- When The Fly kicks in at the start, followed later on by the solo that turns the whole song into that urgent chaos, where it sounds like the whole world is collapsing around him. I was 13/14 when Achtung was released and it was to me then what Nevermind was to millions of people a year later. The Fly was simply the fucking coolest thing I'd ever heard, and as I grew older and understood the song further and further it just got better and better. Of course I ran out and bought achtung as soon as it came out, and I was hooked and loved the ride of u2 through 91-98, right at their most exciting time.
- All of One, right from the opening, but particularly where it goes up a notch in urgency right at "You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl. And I can't be holding on, when all you've got is hope" then leads into the last chorus, where the first chorus was more a suggestion, this one is really pleading. One, to me, is simply the best song ever written by anyone ever. Even in The Beatles dreams they were never this good.
- Mysterious Ways - following Edge's guitar through to the solo, to the point where Bono sings the "one day you arrive, back on the scene...." line and the guitar becomes a lot more free flowing. You get the feeling that he's succumbed to the temptation and he's at ease with it. The "it's alright's" now sound like he believes it is, not like he's trying to convince himself. Your conscience is a pest after all...
- The opening of Acrobat. You know there's absolutely no way into this song but down....
- Until The End of the World - Have you ever noticed with pretty much all the songs on Achtung Baby (with a couple of exceptions) that with every one of them, the themes and stories are dark and awful - lust, betrayal etc - and the songs reflect them, are generally pretty chaotic and certainly dark, but at the mere mention of the word 'love' they all lift into something else, even if it's just in the short term. It's an acknowledgement that no matter how much awful baggage comes with it, and all the terrible things we do with it, love is a higher power above all. It's most striking in Until The End of the World, a song about the ultimate betrayal. Betraying someone you love, to send them to die. Yet the song still completely lifts out of it in the 'love, love, love' parts, only to quickly spiral straight back down again.
Honestly, I cannot for a second understand those who believe that either ATYCLB or HTDAAB are even in the same stratosphere as Achtung. But I'll leave that at that....
