATYCLB round)
(Fast Cars - in the HTDAAB round)
(No Line on the Horizon 2 - to be included in the NLOTH round)

Am I missing any?

The bracketed songs I'm unsure of including. And if I include Mercy, I'm unsure of if I should have rounds for both versions or just one "Mercy" round. But I lean towards including the songs and splitting Mercy into two rounds, because of how incredibly different the two versions are (especially how much the lyrics have changed).

 

[LemonMelon]

Please don't waste time and bandwith on alt Mercy and Stingray. I thought the rule was that we were only doing physical releases anyhow? Mercy is an exception, but Glastonbury? I'm not so sure.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

yeah, i agree with travis about the physical releases. i don't think stuff like ebw and stingray should be included since they were live only, and even then you only got to hear them if you happened to catch them live when they did it, since they didn't play them the whole tour.

oh, and it's love you like mad.

 

[flybabe]

Never mind. I see they were already included.

 

[Globo14]

Do Vertigo Streets, just for shits and giggles.

 

[popacrobat]

Would Boy Falls From The Sky count as a physical release? U2 is credited with the music, right? And they played it once...and soundchecked it a million times.

I agree with the others not getting in. I'd think only one Mercy ('10) should get in too, since it's releases only.

 

[gareth brown]

with the new songs debuted on 360, I think they deserve threads of their own. the thing is U2 have (at least for two decades) never been one of those bands who play brand new material live. Now we've seen them go out on the road with a handful of new songs that the band are clearly happy with and in some cases had an alright stay in the setlist. Just think how many times they must have re-recorded/fucked with those songs before they let us hear them, we all know how protective they are of anything new...

Say U2 were one of those bands that had always played new material on past tours that was never officially released but forever popular among fans (for instance, Radiohead - Lift, Big Boots etc). If there was no polls for that stuff, yeah it'd make sense not to give this bunch of songs the time.

But now that kind of thing has happened and U2 is finally one of those bands with some pretty decent finished songs in the 'Unreleased' list. and come on - it's not like there's people clamouring for THIS to have a poll so they can give it a 10 and write paragraphs on what a lost classic it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDFK704DLDY

there's people here who probably know some of the new 360 songs better than tracks like Stateless/Are You Gonna Wait Forever? etc and would sooner talk about/vote for them - its just a bit of a strange situation because we never had this kind of thing before 360

 

[gareth brown]

once again I have typed too much and have probably killed the thread sorry

 

[Nick66]

Am I missing any?

Yes. You're missing the single best non-album thing 00's U2 did.

Here's to you Dig. And if you're not Irish, it isn't your fault.

The Ballad of Ronnie Drew

 

[nielsgov]

The two Mercys should definitely have different polls.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

wait, the 2004 version of mercy was never commercially released, right? so it shouldn't be included at all.

 

[digitize]

I honestly don't recall ever stating that having only commercially-released songs was a rule, for this contest. And I also draw a big distinction between the 2010 songs and, say, the Salomé outtakes, because the 2010 songs were still presented by the band to the world. But if popular sentiment doesn't want me to include them, I won't... except, I guess, the 2010 version of Mercy? Should I could a live recording on WWIE as an official release?

 

[gareth brown]

Mercy should just be "Mercy" in its own single poll. let people vote based on which they prefer I guess? I definitely think the 2004 version deserves the chance to be voted for/discussed in the thread alongside the....later version it would certainly make for lively discussion in the thread so it's worth that alone!

it's not like we'd be discussing an unfinished 8 minute ramble from Salomé (or whole discs of outtakes in separate polls) - Mercy was [at the time, regardless of what people think of the new version] a finished track cut off the album at the last minute.......just waiting to be butchered a few years later but that's beside the point. It's definitely held in higher regard than certain lost tracks like Be There and so on.

 

[popacrobat]

I honestly don't recall ever stating that having only commercially-released songs was a rule, for this contest. And I also draw a big distinction between the 2010 songs and, say, the Salomé outtakes, because the 2010 songs were still presented by the band to the world. But if popular sentiment doesn't want me to include them, I won't... except, I guess, the 2010 version of Mercy? Should I could a live recording on WWIE as an official release?

Gotcha. Still, the thing for North Star, Every Breaking Wave, etc. is that we haven't heard full versions of them. We have no idea what the finished product would sound like. We have like what, 90 seconds of North Star produced by RedOne with Transformers over it? What's telling to me about those songs, aside from Stingray, they weren't eligible to be voted on for the U22 thing...even though North Star was played considerably more often than One Tree Hill, Out of Control or 40.

 

[Galeongirl]

I'm missing Native Son, Digi. Otherwise it seems pretty complete. I would not be opposed to putting in the 2010 live played songs, though it's kind of hard to judge when there's no studio version.

 

[digitize]

I'm missing Native Son, Digi. Otherwise it seems pretty complete. I would not be opposed to putting in the 2010 live played songs, though it's kind of hard to judge when there's no studio version.

I forgot about Native Son... thanks for reminding me.

 

[LemonMelon]

Mercy should just be "Mercy" in its own single poll. let people vote based on which they prefer I guess?

This is what we've done the rest of the way. It's not like Party Girl had two separate polls in spite of being quite different.

 

[digitize]

I forgot to add The Hands That Built America, so that will get thrown on.

I'm not totally sure what to do about the 2010 songs. My instinct is still to include them, but I'm not sure. I would appreciate as much feedback as possible in this thread between today and when I start these rounds tomorrow to give me a better idea of what to do.

 

[djerdap]

I wouldn't include the 2010 songs. They're unreleased and mostly unfinished material.

 

[gareth brown]

include them, I wrote way too much on it on the last page already to repeat myself but there's more reason to include them than ponder whether 2004 Mercy deserves it's own thread

 

[LadySpinHead]

I vote no on including songs that we've only heard live and somewhat unfinished. I think there's too much temptation to vote based on what we WANT a song to be as a studio cut, rather than what it actually is in its live incarnation only- like EBW, for example. We all WANT it to live up to WOWY and One, but as an acoustic live partial song, how can we really tell?

 

[nielsgov]

I wouldn't include them. It's like voting on acoustic Please or Stay.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

I wouldn't include the 2010 songs. They're unreleased and mostly unfinished material.

yeah, that's what i think as well. also like ladyspinhead said above, it'd be too easy for people to vote based on how they'd want the finished version to sound. if they were included, the only ones i think that would be finished or polished enough to not be like that would be maybe stingray and bffts? though honestly i rarely listen to the 2010 songs, so i'm fuzzy on which ones sounded more finished than the others. jmo anyway.

 

[Scorpionac]

I'd skip the live songs, save Mercy.

 

[digitize]

I'm thinking I'll leave out the 2010 songs. And now part of me just wants to ditch Mercy altogether to make this nice and clean.

 

[cobl04]

Mercy must be included. 04 version is amazing.

 

[U2DMfan]

what about the alternate versions of ABOY, Sometimes and Yahweh?

 

[digitize]

what about the alternate versions of ABOY, Sometimes and Yahweh?

I've been keeping a policy of not having "alternate versions", but instead letting people vote on their overall impressions of songs. Sweetest Thing was the exception to this, because the two versions of it were released more than a decade apart. I was considering making Mercy an exception too, but now I'm not even sure that I'll include Mercy in any form.

 

[LemonMelon]

I insist that you add Mercy in some form, partially because it will rack up more votes than most non-album tracks, and partially because its mean score is going to stomp nearly everything on ATYCLB and Bomb. Not sure why you would want to skip a song with that level of popularity/notoriety. Also, it has been officially released, albeit in an embarrassing form.

 

[digitize]

Maybe I should just do a general "Mercy" round and let people vote based on whatever they want? I feel like if I officially designate a round for the 2004 version of Mercy, which I know is what most people will want to vote on, I will also annoy other people for having voting on an officially unreleased version of the song.