Lo! What is that I hear on the horizon? Rock…? Music…?
Vertigo, by U2 (their 6th of seven #1s)
1 week, from 14th – 21st November 2004
I am a confirmed U2 sceptic. I think they can be too clever for their own good, too preachy, too glossy… But I’ve also enjoyed most of their earlier chart-toppers, from the bluesy ‘Desire’, to the arty ‘The Fly’, to the danceable ‘Discotheque’. I am also ready to forgive U2 anything, now that they’ve restored rock and roll to the top of the charts.
And ‘Vertigo’ does rock. The riff is brutally simple, and the chorus’s hook-line (Hello, Hello, I’m at a place called vertigo…) is brutally catchy. I especially like the verses, where the Edge’s guitar chirps and cheeps like a wildcat ready to pounce, and a filthy bassline is brought to the fore.
I wouldn’t go so far as describing it as ‘punk’, as some outlets did at the time. Yes it’s simple, and blisteringly fast. But it’s U2, in 2004. ‘Vertigo’ lent its name to one of the biggest tours of all time. It was used to advertise the iPod. And it’s still very glossy. The chorus, as effective as it is, is polished to an edge-less (pardon the pun) gleam. While the middle-eight, which is very U2 with Bono intoning All of this can be yours… in a chiming break, breaks any punk-y aspirations once and for all.
I’d also suggest that ‘Vertigo’ is a slight rip off of ‘Elevation’, from their previous album, which had a similarly dumb, sledgehammer riff. 21st Century U2 always had one rocking single per album, and at least one ballad (see their soon to follow final #1). Which could also be seen as a slightly cynical, commercial approach to album-making when compared to their ‘90s concept albums. Then again, like I said, I am a big old U2 sceptic.
But, really. This is a great song. And it ensures that U2 can claim a chart-topping career spanning over sixteen years, an impressive feat for any act. And, alongside their feature on LMC’s ‘Take Me to the Clouds Above’, it means that 2004 was their most successful chart-topping year. The album ‘Vertigo’ came from, ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’, was also one of their most commercially successful. It was also a bit of a swansong, as by the time of their following LP, in 2009, pop music seemed to have finally moved on from them.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
good album good single, and where a lot of acts get terrible singles to represent them topping the charts, I think U2 did OK by and large give or take the odd missing Joshua Tree or Unforgettable Fire classic. Oh, and Even Better Than The Real Thing, both versions, rock and dance.
It all went tits up for them with the itunes freebie album. I was very happy to have it, thanks, but so many people getting angry about something you can instantly delete and didnt have to listen to! Diddums. Those folk must be having ongoing apoplexy about having more music than they could listen to in a lifetime at their fingertips to stream that they never asked for…..
Actually, the reason people got mad was because Apple made it extremely difficult for the album to be fully deleted. The album was automatically injected into every user’s purchase history so it would “live” in their iCloud library for future redownloading. Because it was recognized as a permanent transaction on the backend, users couldn’t permanently trash it from their devices if they wanted. If you could just delete the album once and have it done away with for good, there wouldn’t have been a backlash for it. Apple had to make a specialized one-click removal tool to strip the album from user accounts entirely
Ahh, as I didnt try and remove it it wasnt a problem for me, but you’re right! I get annoyed by the reverse – when Ive paid for a download (and I still have the last ipod Apple released and still not yet full) and it wont upload to the ipod, thats happened a few times now. And I like the back-up cloud feature for when I accidentally delete a track. I’ve downloaded stuff I dont want for other folk (burn a CD for them of tracks that dont have a physical available) and I dont need on my ipod, but happy to have it in the cloud just in case the CD’s fail or whatever. I suspect it’s the principle of having it taunting some people by just existing in their cloud account as opposed to them ever having to listen to it as such, or taking up room on the ipod. That’s really no different from streaming though, these days. You dont pay you get adverts and tracks you havent asked for, you do pay you still may not get stuff you want because not everything is available on streaming, but everything that is available is still in the cloud whether you listen or not. What they dont do to paying customers is annoyingly add something to your own playlist (as far as I know! I don’t stream on principle due to the tiny rewards for most artists) so I guess they have learned from that U2 debacle!
I get both sides of the argument. Yes you could just ignore it, but if I think back to when I had an iPod, my library was me (especially as a pretentious 20 something that I was back then). The idea that U2 could invade that space would have annoyed me. It’s kind of like autoplay on streaming services now. Most of the time they are relevant songs that follow on well from what you’ve been listening to, but sometimes they’re so obviously paid-for plants.
If I had to guess which U2 album spawned to #1 singles, I wouldn’t guess this one. Pretty amazing longevity for a band built around their limitations.
This is a pretty cool song, pretty hard-rocking for U2. It sounds like a mid-2000s US radio rock song, something Foo Fighters would be doing on an album track (it’s not quite good or catchy enough for a Foo Fighters single). I actually do remember hearing it in 2005, though not that much compared to the other big hits of that year. It’s about as radio hard rock sounding as I can imagine a band like U2 being. The riff is pretty awesome, didn’t know The Edge had it in him. It very much sounds inspired by the 2000s indie rock/garage rock revival happening at this time, just beefed up with multi-million-dollar production.
You make a good point – the riff sounds like something the Hives or the Datsuns could have come up with in a garage. Just that its recorded in a multi-million dollar studio, and has Bono singing on it.
Man the first time I heard this song was in an iPod commercial. I guess some things never change.