Top 3 essential live songs

[pop_mofo]

1. Streets
2. Uteotw
3. Bad

These are the essential live songs. Thoughts?

 

[The John Tree]

Streets and Bad are the two easy answers.

With regards to the third song - every show I’ve ever been to where the band plays I Will Follow, the roof just gets lifted off the place. I think that one is quietly a third essential.

 

[U2C]

1. Bad
2. Streets
3. Electric Co.

 

[Registered Dude]

1. Streets
2. Uteotw
3. Bad

These are the essential live songs. Thoughts?

You are correct. There’s a case for 40, but I think it loses out to these 3

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I agree with Streets and Bad being the top 2.

I think the third one is your dependent. You can make a strong case for any of the songs mentioned here, as well as With or Without You, Pride, Bullet (Vertigo your aside), full band Sunday Bloody Sunday.

 

[Irvine511]

I’d vote for SBS live as #3.

 

[lazarus]

I'd argue it's Bullet. Unlike SBS, Pride, or WOWY, it wasn't a single, but became a live staple because of the power of its live versions.

I Will Follow, for example, always gets a big response from the crowd, but I don't know that it's transformed in the way that Bullet is.

 

[cobl04]

Streets, Bad and In a Little While.

 

[zoocarolina]

That’s tough: IWF, SBS, Streets are easy, for me it would be: Gloria, MOFO and One.

 

[MrPryck2U]

1. Streets
2. Uteotw
3. Bad

These are the essential live songs. Thoughts?

These are 3 essential songs, but Bullet and I Will Follow are essential. U2 does have a lot of essentials. Songs that a first time U2 concert goer should hear to get the essence of U2. One and Walk On are now essential also. Narrowing it down to 3 is a challenge because they have least 10.

 

[pacemaker]

That’s tough: IWF, SBS, Streets are easy, for me it would be: Gloria, MOFO and One.

Glad you said Mofo. They have a handful of songs that aren’t played regularly (or at all anymore) that I consider essential that doesn’t quite line up with the original question: Mofo, Lemon, HMTMKMKM, the Bullet-RTSS-Streets sequence/ Please-Streets sequence.

 

[phanan]

I’d vote for SBS live as #3.

Same. Bullet may have gone the strongest transformation from studio to live, but SBS is just more powerful overall.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I’d vote for SBS live as #3.

#3 is the only flexi-spot and this might default to it.

If the mood is right, maybe One gets a shout

 

[Irvine511]

Same. Bullet may have gone the strongest transformation from studio to live, but SBS is just more powerful overall.

There is something about that opening drumbeat that sends adrenaline rushing through my brain. It’s also an all-time top tier political song, and U2 has politics at the core of their identity.

I love the space and theatrics of Bullet and it often lets Bono be at his best, it’s really an entire world they build that enables him to wander through and adapt to the era … top contender for sure.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Same. Bullet may have gone the strongest transformation from studio to live, but SBS is just more powerful overall.

yea full band Sunday Bloody Sunday always gets a huge pop from the crowd.

you could make an argument that Sunday Bloody Sunday is actually #2 behind Streets - as it's more well known to the casuals and non fans than Bad.

I personally put Bad #2 - but i'm not going to argue with anyone who wants to say it's SBS

 

[Salome]

New Year's Day is also in the running for about the same reasons as Sunday Bloody Sunday

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

whether you liked the idea of JT30 or not, the idea that they could play Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Year's Day, Bad, Pride, Streets, Still Haven't Found, With or Without You and Bullet in order to START the show and still have plenty of songs left for a quality encore only goes to show the strength of their catalogue - especially in a live setting.

 

[lazarus]

We got A Sort of Homecoming in the opening stretch, with Bad showing up in the encore.

 

[DaveC]

We got A Sort of Homecoming in the opening stretch, with Bad showing up in the encore.

i am incredibly jealous that you got that setlist rather than the one i got that they switched to mid-leg, where they dropped ASOH entirely and played bad in full daylight.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

i am incredibly jealous that you got that setlist rather than the one i got that they switched to mid-leg, where they dropped ASOH entirely and played bad in full daylight.

They played Bad in London in full daylight too

But also like it was great

 

[DaveC]

it was a fine version of the song.

i just felt like it lost a little something relative to the other times i'd seen it live, being played so early and without the light show.

but i also get that it was intended to be a reference to live aid.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I had a bit of a moment when Bad came on at the last meadowlands show, as it was also my last night before moving to DC.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

The DC show was my last night before officially entering the big boy workforce.

You know, the same show headache was too cool to hang.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

We can basically all agree that Bad and Streets are Thing 1 and Thing 2.

I’ll go out on a limb and throw out Beautiful Day (gets the casuals screaming) but, moreso, City of Blinding Lights. COBL gets an insane reaction night in and night out and never really gets old. If you had to go to a U2 show for a week in a row, I think you’d be less sick of that than if they played Bad or Streets every night. It’s immediate, it’s a rush, it soars.


If there were an inverse, then One is their shittiest live song. It has plodded along and sucked completely this entire century (was great live in the 90s). Passionless and dull. Maybe the casual audience is less bored by it or something but I’ve been more moved by all the garbage new songs live than I ever have been by One. So it’s their biggest net negative for live shows and I don’t get why they mostly can’t seem to move beyond it (half the SOI nights aside).

And if there’s a song that’s been played way, way, way disproportionately to its recognition by most of the audience, it’s Miss Sarajevo which has practically been a staple since the Vertigo Tour. Bono can do some nice operatics and I particularly like it but I always get the sense the general crowd wants to look at their watch.

The Top 10 In Chronological Order:

I Will Follow
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride (most plays and gets casuals on their feet)
Bad
Streets
With or Without You
Until The End of the World
Beautiful Day
Vertigo (again, casuals, but it’s never NOT exciting)
City of Blinding Lights

I’d rank Bullet at #11. Think the crowd tends to dig it but it usually doesn’t arouse a strong reaction right away and I think a lot of casuals don’t necessarily recognize it. Probably would have helped had it been on The Best Of.

New Year’s Day would probably be in the running if played more often, same for All I Want Is You, etc.

 

[cobl04]

One is probably the song with the biggest gap between its best live performances and worst. It can be transcendent, and was brilliant on the JT30 tour I thought, thanks to Hear Us Coming. It doesn't necessarily need Hear Us Coming to be great (although it's never as good without it). But sometimes they play it and it's really slow, plodding and uninspiring.

 

[DaveC]

One is probably the song with the biggest gap between its best live performances and worst. It can be transcendent, and was brilliant on the JT30 tour I thought, thanks to Hear Us Coming. It doesn't necessarily need Hear Us Coming to be great (although it's never as good without it). But sometimes they play it and it's really slow, plodding and uninspiring.

for me that's Pride. i have yet to hear any live version that comes close to touching the studio version. it's the exact opposite for basically every other U2 song.

 

[cobl04]

That's not what I'm talking about tho

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

One is probably the song with the biggest gap between its best live performances and worst. It can be transcendent, and was brilliant on the JT30 tour I thought, thanks to Hear Us Coming. It doesn't necessarily need Hear Us Coming to be great (although it's never as good without it). But sometimes they play it and it's really slow, plodding and uninspiring.

I think the exact correlation between good One and bad One is directly associated with whether or not Bono goes on an 8 minute dissertation between the time the backing track starts and the edge first plays a note

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I think the exact correlation between good One and bad One is directly associated with whether or not Bono goes on an 8 minute dissertation between the time the backing track starts and the edge first plays a note

Yep. Saps it of all its power. The longer the intro, the worse it is. “Get out your phones and text” for Vertigo was probably the worst.

 

[cobl04]

I think the exact correlation between good One and bad One is directly associated with whether or not Bono goes on an 8 minute dissertation between the time the backing track starts and the edge first plays a note

I can hear the backing track screaming in agony.