Best Song Survivor: Pop, Round Five

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What is your least favorite song?


  • Total voters
    51
  • Poll closed .

digitize

ONE love, blood, life
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Thanks to the amazing Axver for covering for me and handling the last round. If God Will Send His Angels was sent to heaven in the last round. Eight songs are left competing for three slots in the 1990s quarterfinal round. You have 24 hours to vote for your least favorite (favorite, as I am American, and thus my spelling is better than Axver's spelling) song, the next song to be eliminated from this contest. For anyone just joining us, rules may be found here.
 
Staring at the Sun has to go this round. It's getting ridiculous.

Wake Up Dead Man is at least a trillion times better. Listen to that metallic guitar, the passion and desperation in the vocals.
 
Staring, Gone and Last Night are all same sort of meh. Voted Last Night this time.
 
I'm holding my vote, to potentially help save Wake Up Dead Man. It's the second best song on the record, in my opinion.
 
Staring at the Sun has to go this round. It's getting ridiculous.

Wake Up Dead Man is at least a trillion times better. Listen to that metallic guitar, the passion and desperation in the vocals.

Cobbler has a point.
 
Here's the text of the Q magazine preview I talked about earlier:

U2's New Album, Track by Track

Q magazine, March 01, 1997

DISCOTHEQUE: The first single, complete with "boom"-enriched outro and accompanying video featuring soon-to-be-legendary appearance of U2 as the Village People. Bono: "When we were recording that, we had the whole studio in mirrorballs and disco lights."

DO YOU FEEL LOVED: Heavy groove-based rocker in the tradition of "Even Better Than the Real Thing." Very likely single. Wry personal reference suspected in the opening lines: "Take these hands they're good for nothing/You know these hands never worked a day."

MOFO: Sonic assault as U2 are possessed by the twin spirits of Underworld and the Prodigy, with Bono at his most cathartic. Breakneck double-tracked drumming quite likely the highlight of Larry Mullen's recorded career.

IF GOD WILL SEND HIS ANGELS: Slow-winding ballad constructed around a title that existed during Zooropa sessions. Bono: "It's this guy beating up his girlfriend about her searching for answers and just telling her to look around. It's like science fiction gospel. Edge is calling it country hip-hop."

STARING AT THE SUN: Infectious, sky-scraping pop song with echoes of Ray Davies and Bowie's "Soul Love." Notable alone for middle eight couplet, "referee won't blow the whistle/God is good but will he listen?" Dead-cert summer number one.

LAST NIGHT ON EARTH: U2 play Oasis at their own game. Steaming rocker with powerful Beatle-y chorus. The last track to be finished, with vocals recorded at 7 a.m. on the day of the album cut. Bono: "It felt like the last night on earth, all right."

GONE: Soaring uplifter oddly reminiscent of the Verve, replete with darkly spiritual lyric. Likely to be emotional highpoint of candlelight vigil if U2's plane ever goes down. Edge: "There's many layers to that song and there's another level to it which I haven't figured yet."

MIAMI: The strangest track of all. Electro experimental before Mullen kicks in with weighty John Bonham-styled groove. Lyrical snapshots of a band trip to Florida in spring '96. Edge: "It's sort of creative tourism."

THE PLAYBOY MANSION: Touching tale of lottery playing average Joe fantasising about gaining entry to Hugh Hefner's private Disneyland, set to '60's flavoured trip-hop. Return to knowingly delivered truisms in verses, including the maybe libellous, "If coke is a mystery/Michael Jackson...History."

IF YOU WEAR THAT VELVET DRESS: Muted and frankly, horny ballad with echoes of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game." Something for the weekend. Edge: "That was a song that basically came out of improvisation with Nellee Hooper."

PLEASE: Shuffly meandering and moody bid-pacer. Edge: "One of the most intricate pieces of music we've ever written."

WAKE UP DEAD MAN: Spaghetti-western atmosphere bristling with distant radio voices. A distorted Bono voices his frustration to Jesus "I'm alone in this world/And a f*cked up world it is too."

Thought it was pretty interesting looking at things through some 1997 eyes.
 
Want to save Wake Up Dead Man, can't bring myself to vote Last Night On Earth. Staring At The Sun it is.
 
Here's the text of the Q magazine preview I talked about earlier:


Thought it was pretty interesting looking at things through some 1997 eyes.

Interesting assessments of these songs, definitely. Last Night on Earth is certainly not a song I would equate with Oasis, but the rivalry at that point must have been palpable.
 
Staring at the Sun has to go this round. It's getting ridiculous.

Wake Up Dead Man is at least a trillion times better. Listen to that metallic guitar, the passion and desperation in the vocals.

At least a trillion!

One of U2's greatest album closers, something they're particuarly good at!

If U2 were really trying to create original futuristic music on Pop, WUDM is the closet they got.

Great lyrics too.

LNOE for me to go, they only got it right when played live.
 
Ugh, LNOE to try and save WUDM. Which is one of my favourites. But I like LNOE a lot too, if I had to vote honestly I'd vote for Please as my least favourite right now, but that won't make a difference nayway.
 
Here's the text of the Q magazine preview I talked about earlier:



Thought it was pretty interesting looking at things through some 1997 eyes.

I thought the comment about Gone was interesting (new level Edge hasn't figured out yet). That song evolved live, and then in the subsequent studio version - much stronger musically, more texture in the pre-chorus (the part with the passing notes) and throughout the verse.
 
It's a close call between SATS and Discotheque for me. Discotheque does absolutely nothing for me in its studio incarnation, but it became a Popmart highlight in a tremendous hurry, while SATS just became more mediocre live. So I guess it's SATS. There's no way I'm touching LNOE, one of the top two songs on the album, unless Gone comes under threat. I'd hate to see WUDM go before Discotheque and SATS, but to be honest it's not going to be in my top three so I suppose it's expendable.

Also, that Q preview is fascinating. I'd never thought of Gone as being similar to The Verve, but that screaming guitar actually is fairly similar to a lot of the guitar sounds The Verve used on their debut album A Storm In Heaven back in the early nineties when they were a shoegaze band.

(favorite, as I am American, and thus my spelling is better than Axver's spelling)

Permaban.
 
Went with LNOE, but I'm not happy about that. These are 8 phenomenal tracks here. I'd also pair IGWSHA in with these, because I feel that every album needs a swooping ballad in the #3 or #4 spot. Once the fat was trimmed (IYWTVD, TPM and Miami) this is such a powerful collection of songs.

I'm going to have a hard time with this from here on out.
 
SATS acoustic was bland and boring. The Edge's guitar was awesome on the few full band performances. Discotheque was awesome in all live performances.

If only 3 songs make the cut, I go with Discotheque, Do You Feel Loved and MOFO.

Just missing the cut are Gone and then LNOE. Please live was great but the album and single version are a snooze.
 
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