As I wrote in the “perfect pairings” thread I noticed that in the thread "U2's sexiest song" two of the most popular choices were Your Blue Room and If You Wear That Dress. I find that these two flow together perfectly.
At the beginning of September there was this thread “song of the day: your blue room” and as I was reading it I thought: What would it be like if it was on Pop? In the past, I had always thought that if Passenger songs could fit anywhere in would be on Zooropa. I was truly impressed when I listened to them both together. (And after all Your Blue Room was a b-side on the Staring At The Sun single.) So, I started thinking of what other U2 would flow well with these two songs. From there I thought of a whole album centered on these two songs. All of the tracks spoke to me of an atmosphere which was very, very late at night. And it struck me as a dark mood album too. So I pictured this character alone in a hotel room in the late hours of the night. Sitting there in the dark; drinking and drinking way too much; staring down at the neon lights of the city; physically and emotionally exhausted; a broken and burned out heart; an affair that had gone sour; reminiscing over the good times they had, the romance; remembering how it all went wrong. Later I thought of a couple subtitles for the album and I actually compiled 2 more albums that told the story of how this character got to this point. In a way it was a trilogy of albums which told the story of U2’s 90s trilogy (AB, Zooropa, Pop) with a different angle. Naturally they were called Neon Red and Neon Purple and similar subtitles. It was cool to read the next week in the BlackBook magazine Bono’s scribble “neon heart” (now we know that these particular lines are from the song City Of Blinding Lights).
NEON BLUE(S)
A SINGLE BED ROOM AT THE CLARENCE HOTEL
THE HANGOVER OF THE PRODIGAL HEART
1. Neon Lights (4:07)
2. Satellite of Love (Edit Danny Saber version –19 sec. screeching) (4:55) 5:14
3. Slug (4:41)
4. Stateless (4:05)
5. Your Blue Room (5:26)
6. If You Wear That Velvet Dress (Pop album version) (5:14)
7. Never Let Me Go (Edit – first 30 sec. of narration taken out) (5:00?) 5:36
8. Grace (5:45)
9. Hallelujah (4:57)
10. Woman (= Back Mask 1&2) 3:11 + 5:32
11. Love Is Blindness (4:23)
12. Please (Pop album version) (5:10)
13. Stay (Craig Armstrong version) (6:02)
14. Tomorrow (Bono & Adam 1996 version) (4:36)
15. You Made Me A Thief Of Your Heart – Sinead O’Connor (6:20)