#340 (out of 365) "A Sort of Homecoming" U2

Back in 1987, I was a sophomore in high school, and my favorite music was basically whatever "pop" music was at the time. I remember I loved Bryan Adams and Heart and The Hooters but also--I don't know, whatever was on the radio at the time. And on the radio in 1987, was a band called U2 with an album called The Joshua Tree. I didn't have much of any history with the band, but I really liked the music on the album and that summer, on our annual family vacation to Wildwood, I won a game at the Boardwalk that allowed me to choose a cassette from their collection (much cooler than a stupid stuffed animal I was too old for). I remember debating for a solid ten or fifteen minutes while my cousin impatiently waited, between U2's "The Unforgettable Fire"-- they didn't have The Joshua Tree, but thanks to MTV that summer, I knew "Pride (in the Name of Love)" or the more pop-based Europe's "The Final Countdown," which had spawned four hit songs by that time for the Swedish hair band.

Like I said, or what I think might have been obvious at the start, I had zero musical taste at the time. But I chose U2. And when I got back to my aunt's house that night, I put The Unforgettable Fire into my Walkman (or, almost definitely, a knockoff version) and "A Sort of Homecoming" came on. It probably changed my life, or at least my life with music. I played that album over and over that trip and when I went to school that fall, I remember trading it with a friend for their copy of The Joshua Tree, and my love for U2 blossomed. The Joshua Tree yielded my top 3 favorite songs of 1987, and they became my favorite band of all time. Of course, in the 90s, their bloated albums lost my interest, and eventually my fandom died to the point that this song, at #340, is the only U2 track to make this list. But within 2 years of winning The Unforgettable Fire, I would buy my first Cure album, then my first Replacements album right before my last family vacation to Wildwood and then I was in college listening exclusively to "college radio" which begat "alternative" or "post-modern" which eventually turned into the "indie rock" that has dominated my life since 1995. Whether any of that would have happened if I had selected "The Final Countdown" in Wildwood, I don't know. But I needed to find a space on this chart for this one song, at least. 

And you know it's time to go, through the sleet and driving snow...

"A Sort of Homecoming" - U2 // The Unforgettable Fire (1984)