Current mood:	busy
Current music:	'Release' by Anathema
Entry tags:	life, music, nzr, trains, u2, university

Well, it's been a while since my last entry, and I forgot to reply to its comments but I'll get around to it someday soon. I've just been busy with university and so forth, and my eyes have decided they really don't like me, so that's been making life difficult, what with the copious amounts of reading I do. As far as university goes, I have somehow been both pushing myself too much and procrastinating more than I should. I realise those two concepts should be mutually exclusive, but they aren't.

It's funny, I was looking forward so much to doing History and Political Science, and yet now I don't feel as if I am doing what I love. I feel drawn back to the first thing in my life that I truly loved and that truly held my fascination; New Zealand's railway system. Shame there isn't any sort of Bachelor of NZR. Ah well, maybe I can use my History and PolSci stuff along those lines; the railway certainly played a very large role in New Zealand's 19th and early 20th century history and politics.

And I randomly felt like making a list in response to a post over on Interference, but it wasn't within the context of the thread and I'm sure making a new one would just cause unnecessary conflict, so I'll post the list here, complete with side comments. I give you ...

The ten worst U2 songs!

10. A Room At The Heartbreak Hotel: This song is just dreadful. The female backing vocals make it all the worse. Cringeworthy, and I can see why it was merely a b-side.
9. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own: Fake, contrived bullshit. This song has no emotional power whatsoever. It's a dull, lifeless plod that has had all of its emotional power sucked out of it. The same can be said for a number of other HTDAAB songs. I don't know if Bono's just not trying or if it's the dreadful production. Probably both in tandem.
8. Love Rescue Me: This song has some nice lyrics, but it really fails to do anything remotely interesting musically. Not worth the time.
7. One: The most sickeningly over-rated song ever. It is complete dross; pathetic, sometimes cliche lyrics, poor singing, a dull musical arrangement, and all in all, a dismal shadow of With Or Without You. I'm not saying it's a ripoff or derivative of WOWY, but that they both aim for the same powerful emotional effect through a slower ballad style and WOWY achieves it whereas One dies with a dull wimper. The worst part? The studio recording lacks its sole worthwhile moment, the "do you hear us coming?" verse added onto the end live.
6. Ultra Violet (Light My Way): It starts off alright, and then keels over and dies. The chorus is quite simply the single worst U2 chorus in history, including "Miami, my mammy". It feels as if it's foreshadowing the boybands that came along later in the nineties. I can certainly hear the Backstreet Boys harmonising "baby, baby, baby, light my way".
5. Red Light: OK, so Edge doesn't totally suck here, but the rest of the band does. Why this made War and Treasure did not is a complete source of confusion to me. Bono's singing is completely off; I don't know what he was trying to do, but he fails abysmally. This song has the musical merit of one of U2's early demos from when Bono couldn't sing, but with cheesiness added for extra flavour.
4. Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World: This song wasn't even worth releasing as a b-side, let alone as an album track. It is so completely boring that it would cure anyone of insomnia. There is almost nothing of merit to pique the listener's interest.
3. In A Little While: One of U2's most repulsive songs. Were it an instrumental, it may have been OK. If it had solely the "rocketship" verse, it may have been OK. But no, Bono had to sing some of the most worthless lyrics of his career in such a manner that it sounds like a frog is stuck in his throat. I cannot comprehend why anyone would like this song.
2. Stuck In A Moment: Even worse than In A Little While, at least in part due to the awful pop production that sucks right into oblivion whatever traces of meaningfulness that were in the song. Edge's verse at the end isn't bad, but the rest of the song feels so manufactured and over-done, like the band originally had a touching song but then decided to overdo it and turn the thing into a pop track in the hopes it would sell a few more copies.
1. Elvis Ate America: The single worst U2 song ever. Not one redeeming feature at all. It is the very definition of cringeworthy and I feel sorry for every person who has ever heard it. There are frigging nu-metal songs better than this. What garbage. What completely worthless, disposable, nonsensical garbage. Why was this put on such a brilliant album? Passengers is nearly perfect once you delete this from the album.

And that's all for now. Have a good one!