U2's 40 greatest songs, ranked

One of the rare U2 songs that offers little more than a frenzied rush, “Elevation” surges on Bono’s whoop and Edge’s fuzz guitar, elements that gain life when heard in concert. Indeed, “Elevation” seems designed for the stage: it’s all overblown, from the muscular melody to the surplus of guitar riffs. Excess usually isn’t U2’s specialty but the indulgence here helps the band take flight.

Humming along almost with a meditative sense of purpose in its tempered groove, “Miss Sarajevo” bursts wide open once opera singer Luciano Pavarotti glides in for an appearance just after the song’s halfway point. Far from seeming camp, Pavarotti lends “Miss Sarajevo” a sense of grand melancholy, transforming it from mood music into a sideways tearjerker.

U2 toiled on “Every Breaking Wave” for the better part of a decade, sketching it out for No Line On The Horizon and playing it on their U2 360 Tour in 2010. They finally finished the tune for Songs Of Innocence, which served as a welcome reminder of past glories. Far from seeming belabored, “Every Breaking Wave” suggested that U2 could still easily reconnect with the sense of sky-scraping majesty that fueled their 1980s work.

A moody, cinematic selection from Passengers—the busman’s holiday side project between U2 and Brian Eno—“Your Blue Room” seems to operate on a constant simmer, a decision that leads not to tension but rather introspection. It’s not monochromatic: it’s colored by deep baritone twangs, Bono sings the choruses in a keening falsetto, while bassist Adam Clayton provides a recitation during fade out. All these elements suggest something of an endless hall of mirrors, where the same image keeps refracting in increasingly obtuse and alluring fashions.

Surrender is a speciality of U2: they understand the moment when the world becomes too much to bear. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” is a moment where they make this instinct explicit. With its exhortations of connection, it nearly plays like a recovery anthem, but it doesn’t quite descend into platitudes: it’s the opposite of a call to action, it’s a stirring moment of acceptance.

Existing in an existential swirl, “Even Better Than The Real Thing” throbs with hyperreality: every element, from the siren riff to the cascading melody, suggests a place where norms no longer matter. Bono’s lyric cuts against this visceral rush: he teases at the idea that he knows everything is not what it seems but he’s happy to live in the fantasy.

Another elegy to a departed friend—a subgenre that became a specialty of U2—“One Tree Hill” smudges the details, leaving behind only the longing for a presence that’s disappeared. U2 builds the tension quietly and expertly, and there’s a sense of escalating deliverance in the repeated chorus. The fact that Bono dances with despair in his lyric lends the song an assured, majestic power.

The slow-rolling gloom swirling on the horizon, “Zooropa” once seemed modern but now seems otherworldly: a dispatch from a future that never manifested. Bono leads us through the proceedings with the charm of a carnival barker who chose to take his retirement in downers, an aesthetic choice that gives the music a surprising kick: it doesn’t seem futuristic so much as untethered.

“Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” doesn’t offer solutions so much as consolation. Bono recognizes the pain of a friend—specifically INXS singer Michael Hutchence, who died of suicide in 1997—and while he can’t find a way to alleviate the pain, he does acknowledge it, and that compassion turns “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” into something of a soothing balm.

“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” plays as if U2 decided to embrace Batman’s comic book origins. Applying all their Zooropa innovations to a proud piece of trash, U2 conjures a glam confection that leans into the transitory pleasures of glitter. Here, U2 sounds looser and freer than they did during much of the 1990s; it’s a song that reveals how labored much Pop can be.

A ballad designed to conquer the world, “Staring At The Sun” failed to do that. Blame it on the maelstrom of Pop, which soured its accompanying singles. Listening to the track on its own terms, the song feels majestic, a tune so blinding in its beauty that it can only be seen at a distance.

Tucked away as a Joshua Tree B-side in 1987 then revived and reworked as a single for a 1998 greatest hits album, “Sweetest Thing” is as ebullient as U2 ever gets. A valentine to Bono’s wife—who by definition must be suffering—“Sweetest Thing” radiates with pure pleasure.

Pulsating to a circular club beat, “Lemon” gives the appearance of being an effervescent dance number. But it quickly gets entangled in complications by the Edge that act as a counterpoint. The Teutonic rhythms and gospel harmonies give “Lemon” an eerie edge that lingers long after the song ends.

Post-punk as doomed romanticism, “Two Hearts Beat As One” is the moment where U2 truly finds its heart. War is filled with nascent masterpieces—songs where the group figures out how to purposefully harness their energy—but “Two Hearts Beat As One” feels on the verge of collapse, a testament to U2’s desire to race into unknown territory.

A cloistered, paranoid soundscape, “The Fly” is the song that casts a shadow over the rest of Achtung Baby; it’s all bad vibes and dashed potential. The Edge lays down a riff that pushes the proceedings forward while Bono lays back to dwell on the decadence, giving the song a compelling inner tension.

Tucked away at the end of Zooropa, the apex of U2’s pop-oriented experimentalism, “Dirty Day” features familiar U2 elements, but slightly out of focus: Bono’s falsetto falters, Larry Mullen Jr.’s driving rhythms are pushed to the forefront so they clash with the moody stillness of the Edge’s guitar and synths. Not so much a concentrated song as a splash of moods, “Dirty Day” illustrates how U2 figured out how to turn the studio into another instrument.

Perhaps the apex of U2’s collaboration with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, “The Unforgettable Fire” shimmers upon a surface that deepens the mystery of the lyric. Inspired by the atomic bombings of World War II, “The Unforgettable Fire” seems unencumbered by its genesis: it doesn’t tell, it suggests. The haziness is what gives the song power, suggesting there are bigger, better worlds just out of reach.

Appearing on a bleak Wim Wenders film, “Until The End Of The World” has a sense of apocalyptic doom at its heart: the world will fall away, leaving only desire. That existential fuel gives the record definition and shape, a pulsating need offset by a bad trying to pull these big ideas back to earth.

All noise and bustle, “Zoo Station” announced that U2 were on the bullet train into the unknown. A group that avoided irony as if it were an allergy, U2 embraced ambiguity on Achtung Baby and, along with it, a sense of grandeur; their cinematic audioscapes were once spartan but they’re now bustling as if they can’t contain all their ideas. Bono doesn’t push at the edges here but he doesn’t need to: it’s about sound and form, not content.

One of the rare moments in U2’s discography where calculatedeffervescence winds up as transcendent, “Vertigo” is all about thatrush; the riffs, the melody, the hooks that propel it forward. ThatBono sprinkles unrepentant corniness throughout “Vertigo”—witness theechoing answers to his “Hello Hello” on the chorus—actually adds tothe song’s charm: it’s the sound of an aging band determined to have agood time and succeeding against the odds.

A highlight on their 1980 debut Boy, “Stories For Boys” gathers its strength from the sound of U2 as a collective. Bono’s lyrics are essentially sketches of escape routes from drudgery but it’s the band itself that offers that kind of deliverance by playing as fast and loud as they can.

Originally appearing on Steven Van Zandt’s Sun City protest album in a solo rendition by Bono, “Silver And Gold” was then recut by the band a couple years later. The song riffs upon inequities in South Africa and the American South, which makes it fitting that it’s the first time Bono attempted the blues. Keith Richards and Ron Wood gave him a John Lee Hooker boogie but U2 tighten up the rhythm and highlight the indignation at its heart.

The heaviest dose of old-fashioned rock and roll on an album steeped in Americana—the song bounces to a patented Bo Diddley beat—“Desire” is a locomotive powered by Larry Mullen Jr; everybody else is racing to catch up. Bono winds up trading in hackneyed imagery—a red guitar is on fire—but it doesn’t matter because the band hits those three chords as if they’re an elemental truth.

“A Sort Of Homecoming” pulls U2’s strengths into sharp perspective. The opening track of The Unforgettable Fire, the first album they made with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, “A Sort Of Homecoming” is rife with atmosphere: Larry Mullen Jr.’s drums feel like coloring and texture just as much as the Edge’s echoing guitar. Bono’s exhortations are exhilarating but hearing how the muddle swirls and congeals is what makes the song so instructive and exciting.

By all accounts, the union between U2 and producer Martin Hannett was an uneasy one. The band was too green to know how to handle the eccentricities of the producer, whose unconventional tactics resulted in some of the greatest records of the post-punk era, including Joy Divison’s Unknown Pleasures. Joy Division’s sound and aesthetic looms over “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” but the single gets its nervous energy because U2 don’t know what they’re doing: Hannett may not have been the right producer for them but he did capture lightning in a bottle here. The live version included on the 1983 mini-LP Under A Blood Red Sky shows how quickly U2 would grow comfortable in their own skin.

Based on the biblical verse Psalm 40 as much by necessity as inspiration, “40" fell together quickly: at the end of the War sessions, they needed one more number to complete the album, so they built a moody track that gave Bono room to roam. He wound up with a stirring call to arms, echoing his refrain from “Sunday Bloody Sunday” but seeming to open up a new avenue of reflection with its circling melodies and riffs.

Back in 1981, Bono’s decision to swipe part of the chorus for “Gloria” from the hymn “Gloria In Excelsis Deo” underscored the spiritual undercurrent flowing through U2’s music. Over the years, Bono’s Christianity moved into a background role within U2 which, in turn, recast “Gloria” as an early song that illustrated how U2 wouldn’t hesitate to swing for the fences. If anything, they were anxious to make those big leaps, an excitement that is palpable in “Gloria.”

Still and steady like a storm cloud appearing over the horizon, “All I Want Is You” is the emotional climax of Rattle And Hum, the moment where all the disparate threads of the project unite in a tidal wave of emotion. Lacking some of the overt American influences of the rest of the album, “All I Want Is You” nevertheless plays as simply and cleanly as a plaintive country song, a quality that gives the track a haunting quality.

Opening with a piano ringing out as bright and clear as the sun on freshly fallen snow, “New Year’s Day” carries an urgency that’s nearly cinematic: its stark, expansive soundscape provides a wide vista for Bono, whose lyrics were inspired by the Polish Solidarity movement. “New Year’s Day” doesn’t feel specifically political yet it does feel galvanizing, playing a bit like a rallying call to arms.

An aspirational anthem from an album drowning in them, “Where The Streets Have No Name” feels unencumbered by time and space. it’s all about dreams and imagination, yearning that isn’t dragged down by the mundane melancholy of reality.

Written a matter of weeks before U2 headed into the studio with producer Steve Lillywhite to record their debut album Boy, “I Will Follow” bristles with urgency. The insistent clarion call of the Edge’s open-note riff sets the pace with the rhythm section racing to keep up, leading Bono to ride this cathartic noise as a wave. Bono’s open-hearted declarations of devotion also give “I Will Follow” a racing pulse. Their earnest, youthful energy still sounds vital.

Maybe the loveliest song U2 ever wrote, “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” exists in an eternal limbo, perched between twilight and the dawn, acceptance and regret. As U2 lays down a groove that has no small debt to soul, Bono stretches the limit of his falsetto, a keening sound that conveys heartbreak and longing.

From a distance, “Beautiful Day” almost seems like a readymade—a song where U2 dutifully hit its marks, never bothering to step outside of the lines. The sense of control is also its crowning grace. It’s a song where U2 appears to conjure every one of their tricks—mood and melody intertwine, rhythms don’t swing as much as push, Bono saves his color for the margins—and deploys them with surgical precision that’s difficult to resist.

Creeping into focus like an ocean liner emerging from the fog, “With Or Without You” never loses its sense of murkiness. That’s intentional. Not so much a live song as a coded spiritual conundrum, “With Or Without You” gains its power through its swampy atmosphere: its darkness puts Bono’s pleas in sharp, passionate relief.

The first flowering of U2’s political consciousness, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” turns a specific regional plight into a universal anthem. The song is clearly about the Irish troubles—the sawing violin underscores its sense of place—but the band’s force not only pushes the conflict into the world at large but demonstrates their might.

An elegy that plays like a hymn, “Bad” crystallizes the strengths of U2: they marry an inherent sense of drama to an unguarded open heart. Opening with the Edge’s circular, echoing guitar riff, a spectral presence brought back to Earth by Bono’s pleading pledge of transcendence to somebody who has already left this astral plane. The tension between Bono’s desires and the grounding drive of U2 makes “Bad” a uniquely powerful piece of work: it captures desire and loss in equal measure.

A clear distillation of the innovations of Achtung Baby, “Mysterious Ways” pulsates with excess, its vivid throb grimying the love song at its core. The opening guitar riff pushes the meters into the red, a distorted salvo that settles into a song that lends a touch of grace to earthly desires.

A song where the heart overpowers everything, including historical accuracy, “Pride (In The Name of Love)” is incandescent in its passion. Muddying the martial rhythms of War, the band creates a noir ode to Martin Luther King Jr.: it hardly sounds American but it’s undeniably cinematic. Bono flubs the details of the assassination—which he fixed on the Songs Of Surrender version—but details don’t matter: the message is compassion and love.

A song of devotion that may also be a song about divorce, “One” is luminous in its ambiguity. As Bono sketches scenarios where a couple’s bond is tested by their differences, U2 lays down its sultriest, subtlest groove: the marriage of melody and rhythm lives up to the ideals of the title.

An anthem of hope and longing, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is the quintessential U2 song: it has a restless heart that yearns for home. The quest for fulfillment is painted not as pain but as an essential part of living. The idea that there’s something unnamed somewhere across the horizon, something that could bring fulfillment, is the key to U2's aesthetic and they never articulated it as fully as they do here.