Rate the Song: Winter

[digitize]

Wow… now we begin the very final round of this rate the song series, the last round of 2000s non-album songs. The full list of such songs is:

Stateless
Summer Rain
Always
Levitate
Love You Like Mad
Smile
Flower Child
Big Girls Are Best
Electrical Storm
The Hands That Built America
Native Son
Xanax and Wine
Are You Gonna Wait Forever?
Window in the Skies
Soon
Winter
Mercy

Today's round will cover the last five songs, from Are You Gonna Wait Forever? to Mercy.

Please rate Winter 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.

A short while after this round closes, I will post results for only 2000s songs, as usual. (Hopefully) a short while after that, I will post full results in a new thread, with a link to a PDF file filled with the full statistical nonsense. I will do my best to make both come out as soon as possible - thank God, these polls close on Saturday, the first day of my Spring Break, so I should have plenty of time with which to work on everything.

I would also like to thank everyone for participating. There have been some skirmishes, but overall, I think this has been a fun experience, and I'm really glad to have run it.

Have fun! This poll will close in 96 hours.

 

[mikal]

I'm actually one of the few hear that loves the Linear version of this song. I include it in my modified NLOTH playlist that excludes the middle 3.

 

[djerdap]

I think that the Linear version crushes the soundtrack one. If not for the cheesy Coldplay synths and some pretty awful lyrics, it makes for a pretty decent song, especially with the opera part in the end and the memorable guitar riff. I also put it in the Horizon playlist while deleting the middle 3.

 

[An Cat Gav]

I'm actually one of the few hear that loves the Linear version of this song. I include it in my modified NLOTH playlist that excludes the middle 3.

I love it too, good video as well!

Really should have made it to the album, would have made NLOTH a hell of a lot better.
8

 

[Nick66]

I so wanted to love this when I first heard about it, and did on the first few listens. I'm not quite as enamoured with it now, and go back and forth on which version I prefer...both have their merits.

I'll give it an 8, just because it's better than most of the 00's non-album tracks, and better than several of the songs that made the record.

 

[LadySpinHead]

7- both versions are solid, although not really spectacular. I like them both about equally, depending on my mood.

 

[Hollow Island]

8 for the Linear version, 4 for the brothers version. The only thing I don't like about the linear version is the speaking. Edge's helicopters are great, they add a lot of tension, and the lyric is pretty good.

 

[Galeongirl]

Cannot understand what people see in this. Dull, bores me out of my mind. GLAD it was not on NLOTH.

 

[Scorpionac]

One of the band's best choruses right here. Guitar and drum lines are boringly generic, though.

The Brothers version is nothing to me.

 

[trevgreg]

One of the few here that likes the Brothers version I guess. Don't mind Linear either. Still stuns me that stuff like this is left off in favor of WAS or COL, for example. I hear an actual song here!

 

[corianderstem]

How the hell does White As Snow not sound like "an actual song"?

I don't think I ever listened to this one more than once or twice, so apparently I found it unmemorable and/or boring.

 

[gareth brown]

never got round to hearing it, and I know this is really frowned upon round here but is anyone able to send me this song please?

 

[theedgeu2]

Linear version needs to be released. It's better than half of NLOTH (IMO of course!). And yea i am the one guy who voted 10. Suck it.

 

[lemonfly]

Bono rhymes "toast" with "ghost". Nuff said. 3

 

[digitize]

"we're like butter on toast" may be Bono's worst lyric ever, but I still generally like the song.

 

[LemonMelon]

A disaster, but I applaud them for their ambition. Bono tries the storytelling thing, but the analogies and a handful of individual lines are so horrible that I can't find much value in it. Musically, it's like three or four average songs (one of them Viva La Vida) crammed together. I gave this a 5, but it's really more of a 3 or 4. I just don't want to discourage breaks from bland, feelgood pop.

 

[coolian2]

Still stuns me that stuff like this is left off in favor of WAS or COL, for example. I hear an actual song here!

que?




i listened to winter last night and already don't remember what it sounds like. bland bland bland.

 

[Axver]

Sorry, why are we voting on a Coldplay song?

 

[digitize]

Sorry, why are we voting on a Coldplay song?

I should start a Rate The Coldplay Song series. That would be entertaining.

 

[Axver]

I need to know whether the hive mind hates Yellow.

NEED. TO. KNOW.

 

[Niceman]

The Brothers' version is much better than the Linear version. I'd give Brothers an 8, Linear a 5. I'll vote an 8 in the thread.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

I like the song more than I like a few of the tracks on the proper release of NLOTH. The Brothers version, I mean. I think it's lovely. The Viva La Vida strings needed to be cut, and they were. The stripped down piano arrangement suits the mood of the song, and I do like a few of the lyrics/line deliveries Bono has in there (although not all of them are great).

It's a 6 or a 7. I'll give it a 7 just because Natalie Portman looked fantastic in the movie, and I got a boner when her character was smoking a joint and talking about how she used to listen to U2 when she was in high school.

 

[trevgreg]

Bono rhymes "toast" with "ghost". Nuff said. 3

I didn't realize all songs needed to have Shakespearean lyrics.

How the hell does White As Snow not sound like "an actual song"?

I don't think I ever listened to this one more than once or twice, so apparently I found it unmemorable and/or boring.

que?i listened to winter last night and already don't remember what it sounds like. bland bland bland.

It's just a personal taste thing here. Unmemorable and bland are words I'd use to describe White As Snow myself, but that's just me.

 

[Galeongirl]

I need to know whether the hive mind hates Yellow.

NEED. TO. KNOW.

I think that would be the Hive's most popular song, since Bono has snippeted it live at Glasto, remember. So it's obviously the thing to like.

 

[Nick66]

I think Bono covers the same semi-autobiographic territory with the "Summer sings in me no more" lyric from winter as the "What happened to the beauty I had inside of me" from COBL.

Lyrically I think this one is OK, but not great. It's certainly light-years ahead of the embarrassing "Mercy".

 

[LemonMelon]

To protect the ones
We put bullets in guns

 

[mikal]

I need to know whether the hive mind hates Yellow.

NEED. TO. KNOW.

i would think The Hive enjoys Parachutes quite a bit. "Don't Panic" and "Trouble" are really great tunes.

 

[LemonMelon]

The Hive likes 90s Coldplay best

 

[Niceman]

To protect the ones
We put bullets in guns

Ak! Horrific line!

 

[digitize]

To protect the ones
We put bullets in guns

I had forgotten about those lines. Wow, that's bad. Usually, I tend to forgive songs with occasional bad lines if they have a strong overall theme/meaning, but Winter is tough.