"Novelty Act" (1996)
Demo Song
Background Information
“Novelty Act” was a song developed for 1997’s Pop and later developed further for 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
During the All That You Can’t Leave Behind release period, two song titles were announced as B-sides, but later did not appear on the singles on which they were announced. On December 5, 2000, youtwo.net announced the track listings for “Stuck in A Moment” and the list included “Novelty Act”. On April 6, 2001, u2wanderer.org announced the track listing for “Elevation” and the list included a song called “The Sun, The Moon and the Stars”. In both cases, the track listings proved to be correct with the exception of these two songs. And the song names were provided by insiders at the record label. Listings on online sales sites including CD Universe and Buy.Com would also list these alternate tracks. Both songs were leftovers from the Pop sessions.
“Novelty Act” was eventually replaced with “Big Girls Are Best”. In the case of “The Sun, The Moon and the Stars” the track was replaced with “Elevation (The Biffco Mix)”.
Both tracks however did crop up again. In the Four5One book “Stealing Hearts from a Traveling Show” a series of photos of alternate covers for the Pop album show both of these songs existed as possible titles for the album at one point. “The Sun, The Moon and the Stars” can also be heard as a lyric in one of the remixes of “Discotheque”, perhaps sampled from this song they were working on.