If you could undo one u2 "mistake"?

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gman

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I guess wat am asking here is for one thing you wish u2 hadnt done. I will allow removal of a track form an album, records they should not have released, records they SHOULD have released or might be to do wi a concert or just a general oversight in your opinion.
One of my u2 mistakes would be the trip hop version of numb. ITS SHIT!!
 
I don't think U2 has ever made a really big mistake, really. Even their "mistakes" sound pretty good to me :shrug:

I'm not sure if this is a mistake but I wish Bono had taken better care of his voice (less drinking and cigarettes) but even that is more wishful thinking than a regret...
 
Make Rattle and Hum with more original studio material, skip the covers and less live songs.
Make Pop the way it was live.
 
Have U2 break up after Pop, because the rest of their career up to this point has all been music for old farts with broken hearing aids.
 
Edit out that "GET BUSY!" shout on the remix of "God Part II."

Somewhere Arsenio is rolling over in his grave.
 
i didn't know Arsenio died.

i wish they hadn't done the chicago dvd. i loved the vertigo tour, but that dvd reaked of ass. i feel like edge was singing more than bono, and all the cuts and added bs are more harmful than that pokemon episode that caused seizures. a u2 concert already has enough energy, you don't need to augment it by switching shots every 4 seconds.
 
redhotswami said:
i didn't know Arsenio died.

Well, not in so many words...

Just a ridiculously dated catch phrase. Glad it didn't make the actual album cut.
 
redhotswami said:
i didn't know Arsenio died.

i wish they hadn't done the chicago dvd. i loved the vertigo tour, but that dvd reaked of ass. i feel like edge was singing more than bono, and all the cuts and added bs are more harmful than that pokemon episode that caused seizures. a u2 concert already has enough energy, you don't need to augment it by switching shots every 4 seconds.


I agree with you Mia, there were so many other Vertigo shows that were probably better than the Chicago one. :eyebrow:
 
Between making Rattle and Hum a normal album with no live stuff and releasing Joshua Tree: Live from Tempe and finishing Pop with the best versions they've made of each song, I'd go with finishing Pop.
 
Discotheque being the first single and video from Pop.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the song. I think they misfired with the video somewhat, and now the general public associates Pop with "U2 dressed like the Village People." Once, a co-worker of mine who generally has very good taste in music and loves U2, said that Pop sucked. I asked him to name a song from it besides Discotheque, and he couldn't do it. All he remembered was that goddamned video.

Instead, I'd have held off HMTMKMKM from the Batman Forever soundtrack and released that as the first single from Pop. That'd be a killer tracklisting... Hold Me -> Discotheque -> DYFL -> Mofo. :drool:
 
It's hard for me to say "U2 should have done this instead of this" because one thing leads to another. For example, of course I wish Pop and Popmart had been more successful, but if they had, would we have gotten ATYCLB, or a completely different album? I suppose there's the potential for a better album but I love ATYCLB. Rattle and Hum was a big misstep imo, but it may have been necessary to get to Achtung Baby. I don't know.

I guess one thing I'd want to do is not have so many producers for HTDAAB. I'm not entirely unhappy with HTDAAB; in fact I quite like it. But the production is not their best, and it doesn't feel quite complete as an album. Sticking with a single producer could have made it more consistant. Jacknife Lee, maybe?
 
I suppose the one mistake that frustrates me more than anything is the failure of The Best Of 1990-2000 to truly encapsulate what U2 were all about in the 90's and how brilliant they were.

1. Nothing wrong with having a promotional single (Electrical Storm), but at least put the radio mix on the Best-Of disc and not on the B-sides disc.

2. Hands That Built America sounds out of place.

3. The single versions of Discotheque, Staring At The Sun and Numb should be featured, not some inferior "new mixes" made especially for the Greatest Hits.

4. The inclusion of Gone is debatable, but at least have the proper version from PoP.

5. The inclusion of The First Time, is pretty silly.

6. Especially when Please, The Fly, Whose Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Last Night On Earth, Lemon and Your Blue Room all miss out.

7. Why are Beautiful Day and Stuck In A Moment included, but not Walk On or Elevation? It doesn't seem right to me that the latter songs will appear on Best Of 00-10 when the former two appeared on the other Best-Of.

8. The B-sides disc features too many remixes (whilst good ones) at the expense of quality b-sides such as Holy Joe, Where Did It All Go Wrong and Always.


The DVD version of 90-2000 is a much more satisfying compilation.
 
annie_vox said:
"One" with Mary J. Blidge... But I'm over it... :shrug:

ya know, i didn't really care for it either. i'm a big fan of mary j, but i think she could've done better on that song. some parts just seem sort of awkward to me. i think she sounded much better live at the vertigo show in ny though.
 
To convince them, that 'OCTOBER', 'RATTLE AND HUM' and 'POP' were NOT mistakes, but beautiful albums with beautiful (live)songs - and that your best work might not necessarily be the work, that sells the most ...
 
Do pop like it was live

I'm going to go with doing POP the way it was live. It would've been a masterpiece!
 
Hiring Hamish Hamilton to direct anything, ever. Think of the concert videos we could have gotten from Elevation and Vertigo, instead of his shaky-cam, random-cutting crap. Sigh.
 
Miami.

And a rocking and angry Bullet The Blue Sky for the previous tour would have been better.


Just personal taste :wink:
 
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