I listened to JT as soon as it came out, and to be honest I only began to like WOWY a few years after, and I still don't like ISHFWILF, however, Streets was one of the tracks that I instantly loved, and I do remember that they released it as a single and peaked at 14 (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that was its peak chart position on Billboard), so radio liked it as well. But, it did take a shape of its own on the JT tour and by ZooTV it was just a song fans expected to be blown away by.
I've been a fan since 1980, and maybe it's nostalgia, or something, but I believe that their best work is truly behind them. From 1980-1994, we were truly spoiled, I mean two masterpieces in a 4 year span?! That's outrageous...if you add to that Boy as one of the best debut albums ever by a rock band, War, Zooropa, and even the strangely hypnotic Unforgettable Fire, it was just a band on a roll...you listened to those albums just a few times and you just knew there was somethin g special about them.
This thing now, from the mid nineties to present day where some fans say you need to listen to the albums a thousand times to get it, that's just not the way it was for me or the other U2 fans I knew from that era. I think U2 wants to stay relevant (whatever that means) and some fans, of course, want them to be loved by other non fans, but deep down I know that I never had the same feeling of WOW! when I heard ATYCLB, or Bomb, or Pop for that matter. However, there are some interesting things on NLOTH, some great stuff, and that feeling I had in the eighties and early nineties has crept up.
But, I still think that the outstanding reviews this album has gotten, is due more to the underwhelming state of rock music, than the actual quality of the album. If you constantly hear good, but not outstanding, rock music, and a band releases something that's very good, or at least head and shoulders above the rest, we tend to overpraise it.
I think this is why I rate AB higher than JT. When AB came out and during the ZooTV tour, grunge was starting, and there were a ton of rock bands out there with very good stuff. AB had to "compete" with a new emerging sound that was dominating the airwaves, which was probably the opposite of AB's sound, and yet U2 still ruled that era.
Oh f***, just realized I have rambled on way too much...thousand apologies