Top 20 U2 Songs Ever

What kind of U2 fan would I be if I did not have a list of my favorite U2 songs?  As U2 comes out with new albums and I over-listen to songs this list will change, but it's pretty solid otherwise.

20. Running to Stand Still
Overall: Dark, quiet, somewhat disturbing, but beautiful song that makes me think of a poor girl addicted to drugs. 
Best line: "Sweet the sin, but bitter the taste in my mouth" which I find true because sin is a something that is good but that is being used for a purpose that God did not intend for it, like eating food (a good thing) excessively (bad). 

19. Mothers of the Disappeared
Overall: Poignant, powerful lyrics and hypnotic music that I apply to the horror of abortion even though it was written targetting Argentinean military kidnappings and murders in the 1970s and 80s.
Best Line: "Through the walls, our daughters cry; See their tears, in the rainfall" which brings to my mind the times I have prayed outside abortion clinics while little baby girls are behind the walls of the mills being killed.  A close second to this line is the beginning of the song "Midnight, our sons and daughters--cut down and taken from us."  Nowhere is this more true than in abortion.

18. The Unforgettable Fire
Overall: Dark and brooding, hard to understand; I modify the lyrics to this one when I sing it.
Best Line: (Modified by me) "Stay tonight, in the light" from "in a lie" which sounds twisted to me.  In the light makes it good to sing.

17. Yahweh
Overall: Really hopeful song that can be sung as a prayer to God, recognizing our human weakness and yet the beauty God has created in us by shaping us in his image.
Best Line:  "Take this soul, and make it sing." Amen to that!  God created our souls so amazingly, and yet few of us give thought to the state of our souls.  When we welcome God into our lives, he comes to dwell within our souls, the ultimate gift of his grace.  The ordinary way he does this is through the sacrament of Baptism and then Confirmation, and if God forbid we should ever expel him from our souls through mortal sin, in Confession he returns to us in love and forgiveness.

16. Mysterious Ways
Overall:  Romantic depiction of the wonder of love (the eros kind) and the beauty of women, God's daughters.
Best Line:  "If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel." Formula for Heaven: Prayer opens up your heart and mind to God.

15. Beautiful Day
Overall:  Upbeat and hopeful song celebrating the joy of life and creation with vivid imagery.
Best Line:  "Reach me: I know I'm not a hopeless case!" which I sing to God and laugh because he doesn't create any hopeless cases, and it is good to realize that, because sometimes it feels like things are hopeless when trying to grow in virtue.  I keep falling to selfish and prideful sins due to these faults being strong within me, and yet I know God can reach me and can change me.

14. City of Blinding Light
Overall:  Interesting tone that sometimes feels bright and other times tired but ultimately is uplifting.
Best Line: "And you, see the beauty, inside of me."  To see the beauty inside of other people, made in God's image, is a powerful way to overcome tendencies to judge them harshly or look down upon them.

13. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Overall:  Torn, pleading, remembering a person and a relationship with them that had problems but was a powerful influence nonetheless.
Best Line:  "Then you leave me, just out of reach."  The theme of the song condensed.  The subject of the song let him into her life to some degree, but not completely, and their relationship was not always based on truth ("you lied to me, because I asked you to") leading to the relationship ending.  The lamentation is who will be the next person who gets to experience the bittersweetness of this girl.

12. Walk On
Overall:  Encouraging and hopeful while truthful about the pain of the past, especially in the family.
Best Line:  "Home: I can't say where it is but I know I'm going."  Many people who did not have a good family or who come from homes broken by sin can identify with this verse.  He looks forward to the future with hope (Jeremiah 29:11-13) while at the same time realizing that due to the fact that he grew up in a family with such problems, he does not know what a true home or family is.  Even so, there is a family waiting for him, on this earth if God so wills him to lead it, and certainly in Heaven as part of God's family forever.

11. One Tree Hill
Overall:  Incredibly moving song depicting struggles to fight for goodness and justice in a world that has much evil in it.
Best Line:  "I'll see you again, when the stars fall from the sky, and the moon has turned red, over one tree hill." Evokes imagery from the book of Revelation in the Bible and the end of times.  Both a cataclysmic time and a joyful one as the last of the earth as we know it falls into the sea, so to speak, and the new Heaven and Earth come bringing God's Kingdom forever.

10. Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World
Overall:  Bizarre and intriguing lyrics and dirgelike vocals and music make for a unique song.
Best Line:  "How far you gonna go, before you lose your way back home?" The woman is confused and is going further away from truth and who she was created to be by God, and so she might lose her way back home if she continues down this path.  It makes me think of poor women who are taken in by modern feminism and the false understanding it has of "equality" for women at the expense of their true feminine beauty and uniqueness.  For more on understanding who women truly are, read about the Virgin Mary.

9. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Overall:  Romantic song by a man calling out for his wife to lead him to God and Heaven.
Best Line:  "Feel like trash, you make me feel clean."  A virtuous woman (Proverbs 31, hint hint) is so uplifting in her good ways that the man blessed with her love feels clean again. 

8. Red Hill Mining Town
Overall:  Nostalgic, English (as in England) feel, describing the difficulty of laboring and toiling in this harsh world.
Best Line:  "We wait all day, for night to come." The work day finishes finally and men go home to their families, happy to be done with the drudgery that all work has to one degree or another.

7. Out of Control
Overall:  Rockin' awesome song from U2's early days--full of energy and enthusiasm for life.
Best Line:  "It was one dull morning, I woke the world, with bawling." Describing his birth into the world and how startling it is and then growing up and getting lots of "big ideas" to go out and change the world with.

6. Miracle Drug
Overall:  Blending natural with the supernatural seamlessly in lyrical meaning, passionate and devoted love song (agape love).
Best Line:  "I've had enough of romantic love, I give it up." Sacrificing romantic love for love that lasts forever, something romantic love can become through commitment and grace.  The story behind Miracle Drug is so powerful that it makes the song what it is.

5. Where the Streets Have No Name
Overall:  Arguably their greatest song, especially live, anthemic, powerful, pointing toward Heaven and rejoicing on the earth until the day Jesus returns in glory.  Perhaps the greatest song of all time (I daresay even better than the Beatles!).
Best Line:  "I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside."  Walls of pride and selfishness, of doubt and unbelief.  With God's help, the walls can be torn down and the person you were created to be shines through and God works wonders through you (like Mother Theresa and John Paul II).

4. Zooropa
Overall:  Fascinating and brooding, cut into two distinct parts, commenting on our consumerist culture and the desire to break free from it by renouncing all of it, perhaps too much ultimately, throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Nonetheless, describing who you are by the negative (what you are not) rather than the positive (what you are).
Best Line:  "And I have no map; and I have no reasons, no reasons to go back."  Reminiscent in my modified form of John 6 when Jesus tells his followers he is the Bread of Life and that you must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have life (describing the Catholic Eucharist, Holy Communion).  Most of his followers deserted him when they heard this, and so he turned to the Twelve and asked if they wanted to leave, too, for he would let them go if they could not accept it.  And St. Peter replies, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life".   There is no reason to go back to the empty way of life lived without God.

3. Zoo Station
Overall:  Energetic, exciting ride through life and the pursuit of the girl of your dreams.
Best Line:  "I'm ready, to take it to the streets."  Throw down the gloves, rubber meets the road, go out onto the streets and take the fight corner to corner until evil is vanquished by God's power.

2. The Fly
Overall:  Love song spiraling upward to Heaven in joy and bliss.
Best Line:  "Love, we shine like a burning star, falling from the sky."  The power and beauty of love ignited burns like a star and in the one flesh union of sacramental marriage in God's heart, it achieves its intended purpose:  a vector of aspiration to Heaven.

1. Bad
Overall:  Haunting, moving, soul-wrenching odyssey into questions of life and death and the emotions they evoke.
Best Line:  "If I, could through myself, set your spirit free; I'd lead your heart away, just to see you break, break away."  How often I wish I could lead people to the Truth of God, the truth of themselves, and see their spirits set free from the bondage of sin and evil.  I long to see people turn to Jesus and accept the forgiveness he has already won for them in taking their sins upon himself.