Shapeshifter said:

By "briefly", you must mean "for ten years".

Joshua Tree, for me, but Achtung Baby is close

They're not my favorites by any means, but they are as consistently good as anyone. Even Atomic Bomb has great songs on it, as do their earliest stuff.

They've stuck with what made them great, with a few side excursions along the way.

NWF said:

For the 80s, this one is my favorite.

I've said it once and I'll say it again:



As far as I'm concerned, they're a singles band. I haven't heard one U2 CD that I've loved completely. This CD gets rid of all the filler -- nothing but cream!

Achtung Baby

POP I liked the songs but it sounded as if the ran out of DAT tape and decided to master it on sandpaper

Achtung Baby is my favorite. Followed by The Joshua Tree. Then, the last 2 albums, although the order always switches... I *think* Atomic Bomb will end up 3rd, and All You Can't Leave Behind 4th.

But I don't think they've done a bad album. Even though I agree with Pandurito, "Pop" has some great songs but they dropped the ball on the production.

One interesting thing to note. On Last.FM (a website which actually tracks what its users are listening to on their computers and/or ipods) lists the Top 50 U2 songs - songs actually played by its listeners. Not a single track from Pop or Zooropa makes the Top 50, and I find that somewhat shocking.

http://www.last.fm/music/U2?q=U2

AlexdeParis said:

for me Achtung is perfect.

"Achtung Baby" sucks, I'm sorry.


"War" however, is the truth!

NWF said:

You on drugs? Achtung is a class act start to finish. Simple as.

The Joshua Tree

My favorites, from start to finish, in order:

1. All That You Can't Leave Behind
2. Achtung Baby
3. Boy
4. Pop
5. The Joshua Tree (this would or could be number 1, but I've heard it too many times to fully appreciate it. It's like when listing my favorite Prince albums, I always forget about Purple Rain.)
6. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - HTDAAB has some great, great songs, but they don't really 'fit' together as an album. Still, I can't leave it off the list because, as I said, it truly does contain some really good stuff.

i'd say Achtung Baby and Joshua Tree are their best.


my favorites are Achtung and Atom Bomb

NorthernLad said:

really? not even Stay?

Tessa said:

They must all be listening to U2 18 SINGLES, that god awful revisionist retrospective.

CinisterCee said:

yeah, it's not ideal, but it's better than 1990-2000 was

Tessa said:

it goes from like 1991 then jumps to 2000 so I could see why you would say that if you don't enjoy that era

Tessa said:

"Stay" probably is in the top 50, but a lot of people don't have it tagged correctly as "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)."

Tessa said:

one of my favorites, and I adore the video also

AlexdeParis said:

Yeah, I'm sure you're probably right. Half have it "Stay" and half probably have it "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)", which skews the stats.

It's really a shame that Bono and Co seem ashamed of their output from 1993-2000. I think it was probably their most creative time as a band. Even though I really loved their last album, and played the absolute shit out of it, I can see that it was a very safe release. Something like "Zooropa" or "Passengers" really showed a band that was at the very pinnacle of fame, yet was willing to try something completely different than what fans expected out of them.

The jump from Rattle and Hum to Achtung/Zooropa was just massive. It's like they became a completely different band. In 1988, U2 could've never released "The Fly", "Dirty Day", "Lemon" or "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car". Who would've guessed that they would have a glam tribute as wonderful as "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" in them?

I'm really hoping that the next CD has them pushing their artistic boundaries again.

Axchi696 said:

I agree w/ you on the jump from Rattle and Hum to Achtung Baby, but to me Zooropa sounded like a collection of afterthoughts and leftovers. It was like Achtung Baby-lite. I mean, it's U2, and there is some great material on it, but to me it felt like they were trying a little too hard to push the envelope.

"Pop" was an ambitious album - to me it was an attempt to reconcile the early 90's material with their larger-scale stadium rock sound of the 80's, but it didn't quite gel. The material overall wasn't nearly as strong as Achtung Baby, and the production just seemed to slip away from them. It was just tooo much. I don't think they had a good grip on what they wanted from that album, and it came out just muddled.

I thought All that you Can't Leave Behind and Atomic Bomb were much more assured and focused. The material was great, and they knew what to do with it. To me, those albums represent U2 saying "OK, we've done the experimental thing, we know who and what we are, we're going to gather together some strong songs and just rock it."
[Edited 3/1/07 9:55am]

NorthernLad said:

See, I think Achtung and Zooropa are two different animals. I think the fact that they were released in such close proximity and the fact that they were promoted by the same tour leads people to tie them together more than they should be.

To me, a lot of Achtung is classic U2 dressed up in alternative clothing. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it, and I think it's arguably their best work, but I think with different production, quite a few of the songs on there could've fit comfortably on Joshua Tree.

Zooropa is a totally different beast, though. "Numb" is proto-rap, "Lemon" is a cross between Talking Heads and disco, "Dirty Day" is darker and harder than anything they'd done before. A non-remixed U2 song could've never worked in the clubs the way "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" did.

I think that only "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" and maybe "Zooropa" could've fit on Achtung.

I'd agree that with Pop, they might have bitten off more than they could chew, but I think it's unfair to compare it to AB. With Achtung, they absolutely needed a reinvention to stay fresh. The '80s were over, the times were changing, and many of their counterparts were hitting the skids. I think by the time of Pop, they had transcended their era, and were finally being looked at as one of the great bands of the rock and roll era. They just wanted to experiment with the underground sounds of the time, and at the time, techno was fresh. To me, Pop is more like a Madonna CD, in that they were "genre-hopping". But, I love Madonna, and I also love Pop. So go figure.

PANDURITO said:

Pop is my favourite U2 album and I just love the sound of it.

Axchi696 said:

The First Time would have been perfect, too.

Nice analysis, by the way. You're right that the albums are two different animals that often get combined (like a liger).

CinisterCee said:

well, 18 singles is a career greatest hits, so yeah, most of that stuff from Zooropa and Pop isn't going to be on there because it was relatively less popular at the time, and now than the rest of the stuff that made it on there.

1990-2000, on the other hand, WAS an attempt at revisionist history, by remixing several of the 90's tracks, including album tracks vs. actual singles, etc. (and on a side note, if they were revising history to come more into line with the 2000+ U2, why didn't they add the single version of Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? it's a fan favorite and would have tipped the balance away from the Zoo/Pop stuff.)

booyah said:

Six, actually. Achtung Baby came out in 1991 and Pop in 1997. A brief peaceful respite in twenty seven years of otherwise either outright loathing U2 (1980 - the day before I heard the Fly in 1991; and 1998* - present).

*Ok, I didn't start thinking they were shite again until I bought Everything I Thought You'd Left Behind When You Cut Off Your Mullet And Stopped Being A Hectoring Tosser - But Obviously Didn't.
[Edited 3/1/07 13:09pm]

Shapeshifter said:

If you heard any of the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack in early 2000, as I did, you probably would have thought the Passengers/Pop era was continuing, until ATYCLB was released in late-2000. For me, the "Nu2" era lasted 10 years (from Night And Day on Red Hot + Blue in 1990, to the day before I heard Beautiful Day in 2000), with The Best Of 1980-1990 as a brief retrospective rather than the return to the past that many considered it to be.
[Edited 3/1/07 13:35pm]