Stay (Faraway, So Close!), U2
Unless you don’t own a radio, TV, or computer, or you have been entirely unaware of the music / celebrity philanthropy world for the past three decades, chances are you’ve heard of U2. In honor of their upcoming 20th anniversary rerelease of their 1991 megasmash reinvention Achtung Baby, I’ll be regularly posting songs in the future from U2′s 90′s period, containing some of their most underrated, misunderstood, and obscure work. Sure, Achtung Baby was a revelation, finding an amazing way to mix U2′s trademark anthemic guitar sound with a heavy dose of German Kraftwerk disco. It yielded massive hits like “One” and “Mysterious Ways,” but after that point, the rest of the 90s got a little bit weird for the band, with 1993′s bizarrely psychedelic Zooropa and 1997′s straight up dance record Pop. Although some fans were turned off by this phase of their career, it contains some of the best work, most notably Zooropa‘s slow burning torch ballad, “Stay (Faraway, So Close!),” a Sinatra-channeling track with vague references to domestic abuse and guardian angels. Surrounded by an album of some pretty weird stuff (see: “Babyface,” “Lemon”), it’s understandable why this song might have been lost in the shuffle, but it’s never too late to check it out. It features some of Bono’s best singing, with his vocal delivery alternating between smooth crooning on the verses, hushed whispers on the bridge, and his trademark throat-lacerating belts on the chorus. The Edge ditches the sky-scraping layered guitar technique that made him famous and instead opts for a trippier, distorted sound that ultimately leads to one of the most deeply melodic riffs of his career. “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” may not be as bombastic as some of the band’s most famous material, but it’s one of their finest.
