Am I the only U2 fan who has never fallen in love with One?

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scatteroflight

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Well...am I?

I admit that it took me many years to really like Achtung Baby. This is much the fault of my stupid brother, who informed me (I was at the impressionable age of 11) that U2 had lost it after he first heard The Fly. I like The Fly a lot now, the solo is jaw-dropping, and in concert it is amazing. But as for One, I always did like it. Really. I can't remember a time when I didn't like it.

But I don't think I have ever loved it. Perhaps I have a heart of stone. Achtung Baby is not an album I often listen to start to finish. I tend to skip to UTEOTW, then go on to So Cruel, The Fly and Mysterious Ways, and maybe listen to Ultraviolet, Acrobat and Love is Blindness. But very often it's just those four. UTEOTW and So Cruel are probably my favourite songs on the album now. But I know that to many people skipping One would be sacrilegious. Perhaps, for me, it has suffered from overexposure. I have heard it So Many Times. But I've heard SBS and Pride and Mysterious Ways and Streets So Many Times as well, and I'm not tired of those songs at all.

One is a beautiful song. The thing I really admire about it is how perfectly it is constructed. I can't fault the album version at all. It is perfectly balanced. I actually like the album version much more than any live version I have heard. I wouldn't--wait for it--I wouldn't have minded a whole lot if at the one U2 concert I've been to so far, they hadn't played One--at least if they'd replaced it with AIWIY or something else. I would have been shocked, yes, but my little heart (possibly made of stone) would not have broken.

One is a song I admire, a song I like very much, but a song I don't think I have ever LOVED. And I have a feeling that on this one I might actually be alone.

------------------
One day we'd reach the great ocean
At the end of a pale afternoon
And we'd lay down our heads just like we were sleeping
And be towed by the drag of the moon

-Sting
 
I personally am In Love with One. The Lyrics, the passion, the voice. It all comes together to create, in my opnion, the greatest ballad ever written. Then again, there are so many other great songs in the album, that I can see why someone wouldn't love this as much as say "So Cruel" or "Love is Blindness". I used to love So Cruel and only like One. So maybe it's just temporary.
 
I'm with you... it's a great song but I don't really love it.
Of U2's ballads I think I prefer All I Want is You or With or Without You.

Maybe there's something wrong with me?
biggrin.gif


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And I felt like a star...
 
Originally posted by Dorian Gray:

Maybe there's something wrong with me?
biggrin.gif


Click to expand...

Yes, there must be!

One is my favorite song, and I believe it is the best song ever written or recorded....
 
I think that a lot of people love the song because they know that it saved the band from destruction!......
 
I do like the story of how "One" came about, but I was never moved by it until Elevation 3rd leg. Meghan ("Achtung Adam!"), if you're here, vouch for it! At LA2, we stood in front of Adam and wept, as did many in the audience, as I had not been able to before. There was just this profound sadness on stage that had not been there before. There was a sense of the band's withdrawal from the audience--they were lost in their own grief about 9/11, they were slightly embarrassed to be the cause of this raw outpouring of tears; yet at the same time there was a deeper, more electric connection than I'd ever felt--they were human, they were grieving, they were angry, they were just as sick and shellshocked as I was. Because it was just so sad, it is not my favorite U2 moment, but it's perhaps when I was the most moved.

So, I started out to say that I agreed with Scatteroflight, that "One" had been the love song of a disastrous, misbegotten college relationship for me, and that for a while, I couldn't even listen to it--how could U2 sink so low as to have put out such a saccharine pop song?? But after LA2, I can't say that. "One" has mesmerized me at last.

--
Did I ask too much
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now it's all I got
 
I really love One, but it has never been one of those songs that send me soaring somewhere else e.g. Unforgetable Fire, Streets, Heartland, Gone, WGRYWH etc

I keep waiting for it to happen, but it doesn't and I don't think it ever will.

I don't know why?
I think if I saw it live maybe that would change. I still love it, but its not a standout.


Pamela


......................................

TAKE ME take me
 
One is the absolute song that strirs a real passion in me . Maybe it has something to do it came out for aids. My cousin, who I was so very close to died of this horrible disease. Everytime I hear One I think of it has a tribute to him.
 
I've never been a huge fan of the album version. I absolutely love the live versions though. I remember sitting at my computer listening to the Irving Plaza concert on the radio last year and when that song came on I had tears flowing down my face.
 
...and just to add. I think the best version of ONE I've ever heard was at the Irving Plaza club gig last year in NYC when they added a bit of WALK ON towards the end. Fucking incredible it was!
 
On any given, day I wouldn't put it down as my "favorite" song. But at a concert, when they play those opening chords, I feel as though I couldn't possibly live without it. It's never failed to bring me to tears when experienced along with 20,000 other people, all singing along together.
 
It took me a while to...understand 'One', I think is the best way to put it. It never really grabbed me until recentlly. The live version from WarChild is the first time it really grabbed me, I'd say, but since then it is the STUDIO version which I've fallen in love with. There is something very magical about the studio version, in that it came out of nowhere, and I remember reading Edge saying it was like "a gift" which shouldn't be messed with. They had it given to them. They had it finished that same night, totally completed. That's amazing, as the studio version is perfect. You'd think they would've laboured for days getting it to sound like that, but from what understand, it was pretty much the first or second take.

Bono's voice, the swirling guitar lines (which sound like nothing I've ever heard, I might add), the bass line, the groove, the hope, the dispair, the all encompasing power of the song -- right down to the bitter-sweet falsetto at the end -- and how everything just kind of fades away within that falsetto, all at the same time, leaves me shaking my head in amazement everytime. How did they capture something so incredibly honest? It blows me away.

------------------
The Tempest
 
Hmmmm...while One is not my all time favorite U2 song, it's one of my very favorites (and one of their finest hours in studio), and IMO Bono's best lyric ever.

------------------
"We feel like this is unfinished business - there's things for us left to do and that's why we still do it." - Larry

"For us, each night on stage has to be like the last night on earth. That's the way our band operates-we can't play the songs unless we're fully into them." - Bono

"The music itself will tell you where to go." - Edge (about recording)

"It's an elevation thing." - Adam (when asked why there's pictures from airport on ATYCLB cover)

[This message has been edited by U2girl (edited 12-20-2001).]
 
U2girl,

I agree about it being Bono's best song, lyrically. There are so many more poetic songs in the U2 canon, but none that evoke such clerity -- while at the same time being so open to interpretation. How can a song be open without being vague? It's a trick that John Lennon used to pull, and Bono has pulled it off here, as well.

------------------
The Tempest
 
I don't usually post much, but I will make an exception in this case! One is my favorite song of all time. I listen to it all the time, and it is probably the only song that, to me, has never lost its magic, no matter how many times I've heard it. It IS perfect. It is just the pinnacle of everything - Bono's voice, the lyrics, the emotion, the music...Ah.
smile.gif
 
I've listened to One many times hoping that I would somehow learn to appreciate it as U2's greatest song. I really like One and I think the lyrics are amazing, but there are many other U2 songs that I will pick for a listen before One.
 
Originally posted by pub crawler:
I've listened to One many times hoping that I would somehow learn to appreciate it as U2's greatest song. I really like One and I think the lyrics are amazing, but there are many other U2 songs that I will pick for a listen before One.
Click to expand...

I'm not the only one.

Yaaayyyyy!!!!

Ok, that sounds kind of weird. Don't get me wrong, I do like One very much, it's an excellent song. But it's almost like a lot of Beatles songs for me. I admire them no end, and I do enjoy them. But they fail to move me deeply.



------------------
You say you want
Diamonds on a ring of gold
Your story to remain untold
Your love not to grow cold
 
I think to me, One is like I Still Havent Found, such a great song, but a tad overplayed both on radio and in concert, and unlike a song like Streets or Bullet which can be re-arranged a bit, One sounds exactly the same as it did 10 years ago. I do love the song, and it is such a touching song, I dont consider it one of my favorites at the moment! So no, your not alone.
 
Anyone who does not love "One" needs help...and that quick!

One is U2s finest hour!

------------------
beLIEve
 
when i first heard it, I didn't like it that much. well, I always liked the lyrics but I mean the music...

now I very much love One, I think it's incredible
 
One just doesn't do it for me. I've grown to like it but I never love it. I'm more of a With or without you person. If they didn't play One I could not care about it in the least but to not play WOWY, even the crappy current version would be blasphemy.
 
One is the absolute pinnacle of popular music to me, of any band, ever. It's musical perfection: depressing, uplifting, bitter, hopeful, the greatest guitar riff of all time, the most universal lyric ever. It's the only song that can move me to tears. And I don't cry at ANYTHING.

If you can listen to that orchestral War Child version and not feel something stir emotinally inside you, you have to be heartless, I'm sorry.
 
Originally posted by scatteroflight:
I like The Fly a lot now, the solo is jaw-dropping, and in concert it is amazing.
Click to expand...

No doubt about it.


I have similar feelings about One. I recognize it as a great song, but I don't see it as the stand-out that most people seem to. I think one of the main things that has caused it to rise so high in not only U2's catalog, but in rock music in general, is the fact that Bono is able to so clearly convey a universal truth that is not obscured, but is actually strengthened, by the open-ended lyrics; they can apply to many situations in a person's life.

The War Child version caused me to look at the song in a new light as well. The audience singing along at the beginning under Bono's hushed voice is probably one of my favorite live U2 moments.
 
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