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The 11 best U2 songs
Ranking the best U2 tracks before The Greatest Show On Earth World Tour rolls into UK stadiums next summer
If you’re going to call your world tour The Greatest Show On Earth, you’d better live up to the billing. Not a problem for U2. Formed in 1976 – when 14-year-old drummer Larry Mullen Jr recruited Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitar) and Adam Clayton (bass) through an ad pinned to the noticeboard of Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive School – the 170-million-selling Irishmen have elevated stadium rock to an artform.
From Zoo TV’s satirical channel-surfing and prank calls, through PopMart’s golden arches and lemon mirrorballs – and don’t forget the wraparound 16K screen of their recent Sphere residency in Las Vegas – U2 trade in rock ‘n’ roll at its most jaw-clanking. But all that production wouldn’t be worth a damn if it weren’t for the band’s half-century catalogue of anthems, all unapologetically epic and sailing to the heavens.
U2 haven’t burnt serious tarmac since 2019 – but with 16th album Carnaval de Luz sparking a whole new setlist, these are the 11 songs you’ll shout back in summer 2027.
11. ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’
(The Joshua Tree, 1987)
Has an album ever opened with such full-body shivers as 1987’s The Joshua Tree? After almost a full minute of bitter-sweet church organ swirling like morning mist, The Edge’s skittering delay-soaked riff turns the key in the ignition and arguably the greatest rock album of the decade is up and running. When U2 pull this out live next summer, the law of gravity will temporarily be suspended.
10 ‘Beautiful Day’
(All That You Can’t Leave Behind, 2000)
Edge remembered a lumpen early take as “ho-hum straight rock”, but by switching up the beat and devising a guitar tone described by producer Daniel Lanois as “splintered metal coming at you like a meteor storm”, U2 birthed the juddering anthem heard on a billion TV sports montages. If this tingling call-to-arms was your morning alarm, you’d probably be king of the world by now.
9. ‘Silencio’
(Carnaval De Luz, 2027)
U2 cut their teeth on Dublin’s post-punk scene of the late-’70s and the Celtic Tiger still roars on this Carnaval De Luz highlight. Definitely not aptly named, this quiet/loud, nasty/nice thrasher sounds like it was cranked out by spotty teens in a sticky-floored garage (not well-heeled rock giants in a presumably-pretty-expensive boutique studio).
8. ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’
(Rattle And Hum, 1988)
The studio original from 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire is no slouch – but it’s eclipsed by the faster, looser, rabble-rousing live take on 1988’s Rattle And Hum. With Edge’s echo riff rattling the rafters and Bono directing the crowd with force-ten messianic charisma, ‘Pride’ is a masterclass in stadium dynamics that all ambitious young bands should be forced to study – and a taste of what awaits you at The Greatest Show On Earth.
7. ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’
(War, 1983)
“This song is not a rebel song,” Bono told the crowd on 1983’s live album Under A Blood Red Sky. And while the jackboot drums and strident fiddle evoke a marching army, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ is a pacifist’s cry of frustration that takes no side, simply calling for an end to the horrors of The Troubles (including the tragic 1972 shooting of civil rights protesters in Derry that gives the track its name).
6. ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’
(Achtung Baby, 1991)
Not for the first time, a U2 song coalesced around Edge’s sonic vandalism, as the guitarist stomped a pitch shifter pedal at the Achtung Baby album sessions and created the car-alarm intro. With Bono’s lyric skewering the early-’90s culture of “instant gratification”, this eastern-tinged electro-gospel banger will still sound prescient at The Greatest Show On Earth.
5. ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’
(The Joshua Tree, 1987)
You can read this Joshua Tree standout as a route-one love song (‘I have climbed the highest mountains/I have run through the fields/Only to be with you’). But there’s a sharp wrench to Bono’s lyric, as the narrator yearns for deeper purpose. “It’s a gospel song with a restless spirit,” the singer explained – and maybe he’ll bring back the New Voices Of Freedom choir who took the Rattle And Hum performance to a higher plain?
4. ‘New Year’s Day’
(War, 1983)
Typical Bono: this wintry War single was born when the singer tried to pen a love song to his wife, but got sidetracked by the socio-political context of the early-’80s and ended up exploring the Polish Solidarity movement instead (“I must have been thinking of Lech Wałęsa being interned”). The rumbling bassline is Adam Clayton’s finest hour, but it was surely the bruised piano melody that carried U2 into the UK Top 10 for the first time.
3. ‘Bad’
(The Unforgettable Fire, 1984)
With Dublin ravaged by poverty and heroin in the early-’80s, Bono wrote what he saw on this haunting slow-burn from The Unforgettable Fire. Penned for an old friend fallen into addiction (whom the singer described as “a ghost looking for his body back”), ‘Bad’ was handed over to the fans with U2’s 12-minute performance at Live Aid – and we’ve never given it back. As the singer reflected: “I see how it transports people.”
2. ‘With Or Without You’
(The Joshua Tree, 1987)
In a parallel universe, this Joshua Tree stunner might still be on the cutting room floor. Aiming for a vibe between Roy Orbison and Scott Walker (“but we overshot the runway and landed in a place called saccharine”), ‘With Or Without You’ was only rescued when songwriter and U2 associate Gavin Friday suggested reworking the arrangement. “The song that became one of our most well-known opens with a whisper,” explains Bono, “slowly building to the opera of a big chorus, which only happens once at the end.”
1. ‘One’
(Achtung Baby, 1991)
Holed up in Berlin’s Hansa Studios at the dawn of the ’90s, the lineup was as fractured as the German capital was newly reunited, clashing so hard over musical direction that Larry Mullen Jr truly believed “this must be the end”. The song that saved U2 began inauspiciously, with a pair of offcut chord sequences rejected from the middle-eight of ‘Mysterious Ways’. But suddenly, remembered Bono, the ‘One’ lyric “fell out of the sky”, alongside a melody so heart-rending it holds entire stadiums in the palm of their hand. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
U2 have announced 2027 UK dates for The Greatest Show On Earth tour. Visit the U2 Artist Presale page here before 22.59 GMT on Sunday, 1 November, to sign up for presale access.
