LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
How artsy! uuuuhg!
Is it artsy of me to suspect you're being facetious right here? There's no other possible explanation for a perspective this ridiculous.
Roughly 3 months later, where does NLOTH fall in your album rankings
- Thread starter mikal
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Is it artsy of me to suspect you're being facetious right here? There's no other possible explanation for a perspective this ridiculous.
toscano
Refugee
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2005
- Messages
- 2,032
From what I can gather, "honest" = "agrees to some degree with me" and not really "honest", right ???
toscano
Refugee
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2005
- Messages
- 2,032
Still not as good as AB, JT, Pop, TUF
Still better than ATYCLB, HTDAAB, R+H
Still better than ATYCLB, HTDAAB, R+H
The OOTS
Refugee
Achtung Baby
Joshua Tree
UF
Pop
Boy
NLOTH
Zooropa
War
HTDAAB
ATYCLB
October
Rattle and Hum
Joshua Tree
UF
Pop
Boy
NLOTH
Zooropa
War
HTDAAB
ATYCLB
October
Rattle and Hum
After about 2.5 months approx, this is what I am thinking, see below my current opinions about all the albums, and bear in mind, my opinions change often depending on what sort of music in general let alone U2 music, I am listening to:
1. Achtung... the album that from 1 to 12, hits your eardrums the most constantly, and consistently, all the way through... almost hypnotic, the best album ever made by any rock band... this album probably can never be supplanted in my mind from the no. 1 rank, so it is unfair of me to even involve it these days in a poll like this... how can I bump down the list an album that contains the likes of One, Until The End Of The World, Ultra Violet etc... maybe it's such a great album because it seems most of, if not all of, the songs, germinated out of one original Mother Song, which bore 12 rock with a hip-hop beat offspring... timeless and still sounds futuristic... U2 struck gold here and it is actually unfair to judge any of their other work against this, if a band is only to strike such gold once in a lifetime...
2. Pop... I love this album, I am a hug fan of the colours, the diversity, the textures, I even love the rough edges that are purported to be because "the album was not quite finished" although quite frankly, I am not sure, and never will be, that I buy this line of argument... the sound was very cutting and very mid-90s, similar in sound to bands who were in turn influenced by U2 such as the Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage... Brave and bold, it seemed that they made the album not caring in the slightest what people thought about them, and then got upset when SOME mainstream people ie. radio executives, went a bit cold on it... they should have stuck to their guns and made more records like this, no other rock band I can think of, could switch focus and genres like this so effortlessly, and make such beautiful music...
3. No Line.. today it has slipped to number three, but for most of the last 2.5 months indeed til 2 minutes ago, I have held it up at the number 2 ranking on the list... wonderful collection of songs, possibly out of all U2 albums, this one has the best line up of track 1 thru to track 8... all 8 songs are now stuck in my head and make up a formiddable, pacey, bouncy, pumping line-up of tunes... maybe loses out to Achtung because White As Snow is misplaced, and does not even belong on the album, does not sound like the rest, sounds 'inserted' so there would be 11 songs instead of 10... also, Cedars, although I like it a lot, is not a strong closer... apart from those minor gripes, I love the record, I love songs 1 to 8 and love listening to them in order, over and over...
4. How To Dismantle... lovely album, close to my heart, I hold it in high regard, I love the sheer strength of the key tracks on the album, they have as Larry might say, "weight"... City of Blinding Lights is in my top 5 U2 songs of all time, Sometimes You Can't Make It is U2's second best ever ballad behind One, Vertigo just rocks, Original Of The Species is a hidden gem that still doesn't know how beautiful it is, and Yahweh is a powerful closing track that rounds out the album perfectly... Love And Peace is one of the best live songs I have seen, it has some sort of aura which helps bring the whole live Vertigo tour experience together... yes I would have liked more scorching rock on this album, the middle bit in 'Native Son' ie. Vertigo's ancestor, contains some of the best music U2 will ever make!
5. Boy... Has just pushed Joshua down the list... why? Because it just has an electrifying, bright spark, as some have commented over the years, this is simply the best debut album from a rock band, written by 16 years olds, that has ever been released.... and I am not even factoring in I Will Follow... rather, what makes this piece of work so great from such a baby band, comes from the rawer, rockier songs, where those layers of guitars and vocals showcase that INTENSITY this band would later make an art form of... for example, my favourite songs are The Electric Co and Twightlight... great emotion and complexity there, an understanding of bringing emotional intensity out in the music...
6. War.. alas poor Joshua Tree, it has just been bumped down again... War, in my opinion, is U2's first true work of art as an album... just about every song is a strong, powerful tune in its own right... not just the old faves like Sunday and New Year's... but this one has underrated classics on board, including Surrender, Drowning Man, Like A Song, as the pillars holding up the big tunes, and then you have the experimental tunes that somehow WORK as real songs, which does not always happen with U2's experiments... I refer to the likes of Refugee and 40, and of course that little hidden gem that BB King and the Gallagher brothers reportedly adore, 'Seconds'... brilliant album from a bunch of 22 year olds.... I might even say this is a great collection of songs, but the album is not... not... not quite... I don't know... LINEAR???
7. Joshua... I love the album, but in many ways it has slipped down the list over the years, because although it's a masterpiece, there is a certain 'sameness' in the record that can make it seem, at times, a little colourless... look, Streets is again in my top 5, With Or Withour You is a unique piece of work in rock and roll history, it's a wonderfully innovative song, Bullet The Blue Sky is hard political rock with Hendrix guitars signalling a development in style by Edge that would not become fully apparent until Achtung... perhaps the album becomes a little melancholy as it goes on... having said that, the intrinsically divine melancholy feeling at the heart of one of my favourite songs of all time, In God's Country, espouses that very same feeling at the heart of the album of which I have just taken issue with... so I have contradictory feelings at the moment..
As for the remainder... like the Professor and Mary-Anne in the Gilligan's Island intro, they get less detail in their own right as I am a bit more ambivalent, as much as I love them all:
8. Zooropa... my first real introduction to U2 which I do love, but which is very experimental and clearly not designed by the band to be their best work or a masterpiece... I love the title track, Stay and Lemon in particular
9. All That You Can't... apart from the glorious Beautiful Day and thumping Elevation, I find this one a little flat and lacking in diversity... Put this one on acid and you have No Line On The Horizon!!!
10. Unforgettable Fire... has my favourite song in the universe, Pride, as its stand out track, but having such a wonderful classic etched in space and time, plus Bad and the title track, does not mean this experimental album should be held up as the masterpiece some proclaim it to be... a great sign of things to come...
11. Rattle and Hum... as people have said, not really an album in its own right... like Joshua, a little flat and dry... still containing masterpiece individual tunes such as All I Want Is You, and hidden gems like Hawkmoon...
12. October... bizarre little album, a bit spooky even, with its religious overtones, its cathederal-like echoyness even more echoey than usual for our Edge... Love Gloria, think I Fall Down is a lost/ignored classic... but just on the whole, the album lacks something... coherent words maybe lol as Bono lost them in the process of recording!
And finally...
0. Passengers... cannot really rank this as a U2 record... but I really like it, very colourful and experimental, worth listening to... or meditating to! Songs I really enjoy are Always Forever Now, the Let's Go Native theme, and of course Sarajevo...
So, on the whole, No Line On The Horizon still really stacks up for me as an album of songs, with not too much of a common thread, but a bit more experimental than the other 00s stuff, more diverse than the 80s stuff, perhaps lacking a Pride, but certainly impressing with Magnificent, a song which brought me to tears on the first day of listening... as per my comments on other albums above, perhaps No Line reminds me most of War... and that, in itself, is a good thing...
1. Achtung... the album that from 1 to 12, hits your eardrums the most constantly, and consistently, all the way through... almost hypnotic, the best album ever made by any rock band... this album probably can never be supplanted in my mind from the no. 1 rank, so it is unfair of me to even involve it these days in a poll like this... how can I bump down the list an album that contains the likes of One, Until The End Of The World, Ultra Violet etc... maybe it's such a great album because it seems most of, if not all of, the songs, germinated out of one original Mother Song, which bore 12 rock with a hip-hop beat offspring... timeless and still sounds futuristic... U2 struck gold here and it is actually unfair to judge any of their other work against this, if a band is only to strike such gold once in a lifetime...
2. Pop... I love this album, I am a hug fan of the colours, the diversity, the textures, I even love the rough edges that are purported to be because "the album was not quite finished" although quite frankly, I am not sure, and never will be, that I buy this line of argument... the sound was very cutting and very mid-90s, similar in sound to bands who were in turn influenced by U2 such as the Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage... Brave and bold, it seemed that they made the album not caring in the slightest what people thought about them, and then got upset when SOME mainstream people ie. radio executives, went a bit cold on it... they should have stuck to their guns and made more records like this, no other rock band I can think of, could switch focus and genres like this so effortlessly, and make such beautiful music...
3. No Line.. today it has slipped to number three, but for most of the last 2.5 months indeed til 2 minutes ago, I have held it up at the number 2 ranking on the list... wonderful collection of songs, possibly out of all U2 albums, this one has the best line up of track 1 thru to track 8... all 8 songs are now stuck in my head and make up a formiddable, pacey, bouncy, pumping line-up of tunes... maybe loses out to Achtung because White As Snow is misplaced, and does not even belong on the album, does not sound like the rest, sounds 'inserted' so there would be 11 songs instead of 10... also, Cedars, although I like it a lot, is not a strong closer... apart from those minor gripes, I love the record, I love songs 1 to 8 and love listening to them in order, over and over...
4. How To Dismantle... lovely album, close to my heart, I hold it in high regard, I love the sheer strength of the key tracks on the album, they have as Larry might say, "weight"... City of Blinding Lights is in my top 5 U2 songs of all time, Sometimes You Can't Make It is U2's second best ever ballad behind One, Vertigo just rocks, Original Of The Species is a hidden gem that still doesn't know how beautiful it is, and Yahweh is a powerful closing track that rounds out the album perfectly... Love And Peace is one of the best live songs I have seen, it has some sort of aura which helps bring the whole live Vertigo tour experience together... yes I would have liked more scorching rock on this album, the middle bit in 'Native Son' ie. Vertigo's ancestor, contains some of the best music U2 will ever make!
5. Boy... Has just pushed Joshua down the list... why? Because it just has an electrifying, bright spark, as some have commented over the years, this is simply the best debut album from a rock band, written by 16 years olds, that has ever been released.... and I am not even factoring in I Will Follow... rather, what makes this piece of work so great from such a baby band, comes from the rawer, rockier songs, where those layers of guitars and vocals showcase that INTENSITY this band would later make an art form of... for example, my favourite songs are The Electric Co and Twightlight... great emotion and complexity there, an understanding of bringing emotional intensity out in the music...
6. War.. alas poor Joshua Tree, it has just been bumped down again... War, in my opinion, is U2's first true work of art as an album... just about every song is a strong, powerful tune in its own right... not just the old faves like Sunday and New Year's... but this one has underrated classics on board, including Surrender, Drowning Man, Like A Song, as the pillars holding up the big tunes, and then you have the experimental tunes that somehow WORK as real songs, which does not always happen with U2's experiments... I refer to the likes of Refugee and 40, and of course that little hidden gem that BB King and the Gallagher brothers reportedly adore, 'Seconds'... brilliant album from a bunch of 22 year olds.... I might even say this is a great collection of songs, but the album is not... not... not quite... I don't know... LINEAR???
7. Joshua... I love the album, but in many ways it has slipped down the list over the years, because although it's a masterpiece, there is a certain 'sameness' in the record that can make it seem, at times, a little colourless... look, Streets is again in my top 5, With Or Withour You is a unique piece of work in rock and roll history, it's a wonderfully innovative song, Bullet The Blue Sky is hard political rock with Hendrix guitars signalling a development in style by Edge that would not become fully apparent until Achtung... perhaps the album becomes a little melancholy as it goes on... having said that, the intrinsically divine melancholy feeling at the heart of one of my favourite songs of all time, In God's Country, espouses that very same feeling at the heart of the album of which I have just taken issue with... so I have contradictory feelings at the moment..
As for the remainder... like the Professor and Mary-Anne in the Gilligan's Island intro, they get less detail in their own right as I am a bit more ambivalent, as much as I love them all:
8. Zooropa... my first real introduction to U2 which I do love, but which is very experimental and clearly not designed by the band to be their best work or a masterpiece... I love the title track, Stay and Lemon in particular
9. All That You Can't... apart from the glorious Beautiful Day and thumping Elevation, I find this one a little flat and lacking in diversity... Put this one on acid and you have No Line On The Horizon!!!
10. Unforgettable Fire... has my favourite song in the universe, Pride, as its stand out track, but having such a wonderful classic etched in space and time, plus Bad and the title track, does not mean this experimental album should be held up as the masterpiece some proclaim it to be... a great sign of things to come...
11. Rattle and Hum... as people have said, not really an album in its own right... like Joshua, a little flat and dry... still containing masterpiece individual tunes such as All I Want Is You, and hidden gems like Hawkmoon...
12. October... bizarre little album, a bit spooky even, with its religious overtones, its cathederal-like echoyness even more echoey than usual for our Edge... Love Gloria, think I Fall Down is a lost/ignored classic... but just on the whole, the album lacks something... coherent words maybe lol as Bono lost them in the process of recording!
And finally...
0. Passengers... cannot really rank this as a U2 record... but I really like it, very colourful and experimental, worth listening to... or meditating to! Songs I really enjoy are Always Forever Now, the Let's Go Native theme, and of course Sarajevo...
So, on the whole, No Line On The Horizon still really stacks up for me as an album of songs, with not too much of a common thread, but a bit more experimental than the other 00s stuff, more diverse than the 80s stuff, perhaps lacking a Pride, but certainly impressing with Magnificent, a song which brought me to tears on the first day of listening... as per my comments on other albums above, perhaps No Line reminds me most of War... and that, in itself, is a good thing...
a very good album that was terribly marketed.
zoopop
Rock n' Roll Doggie
OP
OP
mikal
Blue Crack Addict
the album doesn't need to be saved. it's great. whether it's marketed well or not has nothing to do with the music.
Amiarockstar
The Fly
Good album not great....still need to see it live...if the audience responds great to it then awesome.
beraghrovers
Babyface
My Definitive List as follows:
Actung Baby
Joshua Tree
UF
NLOTH
Zooropa
War
Boy
HTDAAB
Pop
October
ATYCLB
Rattle & Hum
Passengers
Actung Baby
Joshua Tree
UF
NLOTH
Zooropa
War
Boy
HTDAAB
Pop
October
ATYCLB
Rattle & Hum
Passengers
Cooper_Pariah
The Fly
NLOTH was a bit of a let down for me. There are some really great tracks, but also some really stupid ones. Stand Up Comedy really is awful to me.
My list:
Pop
Achtung Baby
Joshua Tree
Boy
War
ATYCLB
HTDAAB
Unforgettable Fire
NLOTH
October
Rattle and Hum
My list:
Pop
Achtung Baby
Joshua Tree
Boy
War
ATYCLB
HTDAAB
Unforgettable Fire
NLOTH
October
Rattle and Hum
Yay! Finally, someone else who ranks TJT at 7!
alanah
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Jimmy Jazz
The Fly
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2004
- Messages
- 239
Achtung Baby
Joshua Tree
Zooropa
All That You Can't Leave Behind
Boy
Pop
The Unforgettable Fire
War
Rattle & Hum
No Line On The Horizon
October
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Joshua Tree
Zooropa
All That You Can't Leave Behind
Boy
Pop
The Unforgettable Fire
War
Rattle & Hum
No Line On The Horizon
October
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
sue4u2
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
AB
JT
NLOTH
TUF
POP
Zooropa
War
ATYCLB
Rattle & Hum
HTDAAB
October
Boy
JT
NLOTH
TUF
POP
Zooropa
War
ATYCLB
Rattle & Hum
HTDAAB
October
Boy
POP-ROMANCER
War Child
POP
Achtung Baby
No Line On The Horizon
All That You Can't Leave Behind
The Joshua Tree
Zooropa
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
War
Boy
The Unforgettable Fire
Rattle & Hum
October
Achtung Baby
No Line On The Horizon
All That You Can't Leave Behind
The Joshua Tree
Zooropa
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
War
Boy
The Unforgettable Fire
Rattle & Hum
October
standrums
War Child
top 3 tie - in no particular order - NLOTH - UF - Zooropa
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
October
War
Boy
Bomb
ATYCLB
Zooropa
R&H
Pop
TUF
NLOTH
JT
AB
War
Boy
Bomb
ATYCLB
Zooropa
R&H
Pop
TUF
NLOTH
JT
AB
Peterrrrr
New Yorker
AB
NLOTH
Zooropa
UF
JT
NLOTH
Zooropa
UF
JT
gvox
Ghost of Love
Just going by how I feel today (and this can change at any moment):
Joshua Tree
The Unforgettable Fire
Achtung Baby
War
No Line on The Horizon
October
Boy
Pop
All That You Can't Leave Behind (*see note for HTDAAB, it applies to an extent here also)
Rattle N Hum
Zooropa
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (and this is because after receiving the Bonus CD of alternate versions and listening to them at high volume in all their mastered glory, I'd like to strangle U2 for picking the versions they did for the final cut of the album
)
Joshua Tree
The Unforgettable Fire
Achtung Baby
War
No Line on The Horizon
October
Boy
Pop
All That You Can't Leave Behind (*see note for HTDAAB, it applies to an extent here also)
Rattle N Hum
Zooropa
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (and this is because after receiving the Bonus CD of alternate versions and listening to them at high volume in all their mastered glory, I'd like to strangle U2 for picking the versions they did for the final cut of the album
)
gvox
Ghost of Love
I don't agree with your JT/AB placement, but I have to admire your love of October. Great stuff.
popacrobat
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
im guessing that list went worst to first, otherwise color me confused.
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