Thanks to our friends at U2gigs, we know quite a bit about U2 snippets over the years. Let's start this slideshow with explaining what a snippet is: "A snippet is when a reference to a song is included in the performance of another". Snippets are typically lyrical quotes by Bono and can range from just a couple of words to two or more verses. Much less frequently, the other band members will include a musical snippet of another song, such as Larry including distinctive drumming from Sunday Bloody Sunday in some Popmart performances of Please. The very first snippet recorded in the eighties was at a show on 12 September, 1980 in Scarborough, England. Bono sang a bit of "Send In The Clowns" during "The Electric Co.", a golden combination that would continue to be seen in shows over the following decades.
What started with "Send In The Clowns" ended up being part of two thirds of all U2 shows. In total, U2 referenced 605 different songs during live performances. Many of these are other's songs but a portion are also U2's own songs. A good example of an "internal" snippet is when Bono sings a bit of the song "40" during or near the end of "Bad". 453 snippets have been only performed as snippet and were never played in full.
While the first ever recorded snippet ("Send In The Clowns") has proven to be one of the most popular snippets (202 times snippeted) it does not beat "Shine Like Stars", which is to date the most popular snippet in U2 history (210 times snippeted). It has been sung so much as an extra verse to "With Or Without You" that most fans don't consider a live performance of this song to be complete without the "Shine Like Stars" snippet. An interesting remark about this snippet is that it is not even a real song, it is something that Bono came up with during the Joshua Tree tour and ever since it has been part of live performances of "With Or Without You". The most popular "real" snippet would then still be "Send In The Clowns".
One sometimes just needs to glance at a setlist to see whether it was a rainy show or not. The more rain falls on a day, the more rain-themed snippets one can expect. This was especially the case during the recent 360 Tour. The high (or low) of this found place on July 23 in Minnesota, where Bono snippeted a total of 8 Rain-themed snippets: Rain, Can't Stand The Rain, Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head, Purple Rain (two times) and Singin' In The Rain (3 times!). Other remarkable Rain-themed shows: 23 September, 2010 in Brussels (5 snippets) and 12 September, 2010 in Zurich (6 snippets). Over the years, Bono has sang around 10 different Rain-themed snippets at shows.
Not only does Bono snippet songs from artists that are present in the audience, there are also quite a few shows known where a certain theme is present in the snippets during a show. Examples of this are the shows in San Antonio in 1997 a day after Michael Hutchence of INXS died and the show in Vienna in 1997 on the twentieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death.
When you think snippets end with just other songs you are wrong, Bono takes snippets to a whole other level with including psalms an poems. As poems go: excerpts from "On the Road", the novel by Jack Kerouac were snippeted in Streets or All Along The Watchtower in the last Lovetown shows, including the final Lovetown show in Rotterdam. The poem "Resolution and Independence" by Wordsworth was snippeted in Streets at the first Point Depot show in Lovetown. William Blake's Jerusalem was snippeted at the Glastonbury show in 2011 and 5 poems of W.B. Yeats were referenced in various shows: Aedh Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven, September 1913, Mad As The Mist And Snow, Mother Of God and The Lake Isle Of Innisfree. As psalms go: Bono snippeted Psalm 116 more than 80 times over the years, Psalm 23 at 74 shows (all in 2015) and referenced Psalm 51 two times in history.
It is very rare for U2 shows nowadays to be free of snippets. Ever since the Joshua Tree tour all regular U2 shows have featured some snippets. A show in 1987 in Boston is one of these rare shows, it was almost entirely free of snippets where Bono had many opportunities with songs such as Bad or I Still Haven't Found. A brief Satisfaction reference was the only snippet recorded during this show. The show with the least snippets during U2's 360 Tour, was the one in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 2011, which featured "just" 3 snippets. On a more recent note, the second show of U2's most recent tour (Innocence and Experience), recorded the fewest snippets of all 2015 shows with "just" 7 snippets. Still more than twice as many as the fewest on 360.
Before U2's Innocence and Experience tour, the show with the most snippets of all-time took place on 30 March, 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia. This Elevation show featured a total of 17 different snippets in a setlist of just 21 different songs. The Innocence and Experience tour shows smashed this record several times. A total of 9 shows played in 2015 have featured more snippets than the 21 recorded in 2001. U2's final show in Dublin on 28 November currently holds the record with a stunning total of 24 snippets in a setlist with just 26 songs. Performances such as The Electric Co. (4 snippets), Until The End Of The World and Bullet The Blue Sky (3 snippets) contributed heavily to this record. It's the show to listen to if you're a true snippet-fetishist! Honourable mentions to the shows in London on 30 October and Belfast on 19 November with 22 recorded snippets each.
Some U2 songs are perfect for snippets, great examples here are songs like Bad or Discotheque. It may not come as a surprise that these songs are the ones that feature the most snippets snippeted in one song. 5 live performances of songs featured a total of 6 snippets: "Bad" on 13 June, 1986 in Chicago, "Discotheque" on 9 July, 2011 in Montreal, "Bad" on 13 June, 1986 in Chicago, "Discotheque" on 26 August, 1997 in Belfast and "Discotheque" on 2 September, 1997 in Edinburgh.
Snippets can make you laugh, sometimes it's the timing of a snippet that makes you laugh, sometimes it's just the snippet itself that is worth laughing and sometimes it's the combination of song and snippet. A few funny snippets that are worth listing here: "Christmas is Coming" in Dundee and 30 May, 2001 in Michigan. "It's Raining Men" in "Mysterious Ways" on 10 November, 1997 in Florida. "Spinning Around" in "Elevation" on 11 November, 13 November and 19 November in Australia. "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)" in "Sunday Bloody Sunday" on 11 November, 1987 in California. "Wedding March" in "Angel of Harlem" on 9 May, 1993 and 28 August, 1993. "(Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame" in "Angel of Harlem" on 18 October, 2015 and finally "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" in Belgium in 1992.
As said in the introduction: some fans love snippets, others hate them. Some don't have an opinion. We at U2start love snippets. We consider ourselves to be real snippet hunters: we listen to recordings hope to catch snippets of songs that are currently not listed on U2gigs.com. If you hear a snippet that is not listed yet, please do the same, this way we can keep U2gigs' and our listings of snippets as complete as possible. Let's give you a first test: there is a currently unidentified snippet in "Running To Stand Still" from the show in Los Angeles in 1987. Which is your favourite snippet? Or favourite show of snippets? Share it with us in the comments. Happy hunting!