Rate the Song: City of Blinding Lights

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Cobble Cobble


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digitize

ONE love, blood, life
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Hello, hello… today we move onto voting for the first half of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

Please rate City of Blinding Lights on a scale from 0 to 10, using whatever criteria you feel allows you to best evaluate the song as a whole. I will not set criteria for people to based on, but if you feel like your best evaluation of the merits of a song comes from voting only based on, say, the studio version, go right ahead and vote that way. Full information on the Rate The Song series may be found in this thread.

Have fun! This poll will close in 96 hours.
 
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Bomb is not the sound of a band attempting something original or making a comeback or even trying to win the world...it sounds like a band holding on as tight as they can to the popularity, redemption and precious relevance they found with ATYCLB. Like a band who "learned their lesson" and wasn't about to lose what they'd won back by taking another risk with something bold or experimental. Nonetheless, mediocre as it is, Bomb came away with two U2 "classics" on it...Vertigo, which was an important hit, but not really one of my favourites, and COBL.

Soaring and aspirational, this song came to mean a lot to me while I was living in Wellington for a time. Easily the best track on this album, and one of U2's best songs of the 00's. They clearly meant for it to be a Streets-type anthem (and the chorus is coldly calculating in this way), and while it quite doesn't reach those heights, its still achieves lift-off most of the time, especially as an opener.

So yeah, it's a well-designed and crafted, if not a bit manipulative, song. It's readily apparent that they were obviously trying to create a stadium anthem, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it just works. They knew what they were doing.

9.
 
9.

one of thier best songs from last decade and really does well live too. that reverse delay intro during the Vertigo Tour was :drool:
 
Best U2 song since Pop. Glorious tune. I'll never forget how enchanted I was by this entire composition when I first heard it back in '04.

10.
 
Fantastic tune, best on Hutub by a looong way. The vibe is very "Eighties" U2, but not in a bad way. A refreshing, ecstatic anthem. 9
 
It's glorious.

And it gave us the Claw's best moment in every show, so it's got that going for it, too.
 
My favorite song on HTDAAB, and was easily a huge highlight at the U2360 show I went to last year. The Claw looked insane, and just hearing COBL just left me amazed.

Favorite part of the song - 'Time, won't leave me as I am' That section there was just incredible live. 10. 10. 10. Absolutely love this song.
 
I’d heard Beautiful Day, and Stuck, and Elevation, and liked them all to some extent. Then in (October?) 2004, Vertigo came out, and I fucking loved it. How catchy and cool and rocking this song is, I thought to myself. I asked for HUTDAB for Christmas, and got it. And as silly as this might sound, that was one of the defining moments of my life, that first listen.

I still loved Vertigo, I immediately loved Miracle Drug and thought Stuck was great too. Hated Love and Peace. And then I got to City of Blinding Lights and my whole world changed. That was one of the first times that I really connected with a song, on a deeper, emotional level, and I knew immediately I had to get as many songs by U2 as possible.

I joined this forum in 2005 and obviously it formed my username. I also had the single cover (which was awesome) as my avatar for like two years.

The song itself I find incredible. Edge’s scat guitar at the start, which turns into a loop, then that piano, before Edge takes the song into the stratosphere. Bono’s in fine form vocally. Massive, massive chorus, which just thrills me and gives me goosebumps every time.

I’ll never forget hearing it live at my first U2 concert, after Wake Up and Everyone. Everyone. EVERYONE. EVERY ONE! But it really came into its own on 360. Not only did it sound amazing, but visually it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. At the second 360 gig I saw I was up on the third level, and when it was played I took a picture of the claw. Because I was jumping around like a fucking lunatic it was very blurry but somehow that makes it look even cooler. It has been the background on my iPhone since the night of that concert.

So yeah, I give it a 10.
 
I find this one to be very formulaic. They were obviously trying to have another Streets here. And that piano melody sounds very unimaginative to my ears. Mixing sounds bad to me, like it's in mono or something. The drums never sounded right here... Or maybe the problem is with my ears.
 
Probably should have been track 1 on the album, followed by Vertigo.
Great great song, one of the best of this century.
Soaring, epic and all that.
10
 
This song didn't really hit me until I saw it live. To go through the motions with everyone else around you just gives the song an entirely new meaning. I can't listen to this song without raising my fist and pointing my finger up at the sky. Just an incredible live track. Good on record, but truly magical live.
 
From the part where Bono sings " And I miss you when you're not around.." to the last of the "woo ooh wooh"'s after the first verse is one of the greatest bits in any U2 song.
 
I'm glad this song is doing so well. :) This is the first U2 song that I really fell in love with. It was something like the third U2 song that I ever heard, and it was so incredibly special to me when I did hear it. It's still really special to me. I actually like it better than Streets.
 
10. Love love love this one. Like a few others, it's the first U2 song (other than One) that I really loved. Such a great track, with great lyrics and great music. Edge really shines here.

Only one (albeit small) gripe here, and that's the extremely high backing vocals in the chorus. On 360, they were extremely present.

My favorite performance is the one from under the Brooklyn Bridge. That entire show is U2 in top form.
 
A fantastic song. It's maybe not as good after 300 listens or so... but I still remember my reaction the first time I heard it. Beautiful.
 
Best thing on HTDAAB along with Yahweh, imo. A real hark-back to my fave U2 era (mid-late 80s) musically, so like one of those times you meet someone new & click like you've known them all your life.

9.
 
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