U2’s Album Leadoff-Singles Ranked: ‘Desire,’ ‘Vertigo,’ More

As we’ll see over and over on this list, the quality of the leadoff single from a U2 album doesn’t always match the quality of the album. In many cases, it doesn’t even come close. That’s certainly true with 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, which marked the return of the Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby dream team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The album may not have been connected with the culture like their prior two albums, but songs like “Moment of Surrender,” “No Line on the Horizon,” “Magnificent,” and “Breathe” rank among U2’s best work of the Nineties. But they erred big time by dropping “Get On Your Boots” as the first single. The riffy song is a cousin of “Elevation” and “Vertigo,” but not nearly as memorable. This was a bold, experimental album. There was no good reason to mask that. It would have been smarter to release “Moment of Surrender” first, and save “Get On Your Boots” for a B-side — or even the cutting room floor.

The brouhaha over the release of Songs of Innocence, downloaded to everyone’s iPhone across the planet, which ranked high on our list of the worst decisions in music history, received so much attention that the actual songs were rarely discussed. And even though Songs of Innocence is far from a masterpiece, there’s really no such thing as a terrible U2 record. “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)” is a moving tribute to Bono’s original teenage hero when he was “young, not dumb,” and the leadoff song to the album. If you haven’t heard it in a long time, give it a second listen. It’s probably still somewhere on your phone. 

According to U2 lore, their second album was a nightmare to create since Bono lost his lyric notebook shortly before recording started, and the band wasn’t sure they even wanted to continue after everyone but Adam Clayton joined the Shalom Fellowship Christian group. But they still managed to turn October into a pretty strong release, even if it didn’t match the highs of Boy. The album kicks off with “Gloria,” and there’s almost no question that should have been the leadoff single. Instead, partially because it was all they had at the moment, they went with the uninspired and insipid “Fire.” The band figured this out pretty quickly since they haven’t played it live even a single time since February 1983. “‘Fire’ was not a very good song,” Bono said in 2006. “I always had this faith that we could make it up as we went along, but sometimes we couldn’t, and that was a case in point.”

To many U2 fans, having any song from Boy this low on a list will seem sacrilegious. Before you freak out, we have a question for you: Is “A Day Without Me” a better song than “I Will Follow,” “The Electric Co,” “Twilight,” “The Ocean,” or “A Cat Dubh?” (We aren’t listing “Out of Control” since it was released as a single from their 1979 EP Three.) By any objective measurement, the song is a throwaway. “I Will Follow” was the obvious first single. It remains in their live set to this day. They haven’t gone near “A Day Without Me” since 1985. Only true hardcore fans even know it was the first Boy single. 

In September 2017, U2 worked “You’re the Best Thing About Me” into the setlist of their Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour, placing the beautiful love ballad between “Vertigo” and “Ultraviolet (Light My Way).” That same month, it was released as the leadoff single from Songs of Experience. There was little public appetite for a new U2 album by 2017 and it received little attention. It’s a shame because “You’re the Best Thing About Me” is a genuinely great song that deserves to be heard. 

MTV, rock radio, and the major record labels were hanging on by a thin thread when U2 were cutting their 2004 LP How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. That’s why they dropped their opposition to placing their music in commercials, and allowed Apple to feature leadoff single “Vertigo” in an iPod ad. It was a great way to expose the song to a mass audience, and it turned “Vertigo” into a hit, even if “unos, dos, tres, catorce!” translates to “1, 2, 3, 14!” Bono late admitted he enjoyed a few cocktails before cutting that part. 

U2 were so cocky in 1993 following the massive success of Achtung Baby and the early legs of the Zoo TV tour that the first single from the quickie followup LP, Zooropa (originally envisioned as an EP), featured The Edge doing something that could reasonably called “rapping.” If that wasn’t weird enough, the video is a close-up of him lip-syncing the song while two women rub their feet on his face. But we love every single aspect of “Numb,” the song and the video. The only bummer is they haven’t let Edge perform it live since 1993. Come on guys. It’s time we all got “Numb” again. 

U2’s 1988 tour documentary Rattle and Hum is widely seen today as a pretentious misstep. And yes, the film itself could have been much, much better considering the majesty of the Joshua Tree tour, and all the footage they captured by director Phil Joanou. But the soundtrack has several killer songs, including leadoff single “Desire.” The Bo Diddley-inspired tune has been part of their live show ever since. (Someone really needs to give Rattle and Hum the Get Back treatment and turn the raw footage into a new movie.)

Original Soundtracks 1 isn’t technically a U2 album even though it features all four members of the band, plus their longtime producer Brian Eno. The 1995 LP was a chance for the band to continue with the experimentations of Zooropa without the pressure of creating another proper U2 album.  It was also a way to bring Eno further into their creative process than ever before by making him a full partner in the band. The result is a stellar album, and “Miss Sarajevo,” featuring a guest appearance by Luciano Pavarotti, is one of the best tracks. And since U2 have played it live at many of their concerts, and it appears on U2 compilation albums, we’re counting this as a U2 single from a U2 album. Good people can disagree with us. 

U2 could have taken the safe path and released “Staring at the Sun” as the leadoff single from Pop. It’s a radio-friendly ballad that could have possibly found a spot on Top 40 radio and maybe even MTV. They instead decided to be honest about the electronica-flavored sound of Pop by dropping “Discothèque” first. And had such a song hit earlier in the decade, maybe it could have worked. And maybe, just maybe, had they released a video where they didn’t dress up like the Village People, people would have taken the song more seriously. But “Discothèque” stiffed, the PopMart stadium tour struggled in many U.S. markets, and it created the narrative that U2 were in decline. But Pop and “Discothèque” have both aged very well. Our dream of a Pop 30 box set may not be realized next year, but maybe by 2037 there will be enough support for a Pop 40 box. We can dream, right?

After the PopMart tour wrapped in early 1998, U2 gave themselves a soft reboot by releasing The Best of 1980–1990 compilation album, and releasing the Joshua Tree era B-side “The Sweetest Thing” as a single. It became a surprise mini-hit, proving there was still demand for the old-school U2 sound. To satisfy that demand, they reunited with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois for the back-to-basics album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. First single “Beautiful Day,” a soaring anthem, became a worldwide hit that made everyone forget the whole “FlopMart” era. U2 were again the biggest band on the planet, at least for a little while. 

After the relative disappointment of October, U2 knew they had to deliver on their third album. They did this by crafting a politically-charged collection of anthemic songs that were destined to be heard in arenas and stadiums all across the world. About six weeks before it came out, they previewed the album by releasing “New Year’s Day.” It’s a song partially about the Polish Solidarity movement, but few listeners picked up on that. They instead heard a cry for a fresh start that felt universal. And early MTV, desperate for content, put the video into heavy rotation. It was the start of a whole new era for the band. 

In the early days of the hair-metal movement, there weren’t a lot of mainstream rock bands singing about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. But U2, drawing inspiration from the MLK biography Let The Trumpets Sing, given to them by former Rolling Stone editor James Henke, somehow turned his message of love into a pop classic that climbed the charts alongside the latest offerings by Wham!, Survivor, and Billy Ocean. (The original version of the song errs by saying that King was assassinated in the “early morning” of April 4, 1968, when the shooting took place after 6:00 p.m. When singing it live, Bono often changes the lyrics to “early evening.”)

The public first got a preview of U2’s followup to The Unforgettable Fire on Jan. 30, 1986, when they went on the Irish show TV Gaga and played a tune called “Womanfish” that’s easily one of the single worst songs they’ve ever written. “We agreed to do that in a moment of dementia,” The Edge said years later. “We hadn’t shot ourselves in the foot for a while, so with two songs half written we decided it was the perfect time to go to the nation to showcase our ‘new direction.’ It was dreadful.” Thankfully, “Womanfish” was thrown back into the ocean, forever, and the next time the world heard a new U2 song it was “With or Without You.” The song is so beautiful that even people who claim to dislike U2 begrudgingly admit it’s a masterpiece. It was also a global smash and helped move U2 into stadiums. Oddly, many young people know it largely today because it appears on the season two Friends episode The One With the List.  (Check out the live version of “With or Without You” from Rattle and Hum. It’s better than the studio version, and it has the beloved “shine like stars” bonus verse that hardcore fans love.)

If this were simply a list of U2’s best singles, “The Fly” wouldn’t rank above “With or Without You.” But in terms of leadoff singles, “The Fly” edges it out because it was a bold, wild change from The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum that almost nobody people saw coming. When it hit in October 1991, a month prior to Achtung Baby, fans were stunned. It would have been safer to lead off with “One” or even “Mysterious Ways,” but they decided to hold those back. “The Fly,” in essence, became a trailer for the entire album. It was U2’s first step into the Nineties, and it set the course for everything that followed. Every time a band opts for the weird song as the first single, keeping the safer options in reserve, they’re taking a page from U2’s playbook.