14 Albums??

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doctorwho said:
Well, let's see...

Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry all perform on it = U2

Brian Eno is on it = U2

Guest performers, true, but guests on other albums too = U2

U2 performs "Miss Sarajevo" in concert and put the song on a U2 "Best Of" album = U2

In 1996, Edge was asked when U2 was going to release their next album and Edge replied, "We just gave you an album!" = U2

Sorry, it's a U2 album. :yes:
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Exactly.

And it's not just a U2 album, but a horrifically under-rated U2 album. Their third best, if you ask me.
 
im sorry but if they wanted it to be a U2 album they would have put the name U2 on it

notice how it is not listed in the U2 discography on U2.com

it may be a project that includes all members of the band, but its not a "U2" album
 
Chizip said:
im sorry but if they wanted it to be a U2 album they would have put the name U2 on it

notice how it is not listed in the U2 discography on U2.com

it may be a project that includes all members of the band, but its not a "U2" album
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:up: :up: :up: U2 approves this post:up:
 
Here's the list of 14 albums.........odd that someone listed Passengers and WAIA in their lists, when the band's website lists neither. The former isn't a U2 release (although I usually consider it to be one of their albums) and the latter is NOT an album.:

1. Boy
2. October
3. War
4. Under A Blood Red Sky
5. The Unforgettable Fire
6. Joshua Tree
7. Rattle and Hum
8. Achtung Baby
9. Zooropa
10. Pop
11. The Best Of 1980-1990
12. All That You Can't Leave Behind
13. The Best Of 1990-2000
14. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
 
Chizip said:
im sorry but if they wanted it to be a U2 album they would have put the name U2 on it
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Ever checked the U2 Best Of 1990-2000 tracklisting?

And did you read doctorwho's post? When asked in 1996 about when the next U2 album would be, Edge said they'd just released one. Funny, I thought Passengers came out in 1995, not Zooropa!

notice how it is not listed in the U2 discography on U2.com
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So what? This is the website that ran an article centred around Bad being played in Paris when in fact, no such thing happened. U2.com has no credibility.
 
I found this on Amazon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

An Amazing Collaborative Effort, January 16, 2005
Reviewer: Nik Zero "The Public Image" - See all my reviews
They wanted so desperately to call it a U2 album that they deemed it a failure. Or, at best, a partial success.

Passengers was a group made up of the members of U2, along with Brian Eno and whoever else this collective could drag along. Other members included Howie B and Luciano Pavorotti, for what it's worth...

Listen. "Original Soundtracks 1" wasn't meant to be a U2 album, nor an Eno album. It was instead the rather fruitful result of a collaborative effort between five men and a few guests. Brian Eno hatched the idea as a series of soundtrack pieces for films that don't actually exist; although one or two of the created works ended up in real films, the rest were based on purely fictional descriptions Eno created for the band to work backwards from.

Of the few that found their way into actual cinema, "Miss Sarajevo" is the most immediately affecting. The first time I heard this track, I was weirded out by the Pavorotti part, but with each subsequent listen, I've not only grown to love it, but I have realized how beautiful a contribution that vocal part was. It's been known to reduce me to tears every now and again.

Anyway, you can tell which songs are for fake movies by reading the liner notes. Eno has used anagrams to encode the names of all involved in the recording of a particular track.

All in all, this album is brilliant if you're not expecting a conventional U2 (or even Eno) album. If you can avoid the connotations each artist brings to the table, you'll most assuredly enjoy this album's sublime attention to detail.
 
Seriously, I don't care if it's U2 or not. ;)

Clearly with the name, The Passengers, it's not a U2 album per se.

However, with songs like "Your Blue Room" and "Miss Sarajevo", one does have to wonder. After all, both of these songs were released on U2 works (b-sides, "Best Of"), and the latter is now performed in concert. Edge also stated how hard U2 worked on "Miss Sarajevo".

I would really call it half-U2, half-Passengers. The songs I like best on the CD are all U2 sounding songs.

However, even the heavy Eno influence makes much of this album sound like the more ambient aspects of JT and especially UF, where U2 had some non-vocal tracks (as b-sides and on the album).

Therefore, while in name it's not U2, in my mind, it is. And it nicely fills that long 4 year gap between "Zooropa" and "Pop" (of course, U2 did release a lot of material - including collaborations - during that time).
 
Isn't this basically a matter of people who think Original Soundtracks 1 is shit saying it's not a U2 album, and people who think it's brilliant saying it is a U2 album?

I think it's brilliant.

And if it's not a U2 album, then why did U2 include it in 'The Complete U2' digital boxset?

It IS a U2 album :wink:
 
I guess that it could be seen as a U2 album + guests. In the same way that The Wanderer is considered a U2 song. The fact that "U2" does not appear on the album sleeve does work against this point. Is it possible that they kept their name off incase it didn't go over well? (i'm only half serious) :wink:

I don't see it as a U2 album because I feel like this was too much of a collaborative effort to be considered solely U2's. That's not to say that I think it's crap though, I quite like Original Soundtracks 1. (good theory though namkcuR, there's probably some truth to that).
 
if anything its more of a brian eno album than a U2 album. if you look at the list of credits eno's name is the first one listed.

bb king has when love comes to town on his greatest hits cd, does that mean its a bb king song or rattle and hum is a bb king album? no, it was a collaboration he was a part of that he wanted to include on his greatest hits cd.

nobody has answered the question that if it is a U2 album, why does the bands name appear nowhere on the packaging?

And why are the band members names listed after Eno as individual Passengers, as if they were contributing toan Eno project instead of the other way around?
 
It could have been a U2 album. I think they (and when I say they, I mean Larry) were just too scared to call it that, lest they alienate their fans.
 
RademR said:
true, but then technically "Gangs of New York soundtrack" is a u2 album :wink:
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Chizip said:
bb king has when love comes to town on his greatest hits cd, does that mean its a bb king song or rattle and hum is a bb king album? no, it was a collaboration he was a part of that he wanted to include on his greatest hits cd.
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If U2 were heavily involved with the whole album and those albums were credited to a single pseudonym that happened to include every U2 member plus their longtime producer, then yeah, there'd probably be some wiggle room on that.

That's like saying that Rattle and Hum isn't a U2 album because Sterling Magee gets a track with no U2 involvement. We're looking at the project as a whole, not cherry-picking individual songs (but if we were, God knows what we'd make of the "Miss Sarajevo" single, where they "cover" two U2 songs).

If there were any other U2 "side projects" that had as much involvement as the Passengers project, you could draw an analogy to that, but there isn't (save maybe the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack--kind of the Lanois Passengers--which makes it easy for us by giving each track its own credits), so there's no reason for all the lame analogies.
Chizip said:
And why are the band members names listed after Eno as individual Passengers, as if they were contributing toan Eno project instead of the other way around?
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If we knew that, we could probably put this debate to rest. I think it was purely for marketing reasons (like, they gave the album to the record company, they pissed themselves, boom, they're the Passengers now), but who knows? That doesn't definitely say anything.

I don't think you can get too bogged down with semantics in music. I mean, Paul McCartney released some stuff as just "Wings" and not "Paul McCartney & Wings," but I don't think there's anyone who'd argue they're not McCartney works.

Anyway, I think Original Soundtracks No. 1 is a pretty important part of their discography either way, and since it does involve every member of U2, it's basically essential to a complete U2 library, even if not every single track is U2 up the wazoo.
 
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They included Miss Sarajevo and Your Blue Room in the Best of 1990-2000, so.... :hmm: Well, I think Original Soundtracks 1 it is a U2 album in theory, but not officialy.
 
Chizip said:
if anything its more of a brian eno album than a U2 album. if you look at the list of credits eno's name is the first one listed.

bb king has when love comes to town on his greatest hits cd, does that mean its a bb king song or rattle and hum is a bb king album? no, it was a collaboration he was a part of that he wanted to include on his greatest hits cd.

nobody has answered the question that if it is a U2 album, why does the bands name appear nowhere on the packaging?

And why are the band members names listed after Eno as individual Passengers, as if they were contributing toan Eno project instead of the other way around?
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That's because everything you wrote is 100% correct (except for the fact that R&H can't be a BB King album as he was only on one song).

OS1 was a "side project". As such, it wasn't meant to be a U2 release. U2 stated that because the work was VERY experimental and collaborative, they didn't feel it was fair to their fans to call this a U2 release.

Of course, by not calling it a U2 release, it received virtually no attention in the U.S. It debuted in the 70's on the Billboard charts, and I think fell off the very next week! If this album even came close to going Gold, that's a major victory. My guess is that it's probably sold no more than a few hundred thousand copies in the U.S. to date. It's amazing that so many fans at the concert know "Miss Sarajevo" so well, as this was not a hit in the U.S. and, as I just wrote, the album received no air time or promotion.

That said, OS1 was a MAJOR side project. This wasn't a one off song (like "Hold Me...") or appearing as a guest artist for one or two songs (ala BB King). This was a full album, where all the members of U2 worked on each and every song.

So while the members of U2 and Pavarotti and others were all "passengers" on Brian Eno's "ride (hence the band moniker), as this was such a major item, I think it's fair to say that this was also no ordinary side project that could be dismissed as "oh, it's not U2".
 
typhoon said:


If U2 were heavily involved with the whole album and those albums were credited to a single pseudonym that happened to include every U2 member plus their longtime producer, then yeah, there'd probably be some wiggle room on that.

That's like saying that Rattle and Hum isn't a U2 album because Sterling Magee gets a track with no U2 involvement. We're looking at the project as a whole, not cherry-picking individual songs (but if we were, God knows what we'd make of the "Miss Sarajevo" single, where they "cover" two U2 songs).

If there were any other U2 "side projects" that had as much involvement as the Passengers project, you could draw an analogy to that, but there isn't (save maybe the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack--kind of the Lanois Passengers--which makes it easy for us by giving each track its own credits), so there's no reason for all the lame analogies.

If we knew that, we could probably put this debate to rest. I think it was purely for marketing reasons (like, they gave the album to the record company, they pissed themselves, boom, they're the Passengers now), but who knows? That doesn't definitely say anything.

I don't think you can get too bogged down with semantics in music. I mean, Paul McCartney released some stuff as just "Wings" and not "Paul McCartney & Wings," but I don't think there's anyone who'd argue they're not McCartney works.

Anyway, I think Original Soundtracks No. 1 is a pretty important part of their discography either way, and since it does involve every member of U2, it's basically essential to a complete U2 library, even if not every single track is U2 up the wazoo.
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This post wins.

I wonder if some people here really understand the concept of using a pseudonym.
 
I still have a question left:

Why cannot it equally well be regarded as a Brian Eno album?
 
namkcuR said:

And if it's not a U2 album, then why did U2 include it in 'The Complete U2' digital boxset?

It IS a U2 album :wink:
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:up:

And if it's not a U2 album, then why did U2 include it in 'The Complete U2' digital boxset?

(because no one noticed what you said :) )
 
doctorwho said:

Therefore, while in name it's not U2, in my mind, it is. And it nicely fills that long 4 year gap between "Zooropa" and "Pop" (of course, U2 did release a lot of material - including collaborations - during that time).
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:up: I think the same way
 
U2Man said:
Why cannot it equally well be regarded as a Brian Eno album?
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Well, there are four members of U2 and only like three aspects of Brahman Eno.
 
Brian Eno did a massive amount of pre-production and the album was then recorded very quickly after that when U2 came into the studio to round off the songs, that's probably the reason why his name is first on the list. Also, I'm sure I've read Edge say somewhere that at least one song was 'basically Brian Eno' to the core.

Why call it Passengers is a very good question, particularly when you look at how invovled Eno was with Talking Heads - producing, co-writing credits, etc - without a change of name. The answer probably lies between them not feeling (I'm thinking particularly of Larry Mullen here) that it was a U2 album, and partially them being afraid of the backlash (which definitely came - I remember reading Bono's rebuttal to the backlash in Propaganda a couple of years after Original Soundtracks 1 came out).

Apart from everything else though, it is an essential part of the U2 catalogue, and perhaps the moniker Passengers was something that allowed them to express themselves in ways that they might have felt constrained to do under the title U2.

Anyway, what we should do is forget about why or how it should be classified and thank them that they actually released it. There's some great stuff on there, particularly the stuff that you can go back to after a long time of not listening and pick up on - One Minute Warning, Theme From Let's Go Native, etc.
 
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