Still a poor man's copy of Beautiful Day but they are allowed to rip off their own songs. Just wish there was more lift off somewhere in the song. Ok but certainly not great.
I agree with you.
Definitely clear they used the Beautiful day formula here. Which is fine- as you say, they're allowed to use their own songs for inspiration. I'll never understand why critics and fans alike expect U2 to have to be Earth shattering and completely different than anything they'd ever released before to be good.
I was thinking of Get out of your own way and what it lacked compared to Beautiful day and City of blinding lights. Aside from the obvious that BD kicked off this U2 3.0 era if you will, there's the differences in sound and feel. BD says "hey, remember those anthems you fell in love with. Here, we're back to that." The song contains some 2000 era bells and whistles as we all know. However, in addition to that, it has a section that truly and authentically recalls 1980s U2. The "See the world......." bridge and the riff in the outro truly capture the JT era, particularly In God's Country. Also, the "what you don't have you don't need it now" vocals immediately recall the high energy, belting War era Bono. Similarly, COBL actually builds and soars like an 80's anthem then at the bridge- Bono shouting "time, time, tiiimmeeeeee......." as Edge winds up that riff- you're getting a dose of early 80s U2 energy again.
Red Flag Day has that early 80s energy. Little Things obviously has that 80s (and 90s with the personal themes) intensity and heartbreak that connects U2 to so many people. The building to a climax, soaring guitars with passionate vocals.
That's really what Get out of your own way lacks. It's very clearly trying to be the next big U2 hit and just as clearly using the BD template. However, it lacks the true callbacks to the U2 energy and as a result, without having much else ground breaking going on, falls short. Even if it had that energy- it would still had to have been DAMN good for the public to eat it up like they did COBL and BD. A good deal better than I think it is.
I go back and forth a lot on the song- I've never hated it. For now, I quite like it. Nice enough song, nice enough message and it fits with the theme of SOE. It's not the clunker some make it out to be.
In my humble opinion, for singles, here are the songs that could do it:
Red flag day- Has enough of the U2 energy, yet very modern sounding, political and personal themes. I think fans and public alike would enjoy it. Very different from what the average person is expecting from U2.
Summer of love- Relevant themes. Excellent song musically and vocally.
Showman- Catchy as hell, nice angle to approach the subjects it tackles from and U2 has never sounded like this.
Love is bigger- Epic U2 anthem. Just like with little things- no new ground, but they get what they're good at right here.
These songs are either different enough or actually good enough to get a lot of attention.