Axver said:I have no idea what people have against this song. The lyrics are lovely and the song has a subtle beauty that makes it one of the best on ATYCLB.
Some people here get so hung up about the "Grace, it's a name for a girl/it's also a thought that changed the world" line that I think they just have a five minute loop of that.
Party Boy said:I like Grace quite a bit actually as a song on its own. I don't think the tracklisting does it any favours on atyclb. Would be a perfect song for Pop or Zooropa... for me anyways!!
Numbology said:i've listened to this song for about........4 times and i think the 5. time will surely kill me.
bathiu said:I actualy (only) like the music there... without Bono's melody and without his lyrics it would be a great instrumental...
The_Edge89 said:
Here you go!
Edge89's own instrumental mix of Grace.
It's hard keeping the quality when you rip the vocals though.
The bass isn't as loud either.
U2 - Grace (E//89 Instrumental Mix)
http://tinyurl.com/6whx6
djerdap said:Grace is crap. The lyrics are even more crap.
"Grace, it's a name for a girl... it's also a thought that changed the world"
I mean, how can a guy who wrote a lyrical masterpiece as Running To Stand Still write THIS?
80sU2isBest said:
If you lived under grace, you'd understand the lyrics completely, and you wouldn't think they were "crap".
djerdap said:
WHAT?
corner said:Grace...mmm...I it! It would have made almost as beautiful a closer to the album as TGBHF, had I not been fortunate enough to live in Scotland.
That said though...I'd imagine that Yahweh would've made a much more satisfying closer than Fast cars for anyone outside of U.K.
Its funny how many of the recent real U2 album closers (ignoring the bonus tracks) seem to be very Faith (in crisis) orientated:
Yahweh
Grace
Wake Up Dead Man
The Wanderer
80sU2isBest said:
Grace - it's what Bono lives under. It's what I live under. It's what every Christian lives under. Grace is the Son Of God willingly dying on the cross in man's place. If you accept that, you are living under grace. Grace transforms something ugly - the sinful spirit of man into something beautiful and new. That's what Grace, God's "thought that changed the world", is about.
GatorDistantRun said:
I know you were talking about recent albums, but don't forget about "40" which closes the War album.
And closing an album with a spirtual song goes back quite a while. Bono said this about 40 but it could be applied to HTDAAB and ATYCLB as well:
Years ago, lost for words and forty minutes of recording time left before the end of our studio time, we were still looking for a song to close our third album, War. We wanted to put something explicitly spiritual on the record to balance the politics and the romance of it; like Bob Marley or Marvin Gaye would. We thought about the psalms... "Psalm 40"... There was some squirming. We were a very "white" rock group, and such plundering of the scriptures was taboo for a white rock group unless it was in the "service of Satan". Or worse, Goth.
"Psalm 40" is interesting in that it suggests a time in which grace will replace karma, and love replace the very strict laws of Moses (i.e. fulfil them). I love that thought. David, who committed some of the most selfish as well as selfless acts, was depending on it. That the scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me; now it is a source of great comfort.
"40" became the closing song at U2 shows and on hundreds of occasions, literally hundreds of thousands of people of every size and shape t-shirt have shouted back the refrain, pinched from "Psalm 6": "'How long' (to sing this song)". I had thought of it as a nagging question –- pulling at the hem of an invisible deity whose presence we glimpse only when we act in love. How long... hunger? How long... hatred? How long until creation grows up at the chaos of its precocious, hell-bent adolescence has been discarded? I thought it odd that the vocalising of such questions could bring such comfort; to me too.
(from Bono's introduction to "Selections from the Book of Psalms: Authorized King James Version", Grove Press, 1999