Unforgettable Single

10 Aug 2012541
Over on our Discography page you'll find dozens and dozens of singles the band have released over the years.

Starting with U23 way back in 1979 - Out of Control, Stories for Boys, Boy-Girl - the trail leads all the way to 'I'll Go Crazy', third single from No Line On The Horizon, in 2009.

Maybe you'd forgotten Lemon was a single. Or you've never listened to Fire. Or you just recently discovered Please. But there'll be a U2 single that's special to you in some way - the one that comes on the radio or arrives unnoticed when your iPod's on shuffle and suddenly a moment in your life comes back to you.

What was the U2 single that stopped you in your tracks - and still does ?

It might depend on where you were when you first heard it, what was happening in your life, how you first got into the band?

Remind yourself of the history of the band's single releases and look through the promotional videos on this page in our Video Gallery (set aside a week or two for this) -  find the one that reminds you of a time and place in your life.

In the comments below tell us why this song is special for you. Is there a story behind it - an anecdote from your life ?

What brings the track alive for you? What was happening to you at the time you first heard it that means you'll never get over this single?

We have prizes for the best, the funniest, the most moving or surprising entries. Add them in the comments below. Did we mention that ? (Don't forget - we're not talking about any U2 track but about those released as singles...)


Comments
541
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moh75
The Unforgettable Fire
My favorite single? it is simple: the Unforgettable Fire. These 4 songs have ignited the fire inside of me, and still burns after so many years. They raised the dust nestled in my soul and my heart did shine as the light from an exploding bomb. When I heard for the first time these songs had a difficult time in my life and they are perfectly adapted to my situation, and although I will refuse to listen, it seemed to me chasing them everywhere, like a hunting dog that has seen a fox, and he will not let her go ... probably this reasoning does not win anything, but I wanted to let you know what this CD has given me.
R3N4tO
Where the streets have no name
Is an anthem for me, is a song that moves me, brings me great memories, I remember like it was today, I walked into a record store she was playing, The Joshua Tree had just reached the stores. from that day forward this is the soundtrack of my life. Thanks U2 for giving us a great life.
Heidi1275
The Fly
I remember when I first heard this song like it was yesterday; I was 12. I fell in love with it immediately and it is still to this day my favorite song of all time. Edge's buzzing guitar just totally sucks you in from the very beginning. Very fly-like! Larry and Adam are spot on as always and I love Bono's kind of whispering, kind of speaking delivery with the distortion on his voice. It's absolute perfection and I never get sick of listening to it. I was a horseback rider when I was a kid and I used to love listening to Achtung Baby when I was practicing on my ponies. This song takes me right back to a particularly successful summer of horse showing with a favorite pony. It was also my go-to song to pump me up on the long drives to horse shows. This song brings back so many memories and I'm so thankful it exists. Thanks boys! :)
ljlcelder
Where the Streets Have No Name - For Sam
This is the one that stops me in my tracks whenever and wherever I hear it and normally reduces me to floods of tears when I am lucky enough to hear it live. My husband Sam and I shared a love of U2 and this is the track I chose to play at his funeral, Hearing it brings back such good and such sad memories.
kimtow
I will follow
I falling asleep with the tv on again. I was just ready to cut it off when i saw Live at Red Rock at 4a.m. I went to the record store they never heard of them either. I had to go to three record store before a clerk finally knew who i was talking about. They special order Live at red rock cassette it took three weeks. Now i can download any u2 song in seconds. But the joy of finally getting the record will always stay with me.
pomodoro
Magnificent
There are plenty of memories related to U2 songs and there are plenty of U2 singles i would mention to indicate a particular period in my life happy or not. After a long break of time during which i had stopped listening to u2 music i started again to in the end of 2010 August and it was amazing, astonishing how much i have felt attracted again by their sound, more and more fond of them , very moved by their songs lirics. In a few words it has happened a kind of rediscovery of them and that has been awesome fantastic. i have learnt much more since then about the contents of their beautiful songs and i have found out unknown songs or maybe some ones i absent mindedly had listened to before to which i have become literally addicted . When i listened to Magnificent and watched the related video for the first time i have felt the sensation that Mr.Paul Hewson had written that song just for me. Since then i have listened to it, Magnificent, thousands of times and i i have felt extremely m oved everytime. that song speaks about a kind of foolishness which may leave a heart bleak and blue; i have interpreted those words in relation to a kind of foolishness happening against me. That songs says. i was born to sing for you i diddn t have a choise ... ; i have interpreted it as Mr Hewson whose first cry was a joyful noise was born to lift me up from a particular uneasy situation i have been living.
Timo1966
I will follow
I was 14 when Boy came out and I had heard some U2 on Dave Fanning and loved 11O'Clock Tick Tock. It blew me away and was the first non Pop music that I absolutely loved. I was the first person in my town to buy the Boy album and I still have it at home. I heard I Will Follow and it sent a chill down my spine. It is so simple but it works. Check out the live version in the Boston 2001 DVD. Awesome to this day.I have grown up with U2. In my degreee year in College, the Joshua Tree came out. For our stress breaks from study, the four lads in our house would gather in a room , put on a track and turn the lights out. The best track was One Tree Hill. The best single and best live track was always I will Follow. The crowd pulsated with the lead guitar. Imagine if it had 3 chords!!!
Kiziuth
Kiziuth
Many years ago, when I was a young girl, there was only one music program in Polish TV called "Videoteka" that presented the music from all over Europe. Every Saturday I was waiting for it to watch some video clips. I remember one particular Saturday, when I was hoping for any... Kajagoogoo song :D. But there were only fragments of some show. The show was boring and I was disappointed. I found guitars too noisy and I didn't like the frontman - jumping to the crowd. The minute after he danced on the scene with a blond girl, I turned off the TV. But I remembered this show on the red floor. After few years, someone in my school had the Greenpeace longplay with "Pride" on it. This song was breath taking and I become interested who the band was, what this music was about etc. I became enthusiastic U2 fan and... Yeah, finally the day has come... I watched "Under a Blood Red Sky" and realised this is the "boring, noisy" show I watched once, and the song is "11 o’clock tick tock"! I was speechless!!! The song was fantastic! And still is one of my favourites. I like to think this song is my very beginning of U2 adventure ;) "Under a blood red sky" is one of my favourite shows, thanks for the DVD!
musicabona
Beautiful Day
I remember hearing that single for the very first time on the Italian radio in early September 2000. Together with my family I spent my holidays there. I knew that these would probably our last holidays with my uncle who suffered from cancer. When I heard Beautiful Day one morning the music echoed all the emotions I went through at this time. In those bell-like guitar notes there was a sort of intensity that was as bright as the deep blue sky of late summer. Despite its uplifting mood a shade of bittersweetness seemed to lie over every note of that song. But for me it was also a great comfort, with its wonderful words suggesting to stay optimistic even when we might lose somebody or something. With its angelic and powerful chorus, Beautiful Day allowed me to feel joy, despite all the sadness. Later I bought the single and now it still means very much to me. Listening to it I can always remember the great experiences I shared with my dear uncle. It is just moving and gorgeous and magical.
Luciano_Claro
If they turn to Dance Music I will hate
It was 21 years ago today, and for me Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum was the sound of my generation. Than I started listening rumours of a U2 dance album on the way. My God i remember the day i listened to my heroes new single The Fly. I hate the drums and the voice. I shouted "THEY SOLD THEIR SOULS“. 1 month later and 1 record in pieces on my floor, i started to listen again to the Achtung Baby. And for the last 21 years it has been my favourite album (1 listening a day), and The Fly, my friends, is the song of my life. When I Die that would be the soundtrack.
jstn044
Where The Streets Have No Name
This song got me into music. I sang it for my church choir my freshmen year in high school and after that I started listening to more U2, Beatles, Hendrix, The Doors, all the groups that influenced these guys. U2 is still number one to me and this song is amazing. Love the bass line and the drive and feel it gives you. Especially live, I feel this is one of their best and they always do it right. I have this song to thank for saving my life and bringing me into music. It will forever be in my heart and soul and will always be my favorite all time song Ever! Thank you U2!
cluttercoco
With or Without You
I met my husband when this single was about to be released. i was lukewarm about U2 at the time, but he was completely excited about the upcoming album and single. This song became our song (the first song that we slow danced to and we played it at our wedding in the church and it was our first dance song). I know the words are not very wedding like but the music is so romantic. Thanks to my hubby I became a huge fan of U2. I loved The Joshua Tree and listened to all the older stuff. we saw the concert and I was forever obsessed with U2...STILL!! When I hear this song it brings back all those memories.
LeBron James Mullen
Bad and what singles are pictured above?
Mine's Bad, but how many of the singles in the thumbnails at the top of this news item can you name? When Love Comes to Town doesn't count.
Managuabulets
Stay (with me forever)
I started listenting to U2 at age 13. Back in a tiny small town in Nicaragua. Over the years i have gotten thru several experiences in my Life, and I can honestly say that there has always been a U2 song for every stage of my life. But since this is a special question, I will start with one of the 2 first songs that hooked me up into U2: STAY (far away, so close) There was no access to cable tv or other stuff, just radios, and foreign music was not a popular thing. I was a rare fish in middle school, back in my hometown, I liked things that no other kids my age liked at the time. I was some kind of outsider. I used to dream to see "the world I wanted to live in". "Dreaming out loud". After the Sandinistas were defeated in the 1990s elections. The Economical Blocking was over, and everything started coming in from everywhere. Music was not an exception. By 1993 a friend of mine was a radio DJ at a National Radio Station, that used to play a lot of foreign music. He gave me a cassette with ZOOROPA. I heard U2 for the 1st time in 1993 from start to finish, and I was amazed, they sounded like nothing I have ever heard before. and STAY with the chorus: "Miami, New Orleans, London belfast and Berlin" had the chorus that talked about my dreams of places I dreamt of. Of course, LEMON was the other single that got me. And the INTRO of Zooropa was out of my little world.
FrankieU2
All is quiet....on New Years day!
For me U2's unforgettable single is New Years day! Especially played live i love the first few seconds when it's just Adam playing the bass...followed by The Edge on piano and Larry battering out the drums... then Bono's opening lyric 'All is quiet on New Years Day'.... It just gets me everytime...the emotion and the feeling of the music just makes that single unforgettable!
mustacheboy
Electrical Storm
I first heard it in a preview on "Radio One" in a very special version which I never found on a single, album or compilation.. where has this very nice alternative version gone? I spent a summer on the lakeside when I heard it and it perfectly fit into my mood at that time. It was a great part of my life these days!
ReachSoHigh
A Celebration
Although I more often listen to the highly collectible ‘Seven Tracks and the Missing Singles’ from the ‘Joshua Tree,’ I’d say the single ‘A Celebration’ was the one I sought most of all for enlightenment. It was difficult to find on vinyl in the 1980s but as a burgeoning U2 scholar I was convinced I had to own it. I lived in the Memphis area at the time and there were good record stores, Pop Tunes, for instance, where Elvis used to shop, and the generosity they showed customers by allowing you to listen to just about anything without the obligation to buy. But the U2 song, ‘A Celebration’ wasn’t available there or on a CD/LP at that time because it was released mainly in Europe and Japan between ‘October’ and ‘War’ in the early 1980s. Nowadays you can find ‘A Celebration’ on disc two of the deluxe, remastered ‘October.’ If you don’t have it I suggest you pick it up. ‘I believe in the third world war / I believe in the atomic bomb / I believe in the powers that be / But they won’t overpower me.’ I had only ever heard ‘A Celebration’ on late night TV when either Night Flight or MTV aired the video. Filmed from inside and outside of an old, vacant correctional facility it suggests the early power of the band with close-ups and smoke screens before and after they take off running, and there appears to be a very cool door to another dimension. Later on, I tried to obtain the record from River Records on Highland Avenue, which had once been Prince Mongo’s beer lounge. The quirky proprietor often sang aloud, out of the blue, to something rare in his Beatles collection. There I heard a few live versions of ‘A Celebration’ where Bono would sing, ‘I believe in the third world war / I believe in the atomic bomb’ and then shout ‘No way!’ As the ‘Shake shake shake’ segues with the ringing, scythe-like edge of Edge’s guitar a bounding rhythm carries you to terra firma. The coalescing thump of the backline stands the hairs on the back of your neck. ‘I believe in the walls of Jericho / I believe they're coming down. / I believe in this city's children / I believe the trumpet's sound.’ The art work on the record sleeve is a rather psychedelic crisscrossing of black and gold lines, colors not often associated with psychedelics, with the rays-of-the-sun logo of ‘A Celebration’ centered near the top. I finally ordered it from another U2 collector. Given some volume, it’s a pure sound, a 45 of conflict, conviction. Hear it? ‘I gotta go! / I believe in a celebration / I believe we can be free. / I believe you can loose these chains / I believe you can dance with me, dance with me.’ Before the recording of ‘War,’ it flowed in the veins of that album’s consciousness, a release of what they thought was right at the time but it was also an invitation, a call to celebrate the soul even in the face of adversity.
parkin
parki59
without a doubt, So Cruel, when we were first married thirty years ago my wife and i would lie drunk on the floor and listen to this song for hours!
MrSwagger
Beautiful Day
I remember the first time I heard this song, the intro, then the words "The heart is a bloom".. When a song like this comes together, it truly is as if it's always been. Beautiful Day is one of the songs, and it always will be to me. This song isn't on the shallow end either, "teach me", and as he changes the lyric at Slane Castle to "Lord, I know I'm not a hopeless case." This song brings rich memories and warm feelings.. I was only 11 when I heard this song, and it's kept with me growing up. I'm officially blessed to have heard a song that captures a picture of brightness and beauty so well. It's the perfect theme song for any day of great weather. =)
Eluard_Moraes
Mysterious Ways
It was the begining of everything... I was not a big fan at that time and Achtung Baby was my first album (in tape format). I remember that I fast forwarded the A side to hear "The Fly", the first song on side B. But, just after this it came the "Mysterious...." It was amazing! Then I bought the Maxi Single and... after that... 20 years has passed... I don't have a favourite song, but I'm pretty sure that this is the one I heard most. Also, it is one of the best live performances! (think in Zoo TV....)
Roeschel
One
buyed this "one" as a 7 " vinyl single in south dakota, probably the latest vinyl record I bought...
mysterious_distance
I'll have to go with...
"New Year's Day". There have been so many singles by U2 that have made an impression on me from the first listen... but "New Year's Day" is a stand-out for me, personally. I'd been listening to mostly classic rock at the time. When I first heard "NYD" on the radio, I was floored by the sound! I'd never heard anything like it before in my life. Being a guitarist (fledgling at the time), The Edge's guitar sound was like discovering a new planet in the solar system. I went right out and bought a BOSS delay pedal so I could start replicating his sound as best as I could. He is still one of my top-5 guitar heros. I'd say "Pride" comes in second, as that single represented a change in their sound. I remember being a bit thrown off at first—having just gotten to know and love the "garagey" sound of "War". But it was, in fact, a song of some amazing things to come. But, yes... "New Year's Day" takes top honors for me.
popfart
I Will Follow
In 1980... I was a young teen and my mother was battling breast cancer. It was a scary time filled with uncertainty. One night I heard "I Will Follow" for the first time and I was floored. The song conveyed all of the emotions I was feeling but was unable to articulate. My mother passed in 1981, but I will forever be grateful to U2 for helping me through a very difficult situation.
kevfly82
My Thrilling Single- Hold Me Thrill Me K
As a child born in the 80's and growing up through the 90's, I feel like I really didn't know what music was until I heard the first notes of 'Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me'. It woke me up! I felt like I grew devil horns like Macphisto's at first listen. I was only 13 years old and I had no clue who U2 were. Even though I heard many of their songs already, I never put it all together. I was hooked from the very beginning of Edge's & Larry's intro. To share the thoughts of a then 13 year-old me, I remember thinking to myself 'That guitar is straight out of Mars! And who's that singing? He sounds so sinister. I gotta get this album!' So I got my mom to drive me to the Kmart in town and she bought me the Batman Forever soundtrack. Man I was so excited to play that cd, couldn't wait to rip the plastic wrapping off. I only knew 1 or 2 other songs on it because kept playing track 1. It did the job of the single - provided the hook to sell the album. Without 'Hold Me Thrill Me.' I wonder if I would've ever had the fascination for the band like I do now. It's not my favorite U2 song- that title might belong to Lemon or Breathe or All I Want Is You- but it was the gateway, that crazy song that I heard at the perfect time of my life that was I grew addicted to for an entire summer and created a path that led me to everything U2. 11 shows & 17 years later I still love that song & it's the U2 single I haven't been able to live without. -Kevin C, Chicago
cnug
cnug
I Will Follow The first time i heard this i thought to myself these guys are going to be huge....!!!! Its still my favourite U2 song.
Leticia45
Pride
it's so hard to decide!!!! But when i heard Pride for the first time, I liked so much and I didn't know who was singing, and when I discover immediately understand that's the band that I will love forever!!!!
Cam U2
City of Blinding Lights
My mom listened to All That You Can't Leave Behind non stop when it first came out, so I was very much aware of U2. I enjoyed the songs and really connected with the music on that album. Also I couldn't forget the bands guest appearance on The Simpsons, being the huge fan I was of the show when I was a kid. Fast forward to April 2005 when I was 16 years old and watching the evening news as they were covering the story in Vancouver of how U2 was looking for a few thousand volunteers to fill GM Place to film the music video for City of Blinding Lights. I was mesmerized and thought it was the coolest thing ever. I looked up the song and thought it was amazing. It was only once I had heard and saw the video filmed in Vancouver that I truly knew this was my favourite song of all time. As a teenager, I was a drummer in a punk rock band, and I thought the new drum beat Larry had devised for the song live was just amazing. I will admit to this day, I still try and cover it. The song opened up my first U2 concert in Toronto of 2005. For me, the song is the best travelling companion I could ever ask for, as I have listened to it when travelling though the US, Russia or Western Europe. "The more you see the less you know, unless you find out as you go". If I need to get energized for the day, this is the song. I hope it will stay in the U2 setlist for years to come. Or just make sure to play it in Vancouver next time your in town as I will be in the crowd!
Ellay
Where the Streets Have No Name
In the early nineties, I was still a fledgling U2 fan. One stormy evening as I scanned through the airwaves, I discovered for the first time what is now the unmistakable rumble at the start of streets, it was a true deep radio sound, fading in and out in waves with a depth I can't find words to describe. As the music made it's crescendo, somewhere in the distance, lightning made contact with the earth every few seconds, creating an incredible crackling sound across the song. It was truly magical. I recorded it that night, and still have it to this day :)
Daniela_Ale
Where the streets have no name
I was a teenager when I've listened this track for the first time. It was a Sunday evening and I was in a disco. The sound and rhythm of that song completely wrapped my mind. I felt the world in my hands despite my young age.. Now, in times of difficulty when I need that feeling of strength, I always listen to U2 and especially that song! Thanks Bono to exist and thanks U2 for your music! Daniela (Massa, Tuscany, Italy)
adiberckovich
All I want is You
All I want is You!!! Two years ago my wife and I were married. In our cermony, we wanted to enter infront all the guests with a U2 song. We thought a lot what song to choose, but we knew it's going to be definitely, a U2 song. We thought about a dramatic and powerfull song which will excite our guests. Finally, we made the best choice - All I want is You. Each word in the song expresses the sense of love and devotion in such a significant and touching way. For Sharon my Love.
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