Songoftheday 8/29/18 - You're an accident waiting to happen, you're a piece of glass left in a beach...
from the album Achtung Baby (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from Irish rock legends U2, whose album Achtung Baby had already landed them three big hits in America with "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and two top-ten pop hits in "Mysterious Ways" and "One". The fifth release from the record (lead single "The Fly" stopped at #61) was the epic "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses". With words by lead Bono and music from the band, the track was mixed from the original demo, with a haunting and reverberating sound to the production, singing about an elusive and mysterious girl...
"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" became the fourth and final top-40 pop hit from Achtung Baby in America in December of 1992. The song spent a week at #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, and peaked at #7 on their Modern Rock format list. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in their native Ireland (#4), Canada (#5 for two weeks), Australia (#9), and Norway (#10). It also hit the top-40 in New Zealand (#13), the UK (#14), the Netherlands (#14), Sweden (#19), Austria (#20), Switzerland (#24), and Belgium (#32). Another track from the Achtung Baby album, "Until The End Of The World", wasn't released as a single in America, but nonetheless hit #4 on the Modern Rock chart and #5 on the Mainstream Rock tally, and hit #69 in Canada.
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Here's the band on their Zoo TV tour behind the album in 1993...
They brought the song out again for their Vertigo tour in 2005...
In 2011, alternative rockers Garbage covered the song for a U2 tribute album, and turned it into a much more brooding affair...
And lastly, from June of this year from the Apollo Theater in New York City...
Up tomorrow: Prog-popster lack a moment.
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