A ridiculous 446 U2 songs are availabe on iTunes in The Complete U2, which includes every studio album, tons of singles, EPs and b-sides, as well as several concerts and a collection of unreleased and rare tunes.
Surprisingly it’s available a day early (or it’s late enough the night before that we can call it close enough), but happily you can buy most some songs for 99 cents and don’t have to shell out $150 for the set (UPDATE: though most of the rare and live cuts are now available “album only”). But despite the title I can think of a few U2 tracks missing. Not many, but a few, including the covers “Beat on the Brat” (The Ramones) and “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” (Johnny Cash), as well as “Fortunate son “(Creedence Clearwater Revival) and “Paint it Black” (The Rolling Stones), though the latter two are available on the Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses EP. I could probably go on, but it seems like a dorky, fan boy thing to do, and I’d probably get schooled by a real fan.
And if you haven’t heard, U2 stormed the streets of New York today.
The new album comes out tomorrow, so I’ll stop the obsessive U2 posting. I promise.
Did you like their covers of Fortunate Son and Paint it Black? I… didn’t, and most haven’t that I’ve known. The styles of those two songs are just not U2, at least the covers didn’t fit well.
Wow, with Vertigo, I’ll have something like 210 U2 songs, and I have a ton of their stuff… maybe I have some repeats cut out from their best of albums, but I have a few live ones I’ve gotten from various sources, as well as a lot of singles, etc. Must be a lot of weird, rare ones scattered in there.
Paint it Black and Fortunate Son aren’t my favorites, but I do appreciate them. They fit right in with the 1980s b-sides disc–I can play that straight through and love it, even though it’s not the best U2 ever.
And there is a lot of weird stuff in the Complete U2. I counted up songs I’d consider (but am too cheap and poor), and came up with 150+, which was mostly live, rare and early cuts, as well as the two albums I don’t have, Boy and Under a Blood Red Sky. I think those really boost the numbers, as well as the ridiculous number of remixes from the 1990s–I didn’t bother counting those in the songs I wanted.
I just checked my U2 song count, and I’m sitting at 261. ;-)
Hey Kevin,
I too am mostly just interested in B-sides and live stuff. I’m not much for the re-mixes. I did download the Desire Hollywood re-mix for nostalgia reasons, but I don’t think I need 10 versions of Lemon.
So far I’ve also downloaded Room at the Heartbreak Hotel and I’m thinking I’ll grab Are You Gonna Wait Forever. Definite B-side material, but two of the better tunes that I don’t already have.
I dig the live version of Gone from their Boston concert – the guitars at the end are ear-bleeding good, and I’ve always liked Stay(Faraway So Close) played live. That song is pretty much the one bright spot off Zooropa.
So I guess I’m more like in the $30-40 price range for grabbing all the tracks I want that I don’t already have.
Thanks for all the U2 coverage Kevin
Question: if you have a $50 coupon, does that mean you can purchase up to $50 worth of tracks, or only can apply $50 to cost of complete set?
thank you.