U2 - Levitate - Non-Album Tracks (1998-2000)

In my opinion, U2 was an excellent band for all of the 1980s and 1990s, but they've been on a slow decline ever since. That is the common trend for musical acts. For instance, I saw a chart once that showed the average time between album releases. Artists tend to release an album a year at first, then an album once every two years, then once every three years, and so on. Often it gets to a point like the Rolling Stones these days (as I write this in 2023) where a new album comes once every five to ten years. So the creative fires don't burn as brightly as they used to.

Due to all that, it's difficult for me to keep going with stray tracks albums for U2, since more of those extra songs aren't that good. However, U2 was still playing at a high level at the time of this album. Their 2000 album "All That You Can't Leave Behind" was seen as a return to form.

All but two of the songs here were officially released. Of those two, there is an officially released version of "North and South of the River," which first came out as a B-side in 1997. However, I prefer the live version from the one time it was played in concert, so I used that. 

"Jump Start My Heart" is a studio outtake. It's a nice song, so I don't know why it hasn't been released in any form. However, it is rather short, at just under two minutes long. So I edited it to repeat some bits, making it nearly three minutes long. That's why I have "[Edit]" in the title.

Many of the songs here are related to the soundtrack to the 2000 movie called "The Million Dollar Hotel." U2 singer Bono was the executive producer for that soundtrack. It included some U2 songs, as well as some songs "Bone and the Million Dollar Hotel Band," which was U2 plus a bunch of other musicians, including Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. I didn't include everything by this group, because there were some unremarkable instrumentals typical of movie soundtracks.

"Sweetest Thing" is a remake of a U2 song from the 1980s. The remake isn't that different, but I included it for completeness's sake, especially since the remake was a hit. "Slide Away" is from the only solo album by Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of the band INXS. Three more songs are from B-sides, and one is from the collection "Unreleased and Rare."

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Sweetest Thing [1998 Version] (U2)
02 North and South of the River (U2)
03 Slide Away (Michael Hutchence & Bono)
04 Always (U2)
05 Summer Rain (U2)
06 Big Girls Are Best (U2)
07 Levitate (U2)
08 Falling at Your Feet (Bono & Daniel Lanois)
09 Jump Start My Heart [Edit] (Bono & the Million Dollar Hotel Band)
10 Stateless (U2)
11 Never Let Me Go (Bono & the Million Dollar Hotel Band)
12 The Ground Beneath Her Feet (U2)

https://www.imagenetz.de/hExiJ

The cover photo is from 2000, but I don't know any other details. Bono, at the bottom, was even lower. But I used Photoshop to raise him up relative to the others.