With or Without You - Legacy

Legacy

"With or Without You" has become one of U2's most well-known songs, and it often appears in music critics' rankings of the best songs of all-time. In 2000, the song appeared at number eight on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Pop Songs", compiled by Rolling Stone and MTV music critics to rank songs released since The Beatles' breakthrough. In 2005, Blender ranked the song at number 268 on its list of the "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born". The following year, readers of Q voted "With or Without You" the 17th-greatest song in history. Music television network VH1 ranked the song number 13 on the "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s" countdown in its series The Greatest. In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number 132 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The song appeared as one of seven U2 songs in Toby Creswell's 2006 music reference book 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories, and Secrets. Creswell said the song struck a perfect balance between the "vigour and spit and attitude" of the group's teenage years and their new-found appreciation for the "power of understatement". U2 have included the song on two of their compilation albums, The Best of 1980–1990 and U218 Singles.