A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “Stand Up Comedy”, a song that contains some lyrics that I referred to as “sloganeering”. Well, another song that fits the same mold, and also happens to be from the same album, is this week’s topic. Despite its similarities to “Stand Up Comedy”, “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” (hereafter shortened to simply “Crazy Tonight”) turned out quite a bit better than the former song, and is possibly the best song on No Line on the Horizon.

Over the past few albums, U2 has written and recorded some of the best pure pop-rock songs of their entire career. Songs like “California” (There Is No End to Love”), “Every Breaking Wave”, and “Magnificent” are accessible in a way that no other U2 song has been since 1998’s re-recording of “The Sweetest Thing”, and demonstrate that the band’s song-writing is still evolving. Another one of these perfect pop masterpieces is “Crazy Tonight”, a song that’s built around a guitar riff that’s among the most sublimely pleasant offerings of Edge’s entire career. This golden kernel of craftsmanship sounds classic enough that you might be fooled into thinking that Edge copped it from some other popular song, (and to be sure, as Bono once said, “every artist is a cannibal”) but this sweet piece of work is an original Edge creation through and through. Not only does this song contain a great guitar riff, but the rest of the band is in top form on this track as well. Adam delivers some danceable, poppy bass action but Larry follows suit with some lively drumming that ties it all together.

Despite falling into “sloganeering” mode, the lyrics to “Crazy Tonight” come off as much wiser than those to “Stand Up Comedy”. I particularly like Bono’s admission that “every sweet tooth needs just a little hit”, which ties into the song’s theme that we can’t (and shouldn’t) be serious all the time. In many ways, I feel that this album was meant as a reaction against the serious subject matters of the previous two U2 albums. While All That You Can’t Leave Behind was all about aging and relationships, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was enformed by the death of Bono’s father, many of the songs on No Line on the Horizon were meant to convey a good time vibe, and “Crazy Tonight” was the centerpiece of that mood. “If I don’t get to unwind and let my hair down soon” the song seems to be saying “I’m going to lose it entirely”.

Depending on your thoughts about remixes, “Crazy Tonight”‘s live history may or may not be a sore subject with you. The song made its live debut, in the same arrangement as the album version, on an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman in March of 2009, but it was only played in that style three more times. All subsequent performances (and there were over a hundred of them) were in a style that was based on Redanka’s “Kick the Darkness” remix. As much as I love the original version of “Crazy Tonight”, I have to admit that these live performances with the remixed format were an exciting, tribal event. It was definitely a highlight of the shows I saw and attended. Still, I wonder whether the original arrangement will ever be played again. To be honest, I kind of doubt it. It falls into that mid-tempo zone that U2 eschew in concert. Even so, one of the promotional videos for the song (with footage taken from the one and only 360 show where the song was performed in its original arrangement) shows what might have been, and It’s one that I like to revisit periodically.