André Hansson’s Guide to U2 Albums
U2 is back
with Songs of Innocence . This is a
big thing for me, even though these days U2 are not really that often in my
headphones anymore. But my life history is inseparable from these four
Irish lads. Between the ages 13 and 22 I more or less listened to nothing but
U2. Pride (In the name of Love) was
the first song I can remember liking at age 8. It’s the song that is most
likely to be played at my funeral when that day comes. I can still vividly recall
the cheap 80s video effect that transitioned from Cia Bergh’s introduction to
the first part of the song (the low flying POV shot over the Dublin harbor over
Edges lightly distorted harmonics and choppy muted strings that open the song)
on the Swedish Pop Chart show Bagen
back in 1984. I may have progressed and developed quite an eclectic taste
today, at age 38, but I’m still a U2 geek. That will probably never change.
This post,
though, is not really about my relationship to U2, but a guide to their albums.
Maybe Songs of Innocence will entice
some young people unfamiliar with the history of the band into thinking “hey,
these geezers are not all bad -- wonder what else they’ve done?” Well, look no
further than to my awesome, and completely subjective, guide below. Enjoy.
1980-1983: Post-Punk
Glory
Boy (1980) 5 out of 5
Youthful
energy and post-punk glory. U2 started out in the wake of the punk scene and were
inspired by acts like The Ramones (which is frequently referenced by U2, lately
with the song The Miracle (of Joey Ramone). They were contemporaries with
Simple Minds, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen and many others. The political
issues and the break with classic rock music’s masturbatory virtuoso craftsmanship
that had fueled the main-era punk (with acts like The Sex Pistols) is still
there, albeit now it’s more about the music now than off-stage antics. The sound
is both more polished and experimental, with clean guitar sounds and
experimental rhythm sections. And Boy is one of the best albums of the genre
and still one of U2’s best.
I can also
recommend trying get hold of some bootlegs from around the time of the Boy
release. On these, without the polish of Steve Lilywhite’s studio album
production, the true post-punk spirit comes out.
Legacy tracks
I Will
Follow
Other notable tracks
A Day
Without Me - check out Edge’s weird echo guitar parts
Shadows and
Tall Trees
Stories for
Boys (does it get anymore post-punk than this?)
11 O’clock
Tick Tock (a song that never made the album, but one frequently featured in
live performances in the early days of U2. A live version can be found on Under
a Blood Red Sky from 1983 and can also be found on the latest remastered deluxe
version of Boy)
Out of
Control
October (1981) 2 out of 5
October is
the rushed follow-up to Boy and features more post-punk, only this time not
nearly as good as before. One can hear U2’s lust for experimentation, and
willingness to push their own boundaries already here, but this time without
the results. I believe generally, October is considered the worst U2 album (possibly
in competition with 1997’s Pop ) and I’m
of the same opinion. It has a few highlights nonetheless. Gloria takes its
place among the legacy track and Edge’s keyboards on the title track October is
hauntingly beautiful.
Legacy Tracks
Gloria
Other notable tracks
October
I Threw a
Brick through a Window
War (1983) 2 out of 5
In January
1983 U2 scores the first UK Top 40 hit with New Year’s Day, as song about the
Polish Solidarity Movement and the mainstream break through is a fact. This
song and the album radio air play of Sunday Bloody Sunday catapults U2 to a
different level of fame. The album is considered a U2 classic, but my opinion
has always been that the rest of the album is pretty bland. More post-punk but
it just isn’t very good. It certainly is nowhere near the brilliance of Boy.
Legacy Tracks
New Year’s
Day
Sunday
Bloody Sunday
Other notable tracks
Two Hearts
Beat as One 40 1984 - 1989: The
Rise to Super Stardom
The Unforgettable Fire (1984) 4 out 5
The
Unforgettable Fire is U2’s first of many collaborations with producers Brian
Eno and Daniel Lanois and marks the first time U2 radically changes their
sound. The post-punk roots are still quite clearly there, but the album is a
wash of lush ambience, sweeping guitars and keyboards. It’s an album where the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Many songs are individually weak,
but the album has such a great atmosphere it doesn’t really matter. It’s an
album you put on and just let it play, not one where you skip around for
individual tracks. Pride (In the name of
Love) is a massive hit around the world and U2 solidifies their status as a
major mainstream act.
Legacy Tracks
Pride (In
the Name of Love) - Oh-oh-ah-oh!
Bad (check
out the epic performance of the song at Live Aid in 1985, which is some say is
a key piece in U2’s rise to super stardom)
Other notable tracks
A sort of
Homecoming
The Unforgettable
Fire
Wide Awake in America (1985) 3 out of 5
An EP
containing live versions of A sort of
Homecoming and Bad , plus two
mildly interesting songs from The
Unforgettable Fire studio sessions that never made the album. Worthwhile
mostly for the live version Bad, which enjoyed massive album radio airplay in
the US in the wake of Live Aid, where the bad had performed an iconic version (not
the one on the album, though) of the song, and helped pave the ground for
massive commercial success of their next album, The Joshua Tree . All songs on this album are now available on the
remastered deluxe reissue of The
Unforgettable Fire .
The Joshua Tree (1987) 5 out of 5
With or Without You and I still Haven’t Found what I’m Looking For hits number 1 in the US
and U2’s break through into super stardom is a fact. The album is hailed as one
the great albums in the history of pop and rock music, U2 makes the cover of
Time Magazine and are suddenly everywhere. There’s not a single dud on the
album (except possibly Trip Through Your Wires, which I personally never really
liked). The American music inspired album, while made in the otherwise abominable
second half of the 80s, features none of the signature sounds of that era. No
reverb on the drums or voices, no cheesy synthesizers etc., which makes the
album sound as fresh today as it did back then. Truly a masterpiece.
Legacy Tracks
With or
Without You
I Still
Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for
Where the
Streets Have No Name
Other notable tracks
Bullet the
Blue Sky
Running to
Stand Still
Red Hill
Mining Town
Rattle & Hum (1988) 2 out of 5
After the
Joshua Tree U2 tried to capitalize on their success with a movie called Rattle
& Hum. It bombed at the box office. The movie and subsequent album was criticized
for being self-indulgent. It’s ok to be big superstar providing you don’t brag
about it. The nod to American music continues and U2 are seen collaborating
with American greats like BB King and perform half-hearted covers of The
Beatles and Hendrix (actually, Watchtower is a Dylan song, but I believe U2 were inspired by Hendrix's interpretation). The album is a mix of (heavily doctored) live performances
from The Joshua Tree tour and new
studio songs. I never liked the album
and for me it became clear that U2 are not always that good when they stray too
far outside their own European post-punk heritage and into more traditional
styles of music. U2 are at their best when playing U2, not when playing
Hendrix. There are exceptions, Angel of Harlem on this very album being one of
them.
After
touring the album U2 had a bit of a burnout and Bono announced on their 1989 New
Year’s Eve concert in Dublin that they “had to go away and dream it all up
again” which led to speculation that the band was splitting up.
Legacy Tracks
Angel of
Harlem
Desire
Other notable tracks
All I want
is You
Heartland
The 90s - The
Experimental Phase
Achtung Baby (1991) 5 out of 5
The Edge
said in famous interview that 1991’s Achtung Baby still sounded like the blues
to him, but through a certain kind of filter. I never understood what he meant.
To me ‘Baby sounds nothing like the blues (with the possible exception of One ). It sounds much more like post-punk
through a filter. And it is U2s greatest and thematically most coherent album.
For me it will always be their greatest album. I am too old to reevaluate no
matter what they do in the future. There are too many memories of my struggling
teens intimately tied to this album. And I’m not alone. For a long time U2 fans
were divided between The Joshua Tree and ‘Baby. Today I believe ‘Baby came out
on top, if barely.
Achtung
Baby marks U2’s second radical change in sonic style. The last anyone had heard
of U2 was the hauntingly beautiful All I
want is You , the last single from Rattle and Hum. Then comes The Fly with heavy distortion and phaser
on the guitar, distorted low whispering voice, and none of the iconic
shimmering delayed Edge guitar parts that signified their 80s sound. Four men
chopping down the Joshua Tree, Bono said of the song. The album opens with Zoo
Station which sounds like your stereo is broken.
Like many
others, I initially had trouble digesting this radical change, but I did and
then I never looked back. ‘Baby is the start of what today can only be
described as U2s experimental phase, with two more albums in the 90s breaking
sonic new ground. They not only broke new ground sonically, but also image
wise. Where the old U2 had been earnest and pretentious, the new U2 was
sarcastic and ironic. Suede vests and
cotton rags had become black PVC suits and fly shades, black and white had
become color, boring had become fun.
After the
release of Achtung Baby they embarked on the massive and technically challenging
Zoo TV tour, still in my opinion, their best tour.
Legacy Tracks
One
Mysterious
Ways
The Fly
Other notable tracks
All of them
Zooropa
(1993) 4 out of 5
U2 follow
up Achtung Baby with an album that was originally going to be an EP. It’s a
more pop oriented album than any previous U2 album, with sweeping pop melodies
like those of Zooropa and Lemon, and quirky bubblegum pop like Some Days are
Better than Others. And it works. Pushing U2s sound in this direction was in my
opinion much more successful than pushing it towards blues on Rattle and Hum.
Stay (Far Away, So Close) is the soundtrack for Wim Wenders film In Weiter Ferne, So Nah , the not-quite-as-brilliant-but-still-worth-a-watch-follow-up
to one the best movies ever made, Der himmel
über Berlin . It’s around this time that Bono is starting to rely heavily on
falsetto for the high notes (and in the case of Lemon, entire songs).
Legacy Tracks
Stay
(Faraway, So Close)
Lemon
Numb
Other notable tracks
Zooropa
Dirty Day
Pop (1997) 4 out of 5
Maybe it
was dressing up like The Village People
in the video for Discotheque , or the
release conference at K-Mart, or maybe Bono being misquoted in the prerelease
interviews saying Pop was a “dance record” when he meant “dense record”? Or
maybe the fact that the album was rushed out while still being somewhat rough?
Or something else? But Pop seemed to alienate a lot of core U2 fans. U2 were
being perceived as straying too far from what made them a great super star act.
Pop was disappointment commercially (it still sold “millions”, but slightly
less “millions” -- everything is relative) but I always liked it. It a great
collection of songs, a testament to U2s willingness to take risks and
experiment with their sound. Not a single dud on the entire album, if you ask
me. Many of the songs were rerecorded and polished for release as singles, but
none of them constituted any improvements over the album versions if you ask
me.
U2’s
biggest challenge was at this time how to top the overbearing majesty of their
own Zoo TV tour. They did, at least in size, with the PopMart Tour.
Legacy Tracks
Discotheque
Staring at
the Sun
Other notable tracks
Gone
The Playboy
Mansion
If You Wear
that Velvet Dress
Please
If God Will
Send His Angels
Mofo
2000s - The Elder Statesman Phase
All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) 4 out of 5
It’s around
this time that I start slowly to lose interest in U2. After the relatively
unsuccessful Pop U2 reinvents themselves by… going back to a more Joshua
Tree-like sound. U2 are now beginning to
administer their legacy, rather than pushing boundaries. Oh well, we all grow
old sometime. They again flirt with the blues (In a Little While, Stuck in a
Moment) but it is better this time around than back in the Rattle and Hum days.
The album is hailed as a triumphant return to form and is called out as U2's third
master piece. Does that assessment still hold up today? I suppose I agree,
although I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the 90s experimentation and
the 80s post-punk over the American influenced blues stuff. Still, ‘Leave
behind is and album that has a little bit of everything and boy is it a great
collection of songs.
U2 Tours
indoors for the first time since the first leg of the Zoo TV tour in 1992.
Legacy Tracks
Beautiful
Day
Other notable tracks
Wild Honey
- notable for being one of the worst songs U2 ever made. I still believe they
put it on there as a joke
In a Little
While
Kite
Stuck in a
Moment
Elevation
Walk On
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) 3 out of 5
Bomb is an uneven album in my opinion. The more rock
oriented follow-up to All You Can’t Leave
Behind contains some of the best songs U2 has ever made, but also a few
bland ones, and a few real duds (A Man and a Woman, anyone?). The album was a massive commercial success, in no small part to Vertigo being featured in a commercial
for the iPod.
Legacy Tracks
Vertigo
Sometimes
You Can’t Make it on Your own
Other notable tracks
City of
Blinding Lights
Original of
the Species
Miracle
Drug
No Line on the Horizon (2009) 3 out of 5
No Line again sees U2 trying to shake things up
sonically. It’s not a bad album with some great songs, but somehow the album
presents like a massive gray mass of tracks that are sometimes indistinguishable
from each other. Maybe it’s the mix? Maybe it’s the Edge using the same EQ and
distortion setting on all tracks (if he in fact even did this, -- it’s what it sounds like in my ears). The
16th note delay arpeggios make a triumphant return and is heavily featured on
almost all tracks. I commend U2 for trying, even if it didn’t quite succeed this time,
like it did back with Achtung Baby.
They embark
on their most ambitious tour yet. Many of the songs that were a bit bland on
the album gets a significant boost when U2 are playing them live.
Legacy Tracks
Get on Your
Boots
Magnificent
Other notable tracks
Moment of
Surrender
Breathe
Songs of Innocence (2014)
So what
about this one then? I can’t say yet. First impression is that it’s quite a lot
more accessible than No Line on the Horizon. Some songs immediately stuck on me
but it is too early for me to form an opinion at this time. I’m not a music
critic so I will take privilege of time before I decide. Stay tuned.
So there you have it. Hope you found it useful. André
with Songs of Innocence . This is a
big thing for me, even though these days U2 are not really that often in my
headphones anymore. But my life history is inseparable from these four
Irish lads. Between the ages 13 and 22 I more or less listened to nothing but
U2. Pride (In the name of Love) was
the first song I can remember liking at age 8. It’s the song that is most
likely to be played at my funeral when that day comes. I can still vividly recall
the cheap 80s video effect that transitioned from Cia Bergh’s introduction to
the first part of the song (the low flying POV shot over the Dublin harbor over
Edges lightly distorted harmonics and choppy muted strings that open the song)
on the Swedish Pop Chart show Bagen
back in 1984. I may have progressed and developed quite an eclectic taste
today, at age 38, but I’m still a U2 geek. That will probably never change.
This post,
though, is not really about my relationship to U2, but a guide to their albums.
Maybe Songs of Innocence will entice
some young people unfamiliar with the history of the band into thinking “hey,
these geezers are not all bad -- wonder what else they’ve done?” Well, look no
further than to my awesome, and completely subjective, guide below. Enjoy.
1980-1983: Post-Punk
Glory
Boy (1980) 5 out of 5
Youthful
energy and post-punk glory. U2 started out in the wake of the punk scene and were
inspired by acts like The Ramones (which is frequently referenced by U2, lately
with the song The Miracle (of Joey Ramone). They were contemporaries with
Simple Minds, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen and many others. The political
issues and the break with classic rock music’s masturbatory virtuoso craftsmanship
that had fueled the main-era punk (with acts like The Sex Pistols) is still
there, albeit now it’s more about the music now than off-stage antics. The sound
is both more polished and experimental, with clean guitar sounds and
experimental rhythm sections. And Boy is one of the best albums of the genre
and still one of U2’s best.
I can also
recommend trying get hold of some bootlegs from around the time of the Boy
release. On these, without the polish of Steve Lilywhite’s studio album
production, the true post-punk spirit comes out.
Legacy tracks
I Will
Follow
Other notable tracks
A Day
Without Me - check out Edge’s weird echo guitar parts
Shadows and
Tall Trees
Stories for
Boys (does it get anymore post-punk than this?)
11 O’clock
Tick Tock (a song that never made the album, but one frequently featured in
live performances in the early days of U2. A live version can be found on Under
a Blood Red Sky from 1983 and can also be found on the latest remastered deluxe
version of Boy)
Out of
Control
October (1981) 2 out of 5
October is
the rushed follow-up to Boy and features more post-punk, only this time not
nearly as good as before. One can hear U2’s lust for experimentation, and
willingness to push their own boundaries already here, but this time without
the results. I believe generally, October is considered the worst U2 album (possibly
in competition with 1997’s Pop ) and I’m
of the same opinion. It has a few highlights nonetheless. Gloria takes its
place among the legacy track and Edge’s keyboards on the title track October is
hauntingly beautiful.
Legacy Tracks
Gloria
Other notable tracks
October
I Threw a
Brick through a Window
War (1983) 2 out of 5
In January
1983 U2 scores the first UK Top 40 hit with New Year’s Day, as song about the
Polish Solidarity Movement and the mainstream break through is a fact. This
song and the album radio air play of Sunday Bloody Sunday catapults U2 to a
different level of fame. The album is considered a U2 classic, but my opinion
has always been that the rest of the album is pretty bland. More post-punk but
it just isn’t very good. It certainly is nowhere near the brilliance of Boy.
Legacy Tracks
New Year’s
Day
Sunday
Bloody Sunday
Other notable tracks
Two Hearts
Beat as One 40 1984 - 1989: The
Rise to Super Stardom
The Unforgettable Fire (1984) 4 out 5
The
Unforgettable Fire is U2’s first of many collaborations with producers Brian
Eno and Daniel Lanois and marks the first time U2 radically changes their
sound. The post-punk roots are still quite clearly there, but the album is a
wash of lush ambience, sweeping guitars and keyboards. It’s an album where the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Many songs are individually weak,
but the album has such a great atmosphere it doesn’t really matter. It’s an
album you put on and just let it play, not one where you skip around for
individual tracks. Pride (In the name of
Love) is a massive hit around the world and U2 solidifies their status as a
major mainstream act.
Legacy Tracks
Pride (In
the Name of Love) - Oh-oh-ah-oh!
Bad (check
out the epic performance of the song at Live Aid in 1985, which is some say is
a key piece in U2’s rise to super stardom)
Other notable tracks
A sort of
Homecoming
The Unforgettable
Fire
Wide Awake in America (1985) 3 out of 5
An EP
containing live versions of A sort of
Homecoming and Bad , plus two
mildly interesting songs from The
Unforgettable Fire studio sessions that never made the album. Worthwhile
mostly for the live version Bad, which enjoyed massive album radio airplay in
the US in the wake of Live Aid, where the bad had performed an iconic version (not
the one on the album, though) of the song, and helped pave the ground for
massive commercial success of their next album, The Joshua Tree . All songs on this album are now available on the
remastered deluxe reissue of The
Unforgettable Fire .
The Joshua Tree (1987) 5 out of 5
With or Without You and I still Haven’t Found what I’m Looking For hits number 1 in the US
and U2’s break through into super stardom is a fact. The album is hailed as one
the great albums in the history of pop and rock music, U2 makes the cover of
Time Magazine and are suddenly everywhere. There’s not a single dud on the
album (except possibly Trip Through Your Wires, which I personally never really
liked). The American music inspired album, while made in the otherwise abominable
second half of the 80s, features none of the signature sounds of that era. No
reverb on the drums or voices, no cheesy synthesizers etc., which makes the
album sound as fresh today as it did back then. Truly a masterpiece.
Legacy Tracks
With or
Without You
I Still
Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for
Where the
Streets Have No Name
Other notable tracks
Bullet the
Blue Sky
Running to
Stand Still
Red Hill
Mining Town
Rattle & Hum (1988) 2 out of 5
After the
Joshua Tree U2 tried to capitalize on their success with a movie called Rattle
& Hum. It bombed at the box office. The movie and subsequent album was criticized
for being self-indulgent. It’s ok to be big superstar providing you don’t brag
about it. The nod to American music continues and U2 are seen collaborating
with American greats like BB King and perform half-hearted covers of The
Beatles and Hendrix (actually, Watchtower is a Dylan song, but I believe U2 were inspired by Hendrix's interpretation). The album is a mix of (heavily doctored) live performances
from The Joshua Tree tour and new
studio songs. I never liked the album
and for me it became clear that U2 are not always that good when they stray too
far outside their own European post-punk heritage and into more traditional
styles of music. U2 are at their best when playing U2, not when playing
Hendrix. There are exceptions, Angel of Harlem on this very album being one of
them.
After
touring the album U2 had a bit of a burnout and Bono announced on their 1989 New
Year’s Eve concert in Dublin that they “had to go away and dream it all up
again” which led to speculation that the band was splitting up.
Legacy Tracks
Angel of
Harlem
Desire
Other notable tracks
All I want
is You
Heartland
The 90s - The
Experimental Phase
Achtung Baby (1991) 5 out of 5
The Edge
said in famous interview that 1991’s Achtung Baby still sounded like the blues
to him, but through a certain kind of filter. I never understood what he meant.
To me ‘Baby sounds nothing like the blues (with the possible exception of One ). It sounds much more like post-punk
through a filter. And it is U2s greatest and thematically most coherent album.
For me it will always be their greatest album. I am too old to reevaluate no
matter what they do in the future. There are too many memories of my struggling
teens intimately tied to this album. And I’m not alone. For a long time U2 fans
were divided between The Joshua Tree and ‘Baby. Today I believe ‘Baby came out
on top, if barely.
Achtung
Baby marks U2’s second radical change in sonic style. The last anyone had heard
of U2 was the hauntingly beautiful All I
want is You , the last single from Rattle and Hum. Then comes The Fly with heavy distortion and phaser
on the guitar, distorted low whispering voice, and none of the iconic
shimmering delayed Edge guitar parts that signified their 80s sound. Four men
chopping down the Joshua Tree, Bono said of the song. The album opens with Zoo
Station which sounds like your stereo is broken.
Like many
others, I initially had trouble digesting this radical change, but I did and
then I never looked back. ‘Baby is the start of what today can only be
described as U2s experimental phase, with two more albums in the 90s breaking
sonic new ground. They not only broke new ground sonically, but also image
wise. Where the old U2 had been earnest and pretentious, the new U2 was
sarcastic and ironic. Suede vests and
cotton rags had become black PVC suits and fly shades, black and white had
become color, boring had become fun.
After the
release of Achtung Baby they embarked on the massive and technically challenging
Zoo TV tour, still in my opinion, their best tour.
Legacy Tracks
One
Mysterious
Ways
The Fly
Other notable tracks
All of them
Zooropa
(1993) 4 out of 5
U2 follow
up Achtung Baby with an album that was originally going to be an EP. It’s a
more pop oriented album than any previous U2 album, with sweeping pop melodies
like those of Zooropa and Lemon, and quirky bubblegum pop like Some Days are
Better than Others. And it works. Pushing U2s sound in this direction was in my
opinion much more successful than pushing it towards blues on Rattle and Hum.
Stay (Far Away, So Close) is the soundtrack for Wim Wenders film In Weiter Ferne, So Nah , the not-quite-as-brilliant-but-still-worth-a-watch-follow-up
to one the best movies ever made, Der himmel
über Berlin . It’s around this time that Bono is starting to rely heavily on
falsetto for the high notes (and in the case of Lemon, entire songs).
Legacy Tracks
Stay
(Faraway, So Close)
Lemon
Numb
Other notable tracks
Zooropa
Dirty Day
Pop (1997) 4 out of 5
Maybe it
was dressing up like The Village People
in the video for Discotheque , or the
release conference at K-Mart, or maybe Bono being misquoted in the prerelease
interviews saying Pop was a “dance record” when he meant “dense record”? Or
maybe the fact that the album was rushed out while still being somewhat rough?
Or something else? But Pop seemed to alienate a lot of core U2 fans. U2 were
being perceived as straying too far from what made them a great super star act.
Pop was disappointment commercially (it still sold “millions”, but slightly
less “millions” -- everything is relative) but I always liked it. It a great
collection of songs, a testament to U2s willingness to take risks and
experiment with their sound. Not a single dud on the entire album, if you ask
me. Many of the songs were rerecorded and polished for release as singles, but
none of them constituted any improvements over the album versions if you ask
me.
U2’s
biggest challenge was at this time how to top the overbearing majesty of their
own Zoo TV tour. They did, at least in size, with the PopMart Tour.
Legacy Tracks
Discotheque
Staring at
the Sun
Other notable tracks
Gone
The Playboy
Mansion
If You Wear
that Velvet Dress
Please
If God Will
Send His Angels
Mofo
2000s - The Elder Statesman Phase
All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) 4 out of 5
It’s around
this time that I start slowly to lose interest in U2. After the relatively
unsuccessful Pop U2 reinvents themselves by… going back to a more Joshua
Tree-like sound. U2 are now beginning to
administer their legacy, rather than pushing boundaries. Oh well, we all grow
old sometime. They again flirt with the blues (In a Little While, Stuck in a
Moment) but it is better this time around than back in the Rattle and Hum days.
The album is hailed as a triumphant return to form and is called out as U2's third
master piece. Does that assessment still hold up today? I suppose I agree,
although I make no secret of the fact that I prefer the 90s experimentation and
the 80s post-punk over the American influenced blues stuff. Still, ‘Leave
behind is and album that has a little bit of everything and boy is it a great
collection of songs.
U2 Tours
indoors for the first time since the first leg of the Zoo TV tour in 1992.
Legacy Tracks
Beautiful
Day
Other notable tracks
Wild Honey
- notable for being one of the worst songs U2 ever made. I still believe they
put it on there as a joke
In a Little
While
Kite
Stuck in a
Moment
Elevation
Walk On
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) 3 out of 5
Bomb is an uneven album in my opinion. The more rock
oriented follow-up to All You Can’t Leave
Behind contains some of the best songs U2 has ever made, but also a few
bland ones, and a few real duds (A Man and a Woman, anyone?). The album was a massive commercial success, in no small part to Vertigo being featured in a commercial
for the iPod.
Legacy Tracks
Vertigo
Sometimes
You Can’t Make it on Your own
Other notable tracks
City of
Blinding Lights
Original of
the Species
Miracle
Drug
No Line on the Horizon (2009) 3 out of 5
No Line again sees U2 trying to shake things up
sonically. It’s not a bad album with some great songs, but somehow the album
presents like a massive gray mass of tracks that are sometimes indistinguishable
from each other. Maybe it’s the mix? Maybe it’s the Edge using the same EQ and
distortion setting on all tracks (if he in fact even did this, -- it’s what it sounds like in my ears). The
16th note delay arpeggios make a triumphant return and is heavily featured on
almost all tracks. I commend U2 for trying, even if it didn’t quite succeed this time,
like it did back with Achtung Baby.
They embark
on their most ambitious tour yet. Many of the songs that were a bit bland on
the album gets a significant boost when U2 are playing them live.
Legacy Tracks
Get on Your
Boots
Magnificent
Other notable tracks
Moment of
Surrender
Breathe
Songs of Innocence (2014)
So what
about this one then? I can’t say yet. First impression is that it’s quite a lot
more accessible than No Line on the Horizon. Some songs immediately stuck on me
but it is too early for me to form an opinion at this time. I’m not a music
critic so I will take privilege of time before I decide. Stay tuned.
So there you have it. Hope you found it useful. André
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