Rate the Song: Silver and Gold

[digitize]

I have decided to expand the list of TUF-TJT-R&H non-album songs to poll Interference on, so this will be the second of now three voting rounds on those songs. The full list is (and feel free to suggest adding some):

Disappearing Act
Love Comes Tumbling
The Three Sunrises
Bass Trap
Sixty Seconds In Kingdom Come
Boomerang I
Boomerang II
Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)
Walk to the Water
Spanish Eyes
Silver and Gold
Drunk Chicken/America
Sweetest Thing (original version)
Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)
Hallelujah Here She Comes
A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel
She's a Mystery To Me
Deep in the Heart
Beautiful Ghost/Introduction to Songs of Experience
Desert of Our Love
Rise Up
Yoshino Blossom

We will address Spanish Eyes through A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel today.

Please rate Silver and Gold 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.

 

[cobl04]

Love version's alright. This one is not. 5.

 

[Nick66]

Sort of like hot iron in water with kind of an "Exit" feel to it. Like the start, with Edge instead of Larry's drum explosion that we know from R&H. Nice alternative strumming starting about 1:00 into the song, and cool atmospherics at about 2:10. Great fade and return at the end.

Yeah, I'll take it. 8.

 

[flybabe]

I like how it builds up to a crescendo with guitar and drums and the hard bitter lyrics that rage through the song. The 'there is a trigger in your gun' is kind of off putting though. 8.

 

[cobl04]

Isn't there a trigger in most guns?

 

[flybabe]

Isn't there a trigger in most guns?

I was thinking 'Obvious statement Bono'.

 

[The Panther]

Yeah, the trigger line is a bit off. It's kind of similar to the "Ran into a juke-joint when I heard a guitar scream" line in "When Love Comes to Town". (Could it be more self-consciously genre-bound, and how would a 70s' Dublin guy know what a juke-joint is?)

Anyway, "Silver & Gold" is a good song. It's a bit hard for me now to disassociate it from the Rattle & Hum live version -- and the late 1987 performances in general -- in which Bono gets on his high-horse and berates the government while praising himself for joining "Artists Against Apar-TIGHT". This, of course, is followed by one of the worst spoken cues in rock history, in which Bono tells his guitarist to "play the blues", upon which The Edge plays a nice, post-punk, rather shrill guitar solo that's about a million miles from the blues.

Disregarding that moment of utter pomposity, it's a fine song, probably traveling down a road that U2 didn't necessarily want to go too far down, but a nice departure nonetheless that they carried off quite well, particularly on the studio B-side (I don't care much for the Sun City Bono + friends version).

 

[gvox]

"Artists Against Apar-TIGHT".

Pretty sure his pronunciation here was deliberate.

 

[prbiker15]

Always loved this song, used to think it was actually part of The Joshua Tree. Gets an 8 from me.

 

[The Panther]

Pretty sure his pronunciation here was deliberate.

To serve what purpose?

 

[An Cat Gav]

Very good track, slow burning anger erupts well at the end.
8

 

[gvox]

To serve what purpose?

Are you serious?

 

[The Panther]

Are you serious?

I am totally serious. Are you gonna answer the question, or shall we go back and forth for another 6 posts of sarcastic rhetoric?

 

[gvox]

Nah. You should know the reason its being said that way.

 

[Aardvark747]

8.

 

[nielsgov]

A good rocking tune. And I'm tired of the ZOMG-EDGE-DIDN"T-PLAY-THE-BLUES-YET-BONO-SAID-SO talk. 8