What did you think when you first heard Actung Baby?

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One of the most memorable first listens of my life. I was working in retail and in college at the time, and a Sam Goody's (old Northeast record chain) was right next to our store. So, after classes I went to work, and on my :15 minute break, bought the CD. I was so pumped to listen to the album that I listened to it in my car, in the parking lot of the mall, instead of just driving home and listening there. Anyway, as an already die-hard U2 fan (since '83, kids) and having seen them on the JT our (my very first concert), I was at mega-fan status and really REALLY excited for the album. But I didn't really know what to expect....so, when Zoo Station started, I was....freaked out, sort of....but really intrigued......and then the album was just off and running, and when it was over I was about as happy as one can be after a first listen. Zoo Station and The Fly were the songs that jumped out at me most at first....eventually, Acrobat would emerge as my favorite....and the album remains as stunning to me today as it did that day. So, my first listen was a sublime event for me, and I still remember it vividly.

Hope that wasn't too long. :)
 
Scared the living crap out of me. I was 11 and I thought something had gone wrong with my parents' speaker system. What followed was a harrowing 55 minutes that left me questioning if love was worth lauding over after all and what the hell it was that I thought U2 sounded like. Definitely not the most fulfilling experience.

Now, of course, it ceaselessly kicks my ass, which I know doesn't sound pleasant, but I can't deny that it is.
 
I thought it was the freaking best thing ever recorded.

Still do, mind you.
 
I was hesitant to buy it because I had fallen kind of in love with Hutdab, Attyclub and the 80s best of, which were the only U2 albums I had at the time. I bought it at the plaza, I was 15 I think, it cost $26. I put it on in the car as Mum drove home, about 4, 5pm on a cold, grey, wet winter's afternoon. I immediately recognised the riff from Zoo Station; it was the theme music to all the AFL videos I had:

YouTube - The 90s - The Decade that Delivered

I was kind of blown away by that. Anyway I went home and listened to it on Dad's old work laptop, and I didn't like it much, Wild Horses and Ultraviolet aside. I was very intrigued by UTEOTW (still, to this day, my favourite 90s U2 track), thought One was the most overrated song in existence (this was the time when it was blasphemous to say a bad word about AB, and it was just about a ban-able offence to dis One) and was convinced I'd bought a shit copy of the CD because Zoo Station was so distorted.

I made a thread about it on here, which was very embarrassing, and I was savaged for not giving 5/5s to One and The Fly. But, Wild Horses and Ultraviolet attracted me enough on first listen that I came back to it, and all of sudden I found myself listening to no other music but AB for an entire fortnight, something I hadn't done before (or since).

Now, it's my favourite U2 album, second favourite of all-time, and though I only listen to it a couple of times a year - I haven't played it since December - it is a fucking incredible album.


edit, that's an awesome screenshot of BRUCEEE.
 
i knew that my life(the music part at least) would never be the same again, and i was right. i knew from the first time i heard the fly that it was the best song i ever heard, i still think that.
 
First song I heard of of it was Who's Gonna Ride your Wild Horses. Then I got the album for Christmas, listened to it once and I knew then that this was gonna be my favourite album ever. It still is. I love every song on it.
 
as it was preceeded by The Fly I was a bit disappointed
but liked it a lot anyway
 
i remember buying it around christmastime (or maybe it *was* a christmas present) in either 91 or 92 - though 91 would make more sense of course. it was the first album of theirs i owned so i didn't have any real notions of what it should or shouldn't sound like. i remember thinking it was the coolest thing i ever heard, i thought they were just the coolest band ever during the early-mid 90s. (on a related note, i remember watching the 93 grammys when bono swore on stage and just being shocked that he did it, even though i didn't curse at the time i guess it made him seem even cooler.)

didn't care much for one even at the time though. :wink: my favourite track was probably zoo station or ebttrt - i thought that was the coolest video too. oh wait, it had to have been christmas of 91 when i got it, i remember already having it in mid-92 when i moved, so yeah. loved mysterious ways, too.
 
First time I watched Zoo TV, when Bono came out doing air kicks to Zoo Station, threw away his cigar and launched into it, was the coolest/most badass thing I'd ever seen. When the DVD finished, I probably looked a bit like Milhouse after playing Bonestorm.
 
The very first thing I remember thinking was just how "dirty" it sounded. It was so heavy and industrial, totally unlike anything I'd heard before or since from a mainstream band. It was like listening to this fucking amazing underground group on an independent label.
The first time I heard TJT it instantly reminded me of the desert, and AB transported me to a club on a dark, rainy night. Those two U2 albums take me to specific places more than any other of their albums.
 
I already had Rattle & Hum, but it was The Fly that properly sold me on U2. Fucking loved it. I was 13, first year of high school, the right age for music to become something else. Went and bought Achtung Baby the weekend it came out, with a friend, went back to his and listening to it for the first time is actually one of my clearest memories from that time of my life. Sitting on the floor of his living room, eating burgers or something, volume turned up incredibly loud, Zoo Station crashing in.
 
I bought it the day I came out, brought it back to my dorm room and listed with my headphones.

I don't remember details of my immediate reaction, but it was definitely positive.
 
Rachel D. said:
I heard Zooropa first so I didn't think it was that weird.
Click to expand...

almost the same for me actually. hearing the riff for Zoo Station followed by the rest of it for the very first time was fucking amazing, I remember really REALLY loving the guitar, but what struck me as the strangest was the effects on Bono's voice. the rest of the album just went from strength to strength with each song but hearing Achtung Baby certainly wasn't as strange as hearing Zooropa one summer after spending that year so far listening to the Joshua Tree (i listened to my Dad's U2 albums in a bit of a funny order)

but yeah I'd REALLY love to have heard it from the perspective of someone who'd been waiting three years since Rattle And Hum, then put the needle on Achtung Baby and got THAT :lol:
 
I first heard "The Fly" on MTV before the album was released. I liked the song, but didn't think it was amongst U2's best. I hadn't really heard of their "new direction" much, so I was a bit surprised, but not shocked. I did recally saying to a few friends that not every album could be a JT - even though I almost immediately regretted saying that. First, I don't think JT is U2's best either - but I knew most people loved that album. Funnily enough, one of the friends stated that it was good that it didn't sound like JT as well. :)

Basically, from that video, the overall reaction was "that's different - not bad, but not blow me away great either."

Then the album came out. I immediately adored MW. I loved the riff from "The Fly" and the entire MW. I remember calling another friend excitedly about the album and how great MW was.

Slowly I discovered more of the album. I listened to it during a Thanksgiving drive to visit family. I briefly loaned the CD to a friend so he could enjoy it while working. Like me, he too wasn't all that aware of U2's change. When he first played it, he thought I gave him the wrong CD. LOL!

What I liked was that U2 finally had some rocking tunes. They had a few in their catalog, but I missed some of that on JT and R&H. AB brought it back. What I missed, though, was Bono's classic wailing. I loved his vocals on TUF-R&H and was saddened to see them more subdued on AB.

Overall though, I enjoyed the album.

In contrast, "Zooropa" did take me a while longer to enjoy. But that's another post. :sexywink:
 
I've been into U2 for only about 6-7 years now. I remember after getting the Vertigo '05 from Chicago DVD after falling in love with the band and HTDAAB and hearing the performance of Zoo Station on that DVD. I was completely head over heels with that performance. I later heard the album version when my dad played it in the car and it wasn't as awesome to me. I never could like the album version of Zoo Station. It was another few years until I finally downloaded Achtung Baby and checked it out. I've since been in love with the album version of Zoo Station and the album really struck a chord with me. I really had a thing for EBTTRT and UTEOTW, and I'd heard both of those on the radio before so I was a bit familiar with those.

My reaction was not really as crazy as some of you who were alive and experienced the whole transition from Joshua Tree U2 to Achtung Baby U2 were. When I got into AB I had been a big, big fan of HTDAAB, JT, and War, which are three of their heavier albums and more guitar driven ones. So with that I wasn't all that shocked at how AB sounded. I'd not gotten into Zooropa yet so I hadn't really seen U2's more experimental side. Zooropa was tough for me to get into and it took a full week of heavy duty listening to that one to really get the concept. It's now in my U2 Top 3, but that's another thread.

The tracks I loved right away were The Fly, EBTTRT, UTEOTW, Acrobat and Zoo Station. One was a song I liked for sure but I've never praised and worshipped that song. It's a magically great song, don't get me wrong, but I think it's a bit overrated. I didn't really seem to care much for TTTYAATW until I was driving two years ago in the summer with my new car and TTTYAATW came on the radio (forgot what station, it was on Sirius) and I decided to give it a few listens over that night. I've really loved it since and I have great memories of listening to that a lot that summer. Ultraviolet was another late bloomer of a song for me. In fact I came to realize it's greatness the same year just right before that summer I got into TTTYAATW. I have wonderful memories when they played it in Raleigh in 2009. So Cruel really came into great play last year when I liked some girl and some things happened. It fit my whole situation. Always loved Mysterious Ways. Love Is Blindness is probably my least favorite on the whole album but Achtung Baby is perfect all the way through. Not a flaw, even though Larry dropped his drum stick in Ultraviolet.:wink: It's my favorite album of all time and always will be. It helped me a lot last year too and I just want to wrap my arms around it and give it great big hug.:hug:

I just got around to buying my first physical copy back in December last year and I fell completely in love with it all over again. It's one of those albums that each time I buy it I fall in love with. I'm pretty sure the same will happen this year when they release the remaster for it.
 
doctorwho said:
I immediately adored MW. I loved the riff from "The Fly" and the entire MW. I remember calling another friend excitedly about the album and how great MW was.

Slowly I discovered more of the album.
Click to expand...

This is, for the record, exactly how it went down for me. I immediately thought The Fly (my favorite U2 song for ages) and Mysterious Ways were the absolute sex, but it was way downhill from there. I got nothing out of the closing trio.

My how things change.
 
Some fascinating experiences here. I've always envied those like NoSpokenWords who came to Achtung Baby only ever conceptualising U2 up to and including Rattle and Hum. It's difficult to imagine how mind-blowing it must have been to hear the album and The Fly for the first time.

My U2 fandom started in '02, through acquiring both the Best Of's. Immediately, I realised there was a stark contrast between 80's and 90's U2. What the Best Of's did for me was to attach a decade to the singles I already knew all too well (Mysterious Ways, One, Real Thing).

The Fly never got played on Aussie radio though, nor Zoo Station, and like Cobbler, hearing Achtung Baby for the first time in late '03, immediately shocked me in that the music from The Decade That Delivered Footy documentary was that Zoo Station song. I'd only ever heard Zoo Station once or twice from the Sydney DVD, so it was pretty exciting. The riff from The Fly was something I'd heard before, but never known what it was, from a a radio segment introduction on MMM.

Anyway, the album came across as dark, but bloody amazing. The Fly, Zoo Station, Acrobat and Ultraviolet were the immediate standouts, while One, Mysterious Ways and Real Thing had no real excitement value as I had heard these three songs countless times before. Wild
Horses was a song with a memorable vocal hook that I had not heard in 10 years or so, so it was kinda exciting to hear this song after so long, and it triggered meinto remembering a TV commercial for either the ZooTV tour or the Achtung Baby album that was on screened fairly regularly a decade earlier.

I immediately enjoyed the album, and it really has consistently been my favourite, although occasionally the Joshua Tree has challenged it.

But I suppose my initial experience was not as someone listening to the album as a whole or as something especially new or groundbreaking, but more so as someone who was bringing all sorts of aural memories to the experience, and as someone who had already heard three of the songs dozens of times previously.

It still sounded like an amazing album from that first listen though, and a very accessible one.
 
I don't remember what I thought exactly, but I do remember that until that point I had Bomb, ATYCLB and all the 80s stuff. After listening to AB it was pretty much mind = blown.
 
i honestly thought something was wrong with my speakers. i skipped to real thing to make sure :lol:
 
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