I was going to suggest:
Start Me Up —> Hang Fire —> Little T&A

Red Rain —> Sledgehammer —> Don't Give Up?
or
In Your Eyes —> Mercy Street —> Big Time?

Maybe the best 3 songs back to back in the entire 1980's?

A Day Without Me!
An Cat Dubh!

Has there ever been a time when U2 was as big as the Rolling Stones?

That's my era too. I had a real hard time with Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum. I was completely pretentious and snarky about them, in an "I knew them before you did" way.

No, every song by REO Speedwagon is the worst song of all time.

Excellent song, horrendously overplayed.

I also like the title song, although I think it's a distinct step lower than those three you mention.

Total Recall doesn't count? :-)

… and U2 was constantly evolving, innovating, and challenging both itself and its audience up until the mid- to late '90s

as well as the early Boy/October/War stuff

I'm a big fan of the "Lemon"/"With or Without You" one-two punch toward the end of Zoo TV

I tend to think he got the medieval warfare more "right" than anything we've seen. Not that he accurately depicted any one battle – no bridge at Stirling, he may have had the pikes-vs-cavalry thing at the wrong battle etc – but the tactile feel of what medieval battle was "really" like to be in, Mel probably got that…

they never came close to attacking or much less taking York.

Sure, “Under The Milky Way” has a Synclavier in it. But the song from Starfish that I really want to know about is the one before Milky Way. Is that also a Synclavier that we hear in "Antenna"?

Odd that the comment thread about the new superhero movie should have descended into nerd so quickly. This rarely happens in the comments threads on The Economist.

Oops. Yeah, I just repeated what you said.

Does anybody remember, that's how Green Arrow and Atom killed Darkseid in that Grant Morrison story, Rock Of Ages or whatever?

A good read:
On Bended Knee: The Press And The Reagan Presidency
by Mark Hertsgaard, 1988