Don’t Hope For Too Much

If you have an interest in hearing U2 completely butcher one of the finest songs of their career, you may want to download the new Mike Hedges remix of “Numb” that was recorded to inexplicably replace the original on the upcoming Best of 1990-2000 record. I’m listening to it right now for the fourth time in a row, and I’m just stunned by how much they’ve botched the job, and I’m trying to work it out in my mind why on earth any sane person would think that this is an improvement over the album version of the song. This recording is entirely lacking in grace, it’s just stumbling around, it’s a fucking mess. The pacing of the song has been made extremely awkward, all of the lush harmonies and sounds of the original either excised from the mix or awkardly jumbled together all at once. Bono recorded a new vocal for the middle of the track, and it sounds okay, and would be a perfectly acceptable adlib during a live performance, but his new vocal pales in comparison to the rather inspired original vocal take. The absolute worst thing about this version is that Hedges has decided to re-record Larry Mullen Jr.’s “I feel numb” refrain so that he’s speaking it in a monotone rather than singing it in falsetto, and to make matters worse, it’s placed so high in the mix that it nearly drowns out the Edge and Bono. There’s no subtlety to this whatsoever, and it makes little to no musical sense – the original sounded smooth, natural, and clever. The original “Numb” is one of U2’s best songs precisely because it’s so well arranged – why replace it with a cluttered wreck like this? This is depressing to me, because it just confirms my suspicions that U2 really have no concept of how great the Zooropa album is. After all, these are people from Europe who feel the need to apologize for how “European” the album sounds, in spite of the record getting some of the best reviews of their career and selling a very healthy number of copies worldwide. I wish they’d wake up and realize that they are at their best when they are “arty” (as Bono would put it), and that it would be in their best interests to age gracefully making records more along the lines of Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Passengers than by shamelessly tossing off tired power ballads like “Walk On”.