Winter (Song) (DISCUSSION ONLY)

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Earnie Shavers said:
It really does seem like a good bridge song though. I am totally sold on this only being maybe 10% away from a great middle song on an album like this. I’m surprised so many people can’t see it’s merits. You can tell from a lot of the reaction in here that most people want different things from albums. Some want track 1-11 to be All Time U2 Greatness on every track with only a passing care for complete feel and flow, and others really want the experience of the ride from track 1-11 and hang more on the details than the Really Big Moments. Either way, not every song on an album has to be a neat little package of bombastic U2ness or oh-so-emotional ultra-melodic balladeering. Some of them need to sit in between, be bridge songs.

So yes, there’s not a human being alive in the entire western world who wouldn’t just assume this is Viva La Vida at the start, it’s obviously unfinished, and Bono is inconsistent (but he is throughout the album). It needs smoothing out and you may think something like Boots or Crazy Tonight or SUC is a better song, and that’s fine, but I can’t see how people don’t think this would have been a great part of an ‘album’ album, if they’d stretched that all the way from track 1-11. Might not be one of the best 11 songs they recorded during these sessions, but I’d take this and a couple of others that still have the 1-4/8-11 feel and flow over the middle three songs any day of the week.
Click to expand...

Couldn't disagree more.
 
I wish the string section, not the Coldplay one but the one from the dallas.swf clip was more prominent. And do away with the one or two clunker lines and refine the song a bit more and you have a very very good song.
 
It's a bit slow, beautiful chorus though! Kinda reminds me of Streets during the chorus.
 
popacrobat said:
I wish the string section, not the Coldplay one but the one from the dallas.swf clip was more prominent. And do away with the one or two clunker lines and refine the song a bit more and you have a very very good song.
Click to expand...

Yeah.

I love the song, but to finish it, id do away with the intro strings, and use the dallas ones, and then have it ease into the verse...

The dallas strings really make this song
 
mobvok said:
:up: You've been on fire in this thread. I think I was the first to compare it to WAS, but really regretting it now because in the rough lyrical sketch here it sounds a lot like continuity with WAS' narrator, and I'm a sucker for that stuff. I'll need to check WAS again, but this sounds like elaboration on the guy's life, checking in at age 21 and 25. And frankly, that operatic outro (and Adam's bass!) is just too good not to appear on a proper album in some form.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the lyric is very similar, which might be on it’s own a reason why it was let go. Reading the lyrics to it though, it wouldn’t take much to tweak it and turn into the voice of someone on the other side of the conflict. When I first heard it (misheard it), before reading the lyrics, I picked up, obviously, that it was a guy off to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, but misheard the stuff about a Holy City and crawling on the streets and just assumed it was the story of someone from Morocco/Middle East and thought it was fucking great that they nearly had both sides of the story on there. The guy from the streets of the holy city, the guy from the suburbs of America… both dying together in Afghanistan.
 
Earnie Shavers said:
Would you, per chance, be a soul rockin' person?
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with what I like or dislike on No Line honestly. I don't really get the connection.

You just said you'd replace 3 finished, and superior songs, with one terrible quality poorly constructed one, because it would make the album flow better. I disagree. This song has no business being on any U2 album until it's cleaned up quite a bit, no matter what it would be replacing. I'm not talking about a "smoothing" out either, it needs a complete overhaul. It's disjointed, bland, and poorly performed (especially Bono's last verse) Winter, to me in its current state, is not up to NLOTH standards and would kill the "mood" of the album quicker than anything on the official tracklisting may already do for some. It can't decide if it wants to be slightly somber and emotional (verses), or cheerful uplifting pop (chorus), and turns out mediocre at both because of it.
 
also, the only line that really bugs me in the song is hot as hell/butter on toast. first one is from electrical storm anyway. second one it just sounds like bono got hungry in the studio.

Bono: I'm hungry. Get me toast. There's butter on this! It's melting! Brilliant lyric!!! Fuck! I burnt my tongue on it! It's hot as hell! wait! this is an awesome line portraying the dangers and perils of hot foods and the imagery of the butter dripping off the toast! :bonodrum:


something like that probably. for what it's worth too I think he really brought his A game on the album so I'm not going to get worked up on one line on an unfinished song. There's a lot of good/great lines on Winter anyway.
 
It was said that U2 cut two songs in the last 24 hours of making the album. Would Winter and Every Breaking Wave be the two songs? White as Snow sounds like Winter in the Rolling Stone article description from back in December.
 
popacrobat said:
Bono: I'm hungry. Get me toast. There's butter on this! It's melting! Brilliant lyric!!! Fuck! I burnt my tongue on it! It's hot as hell! wait! this is an awesome line portraying the dangers and perils of hot foods and the imagery of the butter dripping off the toast! :bonodrum:
Click to expand...

:lmao:

dangers and perils of hot foods ... concept album anyone?? :drool:
 
Cover of the new album "Pilgrimage"

flammes.jpg


2455120420_2e81f49a5d.jpg
 
dan_smee said:
why>?

I am not a person who listens to 20 seconds of a song and says "this is boring, next"

And ESPECIALLY not with a U2 song. A song is an experience, and it is all as important as any other part of it
Click to expand...

oh for me the first impressions of a song definitely count big time... i don't necessarily think "boring" but i don't want it to leave me empty like i'm trying to find something to connect with but can't, and i don't want to hear the opening of a song and it sound just like something that has been done before (like this Viva La Vida reference in this case), especially imagining things from the perspective of the casual U2 fan

it's like a sales pitch - you gotta get on the right track quickly and entice a person before the door gets slammed in your face kind of thing

a song has to grab me, or spark my interest somehow in those first few moments to make me want to keep listening and not skip... it doesnt have to be big and dramatic, it just has to have a special something... thinking about those beautiful sparse heartrending notes at the beginning of White as Snow for instance, there's just something there that draws me in and makes me want to hear more
 
I hope one of you gives Bono a piece of toast this tour if you meet him.

with butter, obviously.

BONO YOU CAN BUTTER MY TOAST ANY DAY

i mean

wait wut
 
I almost hope that U2 had a lot of trouble trying to figure out this song, because if I was sitting in a studio in November 2008 and deciding between calling up will.i.am and writing Crazy Tonight, going back to work on Stand Up Comedy for the 16th month, or working on Winter, I'm going with plan C.

It was said that U2 cut two songs in the last 24 hours of making the album. Would Winter and Every Breaking Wave be the two songs? White as Snow sounds like Winter in the Rolling Stone article description from back in December.
Click to expand...

That said, I really hope this version of Winter wasn't just 24 hours away from being released. You know....buttered toast and ghosts and all that.
 
Winter does not appear to be Mercy reworked. I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this already but Winter's guitar hook is closer to 'New York' from ATYCLB, which is played on two strings. By contrast, Mercy is a different lick played on one string.

I also believe that the HTDAAB-era leak of Mercy is a finished product. Winter doesn't sound as finished; rather, it sounds like it will be split into two songs a la the Salome outtakes of Lady With a Spinning Head (which begat Wild Horses and UV, if memory serves). Also, as someone mentioned above, Bono's lyrics in Winter are stream of conciousness toward the end of the song and the guitar mixing (at 4:10-ish) is just way off on the right channel.

With that said, this song has tremendous potential if they can work out the middle bridge which would lead into the operatic ending.

My ten cents... :wink:
 
MTEdge said:
I also believe that the HTDAAB-era leak of Mercy is a finished product. Winter doesn't sound as finished; rather, it sounds like it will be split into two songs a la the Salome outtakes of Lady With a Spinning Head (which begat Wild Horses and UV, if memory serves).
Click to expand...


something about winter reminds me a lot of those Salome tapes. which is a great, great thing :up:




ps: i'm pretty sure lady with a spinning head turned into UV and The Fly, but Wild Horses was a separate thing.
 
Earnie Shavers said:
How come everyone is squaring this one up against White as Snow? Was it explicitly mentioned somewhere that it was a “‘this or that, but not both” choice?

If not, White as Snow seems like a really weird song to pick on. I think Winter fits the 1-4/8-11 album. Yes, it’s clearly, clearly unfinished. As each new section arrives, they slam into each other. It needs work, the lyrics are overall very nice but with some real dead points, and there is that Coldplay intro (which, even if it weren’t Coldplay and all of the ridiculous bashing that goes on here, would still just be too close to a major song by a major artist released in the last 12 months – it would have to change). Obviously, of course, it hasn’t been mixed or mastered properly. Even though this audio rip is absolutely terrible in it’s own right, you can still tell that it hasn’t been given it’s final spit and shine. Try and see past those things though. Everyone had to see past a lot of the same for Mercy as well.

It really does seem like a good bridge song though. I am totally sold on this only being maybe 10% away from a great middle song on an album like this. I’m surprised so many people can’t see it’s merits. You can tell from a lot of the reaction in here that most people want different things from albums. Some want track 1-11 to be All Time U2 Greatness on every track with only a passing care for complete feel and flow, and others really want the experience of the ride from track 1-11 and hang more on the details than the Really Big Moments. Either way, not every song on an album has to be a neat little package of bombastic U2ness or oh-so-emotional ultra-melodic balladeering. Some of them need to sit in between, be bridge songs.

So yes, there’s not a human being alive in the entire western world who wouldn’t just assume this is Viva La Vida at the start, it’s obviously unfinished, and Bono is inconsistent (but he is throughout the album). It needs smoothing out and you may think something like Boots or Crazy Tonight or SUC is a better song, and that’s fine, but I can’t see how people don’t think this would have been a great part of an ‘album’ album, if they’d stretched that all the way from track 1-11. Might not be one of the best 11 songs they recorded during these sessions, but I’d take this and a couple of others that still have the 1-4/8-11 feel and flow over the middle three songs any day of the week.

Really, it’s quite a cinematic song. It’s great. I think from the falsetto on, given the right mixing that it would have gotten for the album, if it made it, this place would be going mad for it.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that WAS replaced Winter on the album.
 
I bet they recorded a version of it before viva la vida, and since they forgot to release an album for 5 years.... were like oh crap, when eno took winter to the coldplay....
 
catlhere said:
It has nothing to do with what I like or dislike on No Line honestly. I don't really get the connection.

You just said you'd replace 3 finished, and superior songs, with one terrible quality poorly constructed one, because it would make the album flow better. I disagree. This song has no business being on any U2 album until it's cleaned up quite a bit, no matter what it would be replacing. I'm not talking about a "smoothing" out either, it needs a complete overhaul. It's disjointed, bland, and poorly performed (especially Bono's last verse) Winter, to me in its current state, is not up to NLOTH standards and would kill the "mood" of the album quicker than anything on the official tracklisting may already do for some. It can't decide if it wants to be slightly somber and emotional (verses), or cheerful uplifting pop (chorus), and turns out mediocre at both because of it.
Click to expand...


You honestly think that’s what I meant? Where did I suggest that U2 should put an unfinished, unmastered song onto one of their albums? I said the mood and feel of this song fits the album better than a couple that are on there. And then I also said that it was clearly unfinished, disjointed, and needed work.

You need to use your imagination, the same way you need to with Mercy (although moreso with this, as the rip itself is fucking terrible on top of the track not being complete), or any of the alternate versions of the Bomb songs. They’ve stopped the process at varying stages, or the versions we have are from varying stages, all of them at least before the final mixing/mastering stage. NONE of them are up to being dumped as is on an album as they are in the versions we have. I did say it needs more work in several areas. The smoothing out was in reference to the sudden and disjointed changes between each part of the song – they crash into each other, not smooth. That clearly needs working on. Yes, the lyrics have dead spots. And yes, when given the final mix and master, you wouldn’t have the glaring problems with where whichever parts are coming through to you. Bono is too strong in some, guitar too sharp in others, too muddy through a lot of it. His vocal is off in several parts as well. It’s probably not the final effort – lyric or vocal – that he’d give should this have been given the thumbs up for the album.

All of this should be obvious and I have no idea how or why you thought I was even suggesting that this, as is in this state and this version, should be on there.

It’s a reflective song. Looking back over your life, from childhood to fatherhood to fighting a war for reasons you don’t quite understand, memories flicking past, attitudes changing as you reflect on each point… Some are confused, some are clear. Some are mournful, some are defiant. Hence, changes in pace and feel. Songs that try and tell as much of a story in the music as the lyric and aren’t reliant on bombastic hooks and screaming obvious slogans often do that sort of thing.

I guess you either see it or you don’t. So there’s no point debating it. So yeah, of course, Stand Up Bon Jovi fits the album better than a finished version of this could have. I actually mean that. To fit Winter on the album you need to turn the rest of the album around. Make it a complete thought, which would likely mean dumping Boots and Crazy Tonight as well, and having two other songs on there, or at least stretching the album to 12-14 tracks. It’s the alternate version of this. On the one we have, by either replacing one track for it or squeezing it in to make the album 12 songs, it doesn’t really fit. There’s no true smooth spot for it and it would likely come off as filler. But if you turn the album around, knock out the U2 Karaoke Bar intermission in the middle and make the whole album the pilgrimage/journey, then yeah, it fits like a fucking glove.
 
I like the main riff, nice and hypnotic. But its not a great song maybe cos its unfinished. The main riff has potential.
 
mobvok said:
I almost hope that U2 had a lot of trouble trying to figure out this song, because if I was sitting in a studio in November 2008 and deciding between calling up will.i.am and writing Crazy Tonight, going back to work on Stand Up Comedy for the 16th month, or working on Winter, I'm going with plan C.



That said, I really hope this version of Winter wasn't just 24 hours away from being released. You know....buttered toast and ghosts and all that.
Click to expand...


you know by ghosts he meant terroroists, right?
 
Like the song, sounds like a B-side (but some of my favorites are B-sides). I did not read this entire thread so I don't know if this comparison has been made yet or not...but I definitely hear an Unforgettable Fire vibe on this one - listen to Winter then go back and listen to Love Comes Tumbling and Boomerang II. :up:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Headache in a Suitcase
3 Irishmen and a Dutchman Walk Into A Sphere - General Discussion Thread Part III
52 53 54
Replies
2K
Views
64K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
dan_smee
New Album Discussion 1 - Songs of..... - Unreasonable guitar album
60 61 62
Replies
2K
Views
102K
Achtung Ya'll
A
Reggie Thee Dog
Are we NOT discussing the Dolby Atmos Mix of Achtung Baby?
Replies
13
Views
1K
count rushmore
count rushmore
Registered Dude
  • Locked
Songs of _________________; New album discussion #7
32 33 34
Replies
1K
Views
53K
U2387
U2387
Achtung_Bebe
IO: It's been a while...
Replies
2
Views
676
mikal
mikal

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom