Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark - Recordings

Recordings

A Broadway concept album, produced by Steve Lillywhite, was released on June 14, 2011. On May 25, 2011, a single version of "Rise Above", titled Rise Above 1: Reeve Carney Featuring Bono and The Edge, was released digitally. The music video was released on July 28, 2011 and for the Billboard chart week of August 13, 2011 the single debuted on the Adult Top 40 chart at position 40, and peaked at position 34.

Jon Dolan for Rolling Stone gave the album a three stars rating out of five commenting: "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." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave the album one star, stating that all the problems that plagued the production "obscured one key problem with the musical: the songs written by Bono and The Edge are dreadful." Erlewine summed up his review calling the songs a "murky, turgid mess, too concerned with atmosphere and narrative to reel in a listener and ironically not offering ambience or story enough to suggest that the musical would entertain."