Mojo - The Music Magazine

Comment on this post

• U2? Bozo's an idoit and U2 have never been more than a muscially limited third rate new wave media darling band. They ripped up the Bunnymen and they SUCK!!! I suspect the only reason they are around still is for the money and fame (that Bozo needs) and because even they seem ok in a sh*t-hop culture.

  Posted by Hk at 2:13 AM GMT 25/02/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• It's sad, but somehow inevitable, that the first post on a U2 discussion board is some illiterate, half-arsed, laughably unjustifed rant against them. They've always attracted the same kind of desperate complaints from pseudo-hip wannabe Mark E Smiths, who can't handle the fact that a genuinely inventive, forward-thinking, dedicated and FUN band could outstrip all their precious post-punk no-hopers, and remain on top for so long. Get over it.
  That said, the public's taste for U2 doesn't always sync up with their best work...
  So, it'a agiven that Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby will be their. The former's got to be the 'popular' choices, while the latter probably deserves pride of place; it's not just their best batch of songs, but it also symbolizes their ability to re-invent themselves without losing their identity.
  But I've got to put in a bid for ZOOROPA, easily my favourite U2 album. Everything about it it awesome. There's the disorienting cyberpunk packaging, all half-glimpsed logos and cultural icons all twisted-up. The albums rides in slowly with Bono reciting advertising slogans, then it EXPLODES into some technicolour dreamworld. It runs through a catalogue of postmodern obsessions: celebrity worship (Babyface), sensory overload (Numb), hyperreality (Lemon), and then in the last half it drifts into more personal territory, before risding off into the sunset with Johnny Cash on one of the flat-out funniest, but somehow sinister, song's they've ever done. This gets my vote for U2's great lost classic, with POP a close third.
  The runner-up would be RATTLE & HUM- a hugely misunderstood album. It was supposed to be a quick n' nasty snapshot of life-on-the-road-in-America, but coupled with the film it seems like a bloated attempt at self-mythologizing. Remove the live tracks and substitute a few b-sides from the first best-of, and you've got their rootsiest, most 'fanish' album.
  Lastly, WAR must NOT appear on this list. It is easily their most overrated album, even if it is somehow 'definitive'. Even the best songs have horribly Eighties 'bang-crash-wallop' production, and half the songs (Red Light, Surrender, Just A Song) have absolutely no identity whatsoever. If I ever wanted to turn someone OFF U2, I'd play them this album. Anyway, UNDER A BLOOD RED SKY contains all of WAR's best songs in better versions.
  Also overrated (but not as much) is ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND. A handful of good songs, but so contrived. HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB is much better; more cohesive, and genuine.
  Finally, one last word for PASSENGERS. So much better than most people remember. Miss Sarajevo and Your Blue Room are classic U2, but Slug, Always Forever Now and United Colours are a world in themselves.
  Phew, long post, but I think I got it all down.
  O yeah, OCTOBER is better than UNFORGETTABLE FIRE; maybe not song-by-song, but as a whole album. There, I said it.
  I'll shut up now.

  Posted by Conor at 2:03 PM GMT 26/02/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• Unforgetable Fire. The ol' days when they had to work for it. They look like a boy band now.

  Posted by Miguel at 7:32 AM GMT 01/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• Under a red blood sky
  Short,intense,incredible songs. Early U2 at its best.

  Posted by gautxos at 9:02 PM GMT 03/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• Unforgettable fire has to be it for me as it's the moment when U2 left there biggest mark on the planet in my eyes anyway...just look at the LIVE AID footage...rock at it's best!!!!

  Posted by Scott Cleaver at 8:18 PM GMT 04/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• I understand what people are saying about Unforgettable Fire, how it defined U2 as a global supergroups etc... No one's debating the impact of Pride or their Live-Aid appearence or anything, but Unforgettable Fire the album itself is actually pretty weak compared to many of their others. Pride, the title track, A Sort of Homecoming and Bad are great of course (though the definitve version of the latter is on Wide Awake In America), but Wire is like second rate Talking Heads, Promenade, 4th Of July and MLK are formless, and Elvis Presley and America is probably the worst song they've ever done; unstructured, muddled, badly recorded and pointless.
  i think the problem with voting on U2 albums is that when people think of them, they first think about their media image and treat the music as secondary. Their best albums, in terms of the quality of the songwriting from beginning to end, have got to be Achtung Baby and Joshua Tree. In image terms, I think the media-savvy, post-everything version of the band from Zooropa and Pop wins out over the 80s cowboy-hatted super-sincere version each time. (but that matbe because during the 80s I was still listening to my Sesame Street tapes :-)

  Posted by Conor at 3:48 AM GMT 05/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• Achtung Baby - Taking their cue from Bowie and the Bad Seeds, U2 channelled the seedy, neon glow of Berlin into a clanking, motorik dark night of the soul. Their bleakest and best moment.

  Posted by Simon Veaney at 6:15 AM GMT 09/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• Don't bloody bother

  Posted by withy at 4:44 PM GMT 10/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

• 
  I thought we were to suggest the top-5 U2 lps? If so...

  1. Achtung Baby (a sonic marvel, and incredible songs)
  2. The Joshua Tree (emotionally as well as aurally sweeping)
  3. POP (Their most underrated album: brilliant lyrics, fabulous singing)
  4. Zooropa (No anthems here, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, etc.)
  5. The Unforgettable Fire (First indications of their openness to experimentation. Also contains perhaps their greatest song: Pride).

  Tastefully yours,
  EDK
  Boston
  Massachusetts
  USA

  Posted by Dean at 3:23 PM GMT 14/03/2007 Report Abuse

  Reply to this post

Comment on this post