U2 songs that you absolutely hated at first listen....

[jick]

..but then it just grew on you and how now become one of you all-time favorite U2 songs.

List them here, and explain why the song sucked so bad in your first listen and what made it eventually grow on you and made it one of your favorites.

As for me, I still have to give it a thought so can someone else please be the one to get the ball rolling?

Cheers,

J

 

[Liesje]

EBTTRT, So Cruel, and still TTYAATW. I really do have a love-hate relationship with Achtung Baby

 

[beli]

So Cruel. Absolutely hated it. Sounded like a washed out Depeche Mode ripoff (the opening bit) at first.

Love it now though. Tis a good song to listen to when I want to cry my eyes out.

 

[shart1780]

WTSHNN. I used to find it so boring and not catchy at all. After about a year of listening to it it's grown on me. It's now one of my favorite songs!

 

[Axver]

The Best Of 1980-1990 was the first CD I ever owned, when I was eleven. I wouldn't listen past I Will Follow because I thought they were all "love songs I'd never be caught listening to," (even though I ENJOYED them) besides The Unforgettable Fire, which I found plain boring.

A while later, on a holiday, I was playing the whole CD through when I found just how awesome and catchy songs like Angel Of Harlem and When Love Comes To Town are and that they were worth allowing myself to like. The Unforgettable Fire took a lot longer. It wasn't until my musical tastes really started to mature that I started to really appreciate the craftsmanship of this song. I now think it is a masterpiece of sound, an aural landscape painted in vivid colours, and it's one of my favourite songs.

 

[Aardvark747]

'Love Is Blindness' Then when the ZOO TV video came out and I saw the live performence. I loved it from then on.
Actually, I can say the same about 'Running To Stand Still'

 

[Lo-Fi]

Good question.

Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, man I hated that song when I first heard it. I had no idea what they hell they were going on about! I hated the general tone of it all.

Then after a little persistance it just clicked and I 'got it' the drums are stunning and the bass hooks are sweet. I find that with a lot of U2 songs, they're never as they first appear and need a bit of time spent on 'em.

 

[dandy]

when u2 puts out a new cd, it takes me quite awhile to get into it. the last time i truely embraced whole-heartedly a new u2 release was 'the joshua tree'. ohmy: ) i guess it takes me awhile to get to know the songs, to understand and appreciate them on the same level as the older stuff that i've been listening to forever.

that being said, songs i hated the first time i heard them (but now love):

angel of harlem -- i didn't like this song when it first came out. i don't know if it was the horns or just hearing it way too often on the radio. my appreciation for this song increased when i got into billie holliday music a few years back.

the fly -- when this was first released, i hated the video, i hated the noisiness the song, and i hated achtung in entirety until one afternoon when me and my good bud spent an afternoon listening to it full blast with our faces stuck to the lyrics sheet. then i got it. love achtung now, especially the fly.

lemon -- again, when zooropa came out, i was confused and didn't know what to make of it. i cried in agony the first time i heard lemon, and thought it was complete techno-crap. but, again, after a little while, i fell in love with it, particularly the line 'midnight is where the day begins'. 'stay' might have been the only reason i kept listening to zooropa, but i now i love mostly the whole thing.

discotheque -- you think i would have known what to expect when pop came out, but no... it was released on my birthday, so it was a birthday present that i didn't really listen to until a year or so ago. there are a couple of songs on there that i don't love, but overall, pop rocks. especially mofo.

i still haven't gotten into 'all that you can't leave behind', but there's a good chance with the new cd coming out, that i will begin to appreciate it more soon.

does anybody else react this way to new u2 music?

 

[Leeloo]

Bad

 

[Dalton]

The Fly - man I hated that song when it came out. Crazy kid.

 

[2861U2]

Love Is Blindness
Mofo
Seconds

Dont know why I didnt like em, maybe I just didnt give em a good listen.

 

[saltwaterkiss26]

Some Days Are Better Than Others - didn't exactly see the humor of the lyrics to start out with. Now I love them. No idea what brought me around.

Bullet the Blue Sky - I never really liked the rant at the end (I'm not sure I do now), but the whole song grew on me till I didn't really care anymore.

Peace on Earth - thought it was the sappiest thing I'd ever heard in my short life. Now it makes me cry my eyes out. It's still sappy, but maybe I'm just tolerant.

And I STILL don't really like the R&H version of ISHFWILF - at least, not nearly as much as the JT one. Dunno why.

 

[mystery girl]

I didn't like Dirty Day until I saw the Zoo TV Sydney video. I don't know why - it just didn't seem as interesting as the other songs on Zooropa. Now, it's one of my favourite U2 songs.

 

[djerdap]

Kite - this was my least favorite from ATYCLB on the first listen. But then I bought the Boston dvd and everything changed. It is now one of my favorites from that album.

Bad - Same thing. Never did like Bad...until Bologna 1985 bootleg. Now it is one of my favorite songs ever!

 

[discothequeLP]

I didn't really even give Kite a good listen until a few weeks ago when i read that Bono said that Kite was the best song off ATYCLB...then i finally watched it on the Boston DVD and i just fell in love. I love Edge's big gutiar!



I absolutely hated Acrobat and Love is Blindness the first time i heard them. They grew on me though, and now i really love Acrobat!


Also basically all of Pop (especially Do You Feel Loved, Last Night on Earth, and Wake Up Dead Man)

 

[The Sage]

When I first listened to The Unforgettable Fire (album). I thought it was boring pretty much from start to finish. Later, I listened to it properly, and I realised it is in fact the greatest album ever made.

 

[Flaming Friar Sr]

american prayer s@c#ed big time the first time i heard it.... im still waiting for it to grow on me though

 

[luvsU2]

Kite-did not appeal to me at all because it sounded so depressing and just made me so sad. Well I got over that and it is now one of my favorite songs off of ATYCLB

Bad- because I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was called bad. Then I saw this performed live and I finally got it.

WTSHNN and Still haven't found because granted I am a new fan starting in 2001 and I thought these songs were overplayed and too popular and I didn't need to listen to them. Well just this past year when I got back into U2 again I just realized these two songs are great and there was a reason why they are so popular.

Yep I am a dork but give me some time and I usually come around.

 

[neutral]

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses- I just couldn't get into it, I don't know exactly why but the intro, well, kinda turned me off. I didn't like it until I heard the Temple Bar edits, then the story of the song just became more clear. It's one of my current favorites.

I became a fan around the time of Rattle and Hum, and Hawkmoon and Heartland were my least favorite ones. I didn't grow to live Hawkmoon until I heard the live version from the Lovetown special, and Heartland just hit me one day. Now that I think back, some of the songs took me longer to "get" are the ones that I now think of as among the true masterpieces.

There's a couple of songs I still haven't gotten but I dare not name them.

 

[popacrobat]

numb
if god would send his angels- love that song now
two hearts beat as one
miami
miss sarajevo

 

[BluRmGrl]

Hmm...good question!

Lemon - hated it for a couple of years, but then came around.

Stuck in a Moment - I just couldn't get into the timing of the lyrics on that one; of course, now I love it.

New York - didn't like it AT ALL until I saw it performed live in Charlotte, March 2001.

Peace on Earth - this one I'm still having trouble with. It's not that I don't like it per se -- the message and the music are breathtaking. It's just sooo damn depressing, I can hardly bear to hear it. Then again, that's what makes it so powerful - that it has that strong an effect on me. I'm sure I'll come around on that one, too.

There are a few others, but these were the first ones that came to mind.

 

[u2ulysses]

"Bullet the Blue Sky". The first 3 songs on JT created a great mood, which I felt was completely ruined by "Bullet". As a result, I often stopped listening to JT after "With or Without You". It took a while before I finally discovered the rest of the album.

To this day, I'm still not a fan of "Bullet", but I can appreciate its message. However, I'd have no problems if it was dropped from the concert setlist.

 

[sue4u2]

Numb was difficult for me to wrap my head around, untill I saw the video. But still if I was going to skip over a song, that would be the one.
(i can't skip over song's for some reason. Feels disloyal. But that's just me)

 

[Saracene]

I hated everything on Unforgettable Fire except Pride and Bad. Now I love it from start to finish.

Love is Blindness is now my second-favourite U2 album closer; for a very long time I thought it a total bore of a song.

 

[Infinity]

Wake up Dead Man
Peace on Earth
The Playboy Mansion
Miami
Running to Stand still

 

[Infinity]

oo yea i forgot:

Lemon
Babyface
New York
Daddy's gonna pay...

 

[ponkine]

The Hands That Built America
The Wanderer
Miami
In A Little While
Grace
Numb

 

[di_g]

theres a few for me

strangely Beautiful Day frsdt time i heard it i thought it was kinda ok but the opening just sounded cheesy to me. now it is without question one of my favourites

a lot of pop - mofo, please, etc. not exactly my favourites now but i do enjoy them.
discotheque too took a while for me to get into

bullet the blue sky i absolutely hated. it was onl after i seeing it live left such an impression that i started to enjoy it adn now really like it

stuck in a moemtn i never really got into. i didint really like the video to be honest so that kinda put me off. then i was workign in a bar adn they used to play it at the end of everynight adn soon i found myself singing my head off to it. i love it now

there are others but thats enough for now!

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I was confused by "Discotheque" when I originally heard it........and "Staring at the Sun" took some time for me to enjoy it.

 

[Roland of Gilead]

Two absolute haters turned favorites that come to mind are Bullet the Blue Sky and Elevation.

I just wasn't into a Led-U2 song as a 15 year old. I ended up skipping past it all the time. Then I headed of to university and discovered Led Zepplin for myself (when that Box set came out 90-91?). This song is a classic! How could I of skipped it all that time!

I can't for the life of it pin point my distaste for Elevation when I first heard it. Maybe it was the "Woooo Hoooooooos". Maybe it was that guitar riff. Maybe it was the rap style lyrics. I don't know for sure. I just know that it was easily the worst song off All That... for me. It wasn't until I heard the Influx Mix that the song took off into another direction and wouldn't leave my stereos and mind alone for a solid six months. During that time, I realised the brainwashing power this song had and subjected my daughter (1 1/2 to 2 years old at that time) to daily doses of this song until she got the "woooo hoooos" perfected. Now (at 4) she is a Bonomaniac.