Amid the all many disasters that beset the Broadway version of Spider-Man, Bono and the Edge's songs emerge pretty much unscathed by critics. Now that the show has been revised and restaged, this centerpiece anthem of struggle over adversity may become a metaphor for its slog towards redemption. "Rise Above" is a trademark soaring U2 ballad, with  the elegant grandeur cranked up to Andrew Lloyd Weber levels. But show tunes need big voices too, and, singing next to Bono on this version from the forthcoming cast recording album, leading man Reeve Carney sounds like a nervous understudy.

Listen to "Rise Above 1":

U2: Three Decades of the World's Biggest Band, Onstage and Backstage

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”