I'm torn between "Love Is Blindness" and "Wake Up Dead Man."

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"The Wanderer" off ZOOROPA.

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Okay, for sentimental reasons, I'm going to say Love is Blindness. It's so haunting and beautiful, and since the ZOO TV tour was the first tour I saw U2 on, I adored it when they closed the shows with it. So that's my answer! :o)

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Ugh, I love closing tracks, it's so hard to choose. But I think I'd have to go with Love is Blindness. If Achtung Baby had ended with Acrobat, the album would end on a sort of bitter, yet positive note. But then Love is Blindness comes in and rips your heart out and makes you weep, in an absolutely stunning way.

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my u2 albums rotate from time to time, i just become enveloped in them for extended periods of time, so that closer song at that time is perfect, often relevant to where i am at the moment. i have HTDAAB in the cd player this week, and YHWH is the closing song, the song i hear when it's not on, the song i'm hearing when i wake up in the silence in the morning. awesome place this is, thanx. stay close, sammi =)

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"Love is Blindness" or "40"

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40, definitely (with a slight preference for the live version that ends Under A Blood Red Sky). Love Is Blindness is a close second, though.

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'Love Is Blindness' grabs me every time. However, I will add that I firmly believe 'Exit' should have closed the JT album. :)

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All I Want Is You or MLK would be my picks.

I have a slight love/hate relationship with Love Is Blindness because it's one of those songs where you absolutely have to stop everything and listen to it for it to reach its potential. It rips my heart out when I listen to it properly.

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Oh I agreee with what you said about Love is Blindness, if you're not paying attention to it it's very easy to miss the great moments of the song. You have to pay attention to it, then it's just freakishly heart-wrenching lol there aren't many songs that are heart-wrenching for me, of the top of my head I only remember LIB and that tango from The Scent of A Woman movie, Por Una Cabeza, that is one heck of a heart-wrenching song lol

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I truly, honestly can't pick one. They all fit their respective albums so well. Yahweh is a very powerful song for me, personally. "40" is perhaps a defining song of U2's canon. I think the highest quality songs are The Wanderer and Wake Up Dead Man. WUDM easily has the best lyrics of the lot.

How's that for non-committal!

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My favourite closing tracks are The Wanderer, 40 on Under a Blood Red Sky and Wake Up Dead Man.

The Wanderer because the whole of Zooropa has got a "life is all good" feel to it, even on the sadder songs like The First Time. The Wanderer comes along and punches that idea up a bit, cause in the end the song is sort of about searching for happiness... It's also cool because it brings God to the album, since Zooropa is mostly God-less, at çeast in comparison with other albums

40 doesn't need much explanation. On War it is already a great album ender, because of the subject and it being much slower than the other songs. It's like you complained, you celebrated, you lived your life and now you're there just waiting for God and remembering all that he did for you, or something like that... lol And on Under a Blood Red Sky you have all of that plus that amazing moment of all the crowd singing "how long to sing this song" after the song is over (and I suppose the band left the stage, like it happens on the Chicago DVD). It's just awesome, great way to finish a concert, great way to finish an album.

And Wake Up Dead Man, I think it's the same thing as The Wanderer, just creepier, because it's a creepy song and also POP is a creep-free album up until that song, and that just heightens the creepy-ness. It's all just very creepy lol And the song also has that "the end of the world" thing to its lyrics, so "the end of the world" "the end of the album"

And about the different songs at the end of different versions of the same album, I think that it usually the extra song some editions have sounds like an extra song, at least on HTDAAB that's the case IMO. Yahweh matches the whole album completely and still has that final song thing to it, while Fast Cars sounds more like something that should be in the middle of the record, maybe near Love and Peace or Else, or A Man and A Woman. But in the end I don't think it actually fits properly inside that record... it just sounds too different. I dunno about other cases of this.

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I have a feeling a lot of the comments will be about Love Is Blindness, so I'll go with my second favorite closing track - Shadows and Tall Trees off Boy. Listening through the whole album and trying to forget all the others following it as if U2 were young and starting again, I'm amazed at its ambition and - you know - combination of balls and doubt on it: Do you feel in me/Anything redeeming/Any worthwhile feeling to Follow me and my shadow, shadow, shadow/Salute my shadow, shadow, shadow. The whole album is a question, and this song's the perfect ending.

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*points to you*

Yeah, what she said!

;-)

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favorite closing tracks: all i want is you. mothers of the disappeared. love is blindness. yahweh. they all seem significantly like a closing prayer, blessing, benediction etc... (pick one description for each song as required). i personally dont like fast cars as a closer on the UK version... and i like what you said about love is blindness. spot on.

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"All I Want Is You" might be the most perfect song U2 ever recorded.

Although I must admit, I love "The Wanderer" a little too much.

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For what it's worth, my quick opinion on the topic is that I think 'All I Want Is You' (R&H), 'Love Is Blindness' (AB) and 'Wake Up Dead Man' (Pop) are amazing closing tracks that do more than merely close the album. They sum up its meanings and intentions and, I think, leave the listener a little unsettled. They close, but they don't finalise.

ditto, ditto, ditto! nothing more to say really...

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1. "40"
2. Mothers of the Disappeared
3. All I Want is You

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All-time favourite? Love is Blindness. It's the perfect ending to one of the best albums ever made.

But All I Want is You is a close second.

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MLK

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I think Love Is Blindness is the best closer by quite a distance.

But I'm really glad they put Fast Cars on the end of HTDAAB. I don't like the thought of that album ending with Yahweh, I think it's much nicer to finish with something fluffy that gets you dancing around and laughing. :)  I quite like having The Ground Beneath Her Feet on ATYCLB as well, although that one feels more like a tacked-on bonus track.

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