Deep Album Cuts Vol. 304: U2
Having done over 300 of these things now, it amuses me how many massive household name artists there are that I haven't done a deep cuts playlist for yet, particular one that I've been listening to pretty much my whole life like U2. Last year I ranked every U2 album for Spin and decided to once again put off a U2 deep cuts playlist for a while after that. Then the band announced Songs of Surrender, out this week, which features new studio recordings of 40 songs from the U2 catalog, 10 songs selected by each member of the band. So I thought I'd do my little retrospective while they're also taking a look back.
U2 deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Out Of Control
2. I Threw A Brick Through A Window
3. "40"
4. Surrender
5. MLK
6. A Sort Of Homecoming
7. Red Hill Mining Town
8. Mothers Of The Disappeared
9. Heartland
10. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
11. Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World
12. Some Days Are Better Than Others
13. Gone
14. In A Little While
15. One Step Closer
16. Stand Up Comedy
17. Cedarwood Road
18. The Little Things That Give You Away
Track 1 from Boy (1980)
Track 2 from October (1981)
Tracks 3 and 4 from War (1983)
Tracks 5 and 6 from The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
Tracks 7 and 8 from The Joshua Tree (1987)
Track 9 from Rattle and Hum (1988)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Achtung Baby (1991)
Track 12 from Zooropa (1993)
Track 13 from Pop (1997)
Track 14 from All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000)
Track 15 from How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004)
Track 16 from No Line On The Horizon (2009)
Track 17 from Songs Of Innocence (2014)
Track 18 from Songs Of Experience (2017)
The 40 songs that U2 revisit on Songs of Surrender are mostly singles (although it's not really a greatest hits deal -- a lot of big songs are passed over in favor of forgotten minor hits). In fact there are only about 7 deep cuts on the whole thing, which say interesting things about what eras each member wanted to highlight. The Edge picked "Out Of Control" and "Stories For Boys" from their debut. Larry Mullen Jr. picked a couple midperiod album tracks, Joshua Tree's "Red Hill Mining Town" and Zooropa's "Dirty Day," Adam Clayton picked "Peace On Earth" from All You Can't Leave Behind, and Bono picked three 21st century songs: "Miracle Drug," "Cedarwood Road," and "The Little Things That Give You Away." Still, they weren't out to check off every box -- nobody picked any songs from October or No Line On The Horizon to re-record, and oddly neither "Surrender" from War nor "Moment of Surrender" from No Line was reprised for Songs of Surrender.
"Red Hill Mining Town" is a song that fascinates me from a what-if perspective. After "With Or Without You" became U2's first #1 single on the Hot 100, "Red Hill Mining Town" was planned as the follow-up, and they filmed a music video, which the band wound up hating so much that they changed the whole singles campaign. Instead, they quickly shot the now-iconic "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" video, that song also went to #1, and the rest is history. "Red Hill Mining Town" never got its turn as a single, and today it's the 7th most popular song on The Joshua Tree behind "In God's Country," but one can safely assume it came very close to being one of U2's most well known songs had it been promoted at the peak of their popularity.
Sometimes when I'm putting together a deep cuts playlist of a big rock band, I find myself straining to find uptempo non-singles because I get bored if I end up with too many ballads and slow songs. But U2 is one of those bands where the slow burners and more textural pieces are often my favorite tracks, so I was more than happy to include things like "40" and "MLK" and "Mothers Of The Disappeared" and display that side of the band. My friend and frequent studio collaborator Mat Leffler-Schulman always praised "Mothers" as a great Brian Eno production which ran a drum machine through a vocoder, very much influenced us.
Achtung Baby was one of the albums that was ubiquitous in my mom's house (and, I guess, in the world in general) around the time I started to really get interested in music, and I'll always have a lot of love for that one, the hits and the deep cuts. It always surprises me to realize that most people don't think "Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World" is not a key song on that record, it feels like it could've been a hit. The only time I've seen U2 live, in Baltimore in 2011, they did a lot of Achtung Baby for the 20th anniversary of the album, and "Ultra Violet" was amazing live. Between Bono's memoir, the upcoming Netflix biography series, Songs of Surrender, and the fact that Mullen is sitting out the band's Vegas residency this year, I have to wonder if U2 is finally winding down now after 40 years of massive albums and tours. It's been a hell of a run, though, whether or not it's anywhere near over.
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on Thursday, March 16, 2023 at 8:01 AM.
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