U2 best trio of songs?

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Put me down as a huge fan of NLOTH's opening trio. I would rather have that than all of SOI. I can't think of three songs from that album that I like as much as those.

I'd take Cedarwood Road and The Troubles over any member of NLOTH's opening trio.
 
Cedarwood Road live, maybe. And maybe if The Troubles was allowed to go anywhere at the end instead of that single edit they gave us.
 
I'm sure I'm about to get pelted with rotten tomatoes but MOS is the weakest link in NLOTH's opening trio.

Not that any of them are especially strong links compared to most of the other trios already mentioned.


*pelts Ax with tomatoes*


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I love some songs on SOI but as a continuous string of songs, they kinda suck. Kinda like last CHVRCHES album.


As an album SOI is the most consistent in theme and cohesive in track placement since Zooropa. NLOTH is a drunken A.D.D. mess after MOS, Bomb is just a collection of songs, ATYCLB works but has some strange turns, and Pop almost comes off like a compilation especially after Mofo.


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As an album SOI is the most consistent in theme and cohesive in track placement since Zooropa. NLOTH is a drunken A.D.D. mess after MOS, Bomb is just a collection of songs, ATYCLB works but has some strange turns, and Pop almost comes off like a compilation especially after Mofo.


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I agree for the most part. That is the brilliance of Pop though. Its all over the place but somehow makes sense.

I remember listening to NLOTH and those first 3 song was blown away! Especially with NLOTH. Felt like a bomb went off and then the grand intro (I understand it never recovers but still a good tune) of Magnificent, and then the powerful MOS. To me MOS sounds like a tune U2 never attempted (in the vein of The Band, George Harrison, or even Dylan). I can understand why some may not care for it but it was a chance by U2. Something they haven't done since Pop.

After that trio though...the album never recovers :angry:
 
NLOTH
Magnificent
MOS

is vastly underrated. One of U2's strongest starts to an album. Never really recovered after Crazy though....

I remember being very pleased on the first listen after hearing those first three… thinking, “Okay, we’re onto something here!” Then I heard the rest of the album and ultimately came away with only 4 or 5 songs overall that I'd ever come back to.

Definitely the strongest opening trio since Pop though.
 
Put me down as a huge fan of NLOTH's opening trio. I would rather have that than all of SOI. I can't think of three songs from that album that I like as much as those.



:up:
I was just listening to this album yesterday for the first time in ages. The opening trio is very strong. It falls apart afterwards, though, and doesn't pick back up till Fez.
 
Its funny no one has mentioned a trio from ATYCLB...

Another album with a strong start (Tracks 1-5, even though studio Elevation is kind of meh now)


I would like to add:

Lemon
Stay
Daddy's Gonna Pay..
 
As an album SOI is the most consistent in theme and cohesive in track placement since Zooropa. NLOTH is a drunken A.D.D. mess after MOS, Bomb is just a collection of songs, ATYCLB works but has some strange turns, and Pop almost comes off like a compilation especially after Mofo.


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yeah, I agree that SOI has pretty cohesive flow compared to past albums; Pop is pretty messy and NLOTH is....just set of songs.
 
yeah, I agree that SOI has pretty cohesive flow compared to past albums; Pop is pretty messy and NLOTH is....just set of songs.



Completely disagree about NLOTH.....
Bomb, on the other hand, is just a set of songs.
NLOTH has a feel and theme to it. The track listing doesn't help that, though. Yeah, obviously Crazy Tonight does not fit the album at all. But NLOTH, Fez, Magnificent, MOS, UC, WAS, Cedars, etc all very much have a sonic similarity.
Fez
NLOTH
Magnificent
MOS
UC
Breathe
WAS
Cedars

Solid, cohesive album IMO.
 
I've always had this as my NLOTH Tracklist and tried to forget that the middle 3 ever happened:

No Line On The Horizon
Magnificent
Moment Of Surrender
Unknown Caller
Soon
Breathe
White As Snow
Winter - Linear Version
Fez - Being Born
Cedars Of Lebanon
 
*pelts Ax with tomatoes*

Well i'm glad those tomatoes at least weren't rotten.

Definitely the strongest opening trio since Pop though.

That's not particularly hard when the competition is ATYCLB (the awfulness of Stuck; the cheesiness of Elevation) and HTDAAB (the excruciatingly bad transition from Vertigo to Miracle Drug, and the dullness of SYCMIOYO).

Its funny no one has mentioned a trio from ATYCLB...

It'll do well in a worst trio thread.

Not as popular here, but still awesome is Fez-BB/White as Snow/Breathe.

I've always thought Breathe's placement ruins the end of NLOTH. Fez/White As Snow/Cedars flows really well. Breathe should be much earlier on the album (or dropped).
 
Any run on Pop will do for me, particularly Do You Feel Loved - Mofo - IGWSHA. Or the final three of Achtung.

Honourable mention:

TGBHF - Never let me go - Stateless
 
I've always had this as my NLOTH Tracklist and tried to forget that the middle 3 ever happened:

No Line On The Horizon
Magnificent
Moment Of Surrender
Unknown Caller
Soon
Breathe
White As Snow
Winter - Linear Version
Fez - Being Born
Cedars Of Lebanon

This is as good as NLOTH gets for me and could probably have been a top 5 U2 album.
 
Agree on many trios named here. Pretty much any trio on Achtung Baby works. Though it doesn't contain my favorite song, the best trio for me is:
Ultra Violet - Acrobat - Love is blindness

As for NLOTH, I've been listening to it quite a lot lately, and what I thought about it after its release still holds true today. It's just a very coherent album. The problem is that I'll go crazy and Boots really don't fit in. The rest is excellent. So, besides the opening trio (which is an obvious contender), I think this is an excellent trio: Stand up comedy - Fez - White as snow. Again, not my favority song on the album, but as a trio is works wonderfully.

Another big contender for best trio would be Zooropa - Babyface - Lemon. If only there wasn't Numb in between... Definitely a courageous song, a real statement, but Lemon would just fit better in this trio and is just an amazing song in itself.
 
I can't believe somebody just mentioned Stand Up Comedy in a positive context. I didn't think that was possible.
 
The trouble with NLOTH is that the interesting stuff is mostly kinda-there, and the shit stuff is very there. I like Fez but it just feels like the sketch for something that might go somewhere at some point. Essentially there is no three-song run on that album that fits the bill. As I'm sure I've said before, I consider Moment of Surrender great in and of itself.

Truth be told, I don't think they had a fucking clue what they were doing when they made that album. I think/assume they were consciously walking back the HTDAAB era, but they didn't really have their finger on any pulse. It basically didn't need to be made, that record. The urgency was long gone.
 
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Amazingly I probably consider SoI to be a better *sarcastic air quotes* album *end sarcastic air quotes* than NLOTH, just because the former is so all over the joint. At least SoI is somewhat unified, and gets better the more it goes on.

But, NLOTH has, like, 47 better songs than SoI, so it gets the choccies.
 
I can't believe somebody just mentioned Stand Up Comedy in a positive context. I didn't think that was possible.
Really? While it's nowhere on my top list of U2 songs, I quite like it. Same goes for Fez and White as snow, but as a trio it works very well. Just as the whole album works as a unit (except for the before mentioned Crazy and Boots).
 
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