namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
A statement like this makes it clear that you have little understanding of why people who dislike ATYCLB and/or Bomb do so.
Rate The Official Albums + 1-sentence comment on each
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A statement like this makes it clear that you have little understanding of why people who dislike ATYCLB and/or Bomb do so.
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
Well said! 00s U2 apologists really have a very limited understanding of why some people dislike certain things about the last 2 albums. But yet they try and call them names, carelessly throw around words like "troll" and insult them in public to get them to in some way blindly appreciate the last 2 albums. Every now and then a question such as "then why are you still here?" will pop up... ah good times!
Jimmy Jazz
The Fly
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- 239
BOY - 8/10
Strong debut which shows potential.
OCTOBER - 5/10
Some good songs, but mostly forgettable ones.
WAR - 8/10
U2 trying to be The Clash and it works.
THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE - 7/10
Great sound and has some of their best songs yet but, except for Bad, loses me a bit after the first four.
THE JOSHUA TREE - 10/10
Duh, it's a classic.
RATTLE & HUM - 7.5/10
- Could be a 9/10 if it were more a traditional album (ie replace all live tracks with A Room At The Heartbreak Hotel and Hallelujah Here She Comes)
ACHTUNG BABY - 27/10
- Probably the best album ever made and the best change any band has done.
ZOOROPA - 9.5/10
- Perfect follow up to Achtung.
POP - 7.5/10
- Album has it's problems but there is something special going on with the songwriting here that I can't quite put my finger on.
ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND - 9/10
- Great album contrary to popular belief.
HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB - 2/10
- Pretty much nothing redeeming in this album.
Strong debut which shows potential.
OCTOBER - 5/10
Some good songs, but mostly forgettable ones.
WAR - 8/10
U2 trying to be The Clash and it works.
THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE - 7/10
Great sound and has some of their best songs yet but, except for Bad, loses me a bit after the first four.
THE JOSHUA TREE - 10/10
Duh, it's a classic.
RATTLE & HUM - 7.5/10
- Could be a 9/10 if it were more a traditional album (ie replace all live tracks with A Room At The Heartbreak Hotel and Hallelujah Here She Comes)
ACHTUNG BABY - 27/10
- Probably the best album ever made and the best change any band has done.
ZOOROPA - 9.5/10
- Perfect follow up to Achtung.
POP - 7.5/10
- Album has it's problems but there is something special going on with the songwriting here that I can't quite put my finger on.
ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND - 9/10
- Great album contrary to popular belief.
HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB - 2/10
- Pretty much nothing redeeming in this album.
LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
This is particularly easy for you of all people to say, I imagine, considering the last two albums are among your least favorites by the band.
I don't think the people who hate the 00's albums think the way they do because they're trolls or idiots. I think the majority simply dislike them because they're not to their taste, while an extremely vocal minority dislike them because of their personal feelings about Bono and/or the way the band markets themselves.
But they're not trolls, no.
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
Screwtape2
Blue Crack Addict
I think you are completely wrong about how fans would react. A lot of people here love Mercy and wish the band would get darker/more moody. That's what Babyface would give them sonically. People also want Edge to do interesting things and Some Days would provide that.
namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
Boy ***1/2
A fresh, exciting, debut that sends your pulse racing on tracks like I Will Follow, Out Of Control, Stories For Boys, and The Electric Co. and offers a great first glimpse at that special, dark, U2 sound that would be developed later on, on tracks like Twilight, An Cat Dubh/Into The Heart, The Ocean, A Day Without Me, Another Time Another Place, and Shadows And Tall Trees. Would have been even better if 11 O'Clock Tick Tock had been on it.
October ***
A sophmore record that perhaps has never been what it was supposed to be before the lyrics were stolen and it had to be essentially re-written from memory - tracks like Gloria, I Threw A Brick, Rejoice, Fire, and With A Shout further develop the fist-pumping element that would dominate much of U2's 80 work, while tracks like the title track, Tomorrow, and Scarlet show a haunting subtlety that U2 would not come back too very often. The title track alone is worth the price.
War ****
The record where U2 found its permanent voice and cemented their identity, where tracks like Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day - the first truly brilliant classic songs of their career - as well as Seconds, Like A Song, Two Hearts Beat As One, and Surrender perfected the fist-pumping, heart-on-sleeve element that would come to define U2, and tracks like Drowning Man and future trademark concert closer "40" would foreshadow the atmospherics and the emotional/spiritual plane that would eventually make U2 legends.
The Unforgettable Fire ****
A record in which U2 dove head-first into the world of atmospherics and exchanged the angry, loud, brash attitude of their first three records for a more observant, contemplative, mature attitude, and in these two things, added considerable musical and emotional depth to their 'fist-pumping, heart-on-sleeve' element - this is abundantly clear on tracks like A Sort Of Homecoming, Wire, the epic, indescribable title track, and the uber-classics Pride(In The Name Of Love) and Bad - while also immersing themselves in music that was less anthemic and less U2, and nearly wholly atmospheric, as evident in tracks like Promenade, 4th Of July, Indian Summer Sky, Elvis Presley And America, and MLK. The overall product could have benefited from the inclusion of b-sides like Love Comes Tumbling and Bass Trap, but it's still a great record as it is, and one cannot overestimate the importance of it in U2's growth as musicians, because it was the record where U2 first entered the emotional plane that they would nearly have a monopoly on for a long time, and that made so many people feel such love for them over the years.
The Joshua Tree *****
Easily the most cinematic record of their career, the record on which the sound still referred to today as 'the U2 sound' is the most prominent, this is one of U2's absolute masterpieces, - it was the peak of Edge's chiming era, it was arguably the peak of Bono's vocal career(although he gives a superb vocal performance on AB as well) - and throughout the record, from 'Where The Streets Have No Name' to 'Bullet The Blue Sky' to 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' to 'Exit' to 'Running To Stand Still' to 'One Tree Hill' to 'Mothers Of The Disappeared' to my personal favorite 'With Or Without You', it is by far the most passionate record of their career, and with such an impressive and broad spiritual range - from the absolutely uplifting(Where The Streets Have No Name, Red Hill Mining Town) to the darkest despair(Exit, Running To Stand Still, Bullet The Blue Sky, Mothers Of The Disappeared) to the place where the two combine to form a stunningly complex emotional viewpoint(I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, One Tree Hill, With Or Without You) - it is no wonder that so many people are so very attached to this majestic record. What makes it truly incredible is the prolific nature of the sessions that it came from - the b-sides are mostly a-side quality and had this been a double album, it would've have gone from 'Top 50 of all time' calibre to 'Top 10 of all time' calibre.
Rattle And Hum ***1/2
After reaching the end of their first musical thread on JT, this is the record on which they first started the experimentation that would dominate much of their work in the 90s - here they dabbed in country on tracks like Love Rescue Me and When Love Comes To Town, dark soul music on tracks like Hawkmoon 269, Heartland, and God Part II - but despite this, the tracks that most sounded like JT material - Desire, Angel Of Harlem, and All I Want Is You - were still the big hits, and despite the high quality of some of this studio work(Angel and AIWIY are brilliant) and the high quality of some of the live performances on the record, the whole is plagued by poor sequencing and total lack of flow.
Achtung Baby *****
Arguably the masterpiece of U2's career, this record takes the sound U2 spent all of the 80s creating, evolving, perfecting, and refining, and turns it on its head, adding far more nuance, subtlety, and depth to it then ever before, and allowing it to come from a far more introspective place than ever before - while making this record, the band was divided against itself creatively, their personal relationships were going through a rough time(Edge's first marriage failed and Bono and Ali had some issues), and the world changed(communism ended, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed), and all of the pain, friction, uncertainty, fragile mental states, frustration, and a million other emotions associated with all of these things led to the most personal record the band has ever made - they ended up taking the core soul of their sound from the 80s and building it back up while experimenting with sound ranging from dance music to electronic music to grunge music to metal music and the result of this new sound mixed with everything they were going through was an incredibly moving darkness - not of anger but of pain and sadness and love - that was masked, perhaps intentionally, in all of these brilliant new electronic, trippy soundscapes. By far the emotionally deepest record of their career, and arguably the musical high point for all four members.
Zooropa *****
With the overwhelming critical and fan success and praise of Achtung Baby and the subsequent ground-breaking revolutionary ZooTV tour, U2 felt like they could do absolutely anything - as evidenced in the line "and I don't know the limit, the limit of what we got" in this album's title track - and, that being the case, put out the most uncalculated, free-spirited, experimental record of their career(except for Passengers - yes, contrary to popular belief, Zooropa was more out there than Pop), and probably because of that, this addition, rather than a follow-up, to Achtung Baby is just as brilliant, albeit in different ways, as the latter, showcasing U2 stretching their artistic muscle on tracks like the epic title track, the polarizing Numb, Lemon, and Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, the restrained rocker Dirty Day, and the pop-country The Wanderer, while at the same time proving that they could still make very U2-sounding songs while still sounding fresh on tracks like the classic, gorgeous Stay(Faraway, So Close) and The First Time. I would also add that with tracks like Babyface, Lemon, Stay, Some Days Are Better Than Others, The First Time, and The Wanderer, this record was a more artistically successful 'pop' record than ATYCLB, when they were trying to make a pop record.
Pop ****1/2
The product of the highest point of ambition U2 ever reached, this is the hardest rocking record U2 have ever put out, and the techno atmosphere of a few of the tracks, along with perhaps its somewhat unfinished state(something that was magnified after U2 put out drastically different single versions of some of these songs and played drastically different live versions of some of them, and often took to calling the record 'unfinished' in subsequent years), led to it being far less appreciated than it should have been, and if Mofo, Last Night On Earth, Miami, and Please had been more like they were live, and the absolutely kick-ass stand-alone single Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill had been included, it would have been indisputably one of the greatest rock albums in recent history and certainly much more highly regarded in U2's canon.
All That You Can't Leave Behind ****
A record that was made with two goals in mind - to make a 'pop' album, and to make an album that would sound like 'four guys in a room' and reclaim many of the fans they felt that they had lost with Zooropa and Pop - I dock this record a star not so much because of what's on it, but more because of what's not on it - I loved this record when it first came out, it was the first U2 record that I got when it was actually released, and I listened to it end to end all the time - but after eight years, I can't forgive the fact that The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Stateless, and Falling At Your Feet - the three 'U2'-credited MDH tracks - were not included on the album, since they were recorded during the same time period, and since they would have made the album 5x better while not at all deviating from the 'pop album' goal or the 'four guys in a room' goal. But overall a very enjoyable listen, not at all boring the way much of Bomb is to me, because they were still attempting something new, to grow as musicians, with tracks like Stuck In A Moment, In A Little While, Wild Honey, When I Look At The World, and Grace, and the ones that weren't as 'new', like Beautiful Day, Elevation, Walk On, Kite, and New York, were still interesting enough to warrant listen after listen, although today I find myself bored of Walk On.
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb **1/2
A record that just sounds stale for at least half the time, that offers little the band hasn't done before and better, and that suffers from the worst production by far of any U2 record - the saving graces are A Man And A Woman, Fast Cars, One Step Closer, Love And Peace Or Else, and Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own(and this one takes half its time before it gets interesting). I loved City Of Blinding Lights when it was new, but I've grown totally bored of it. The record would've been helped immensely if Electrical Storm and The Hands That Built America had been saved for it.
A fresh, exciting, debut that sends your pulse racing on tracks like I Will Follow, Out Of Control, Stories For Boys, and The Electric Co. and offers a great first glimpse at that special, dark, U2 sound that would be developed later on, on tracks like Twilight, An Cat Dubh/Into The Heart, The Ocean, A Day Without Me, Another Time Another Place, and Shadows And Tall Trees. Would have been even better if 11 O'Clock Tick Tock had been on it.
October ***
A sophmore record that perhaps has never been what it was supposed to be before the lyrics were stolen and it had to be essentially re-written from memory - tracks like Gloria, I Threw A Brick, Rejoice, Fire, and With A Shout further develop the fist-pumping element that would dominate much of U2's 80 work, while tracks like the title track, Tomorrow, and Scarlet show a haunting subtlety that U2 would not come back too very often. The title track alone is worth the price.
War ****
The record where U2 found its permanent voice and cemented their identity, where tracks like Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day - the first truly brilliant classic songs of their career - as well as Seconds, Like A Song, Two Hearts Beat As One, and Surrender perfected the fist-pumping, heart-on-sleeve element that would come to define U2, and tracks like Drowning Man and future trademark concert closer "40" would foreshadow the atmospherics and the emotional/spiritual plane that would eventually make U2 legends.
The Unforgettable Fire ****
A record in which U2 dove head-first into the world of atmospherics and exchanged the angry, loud, brash attitude of their first three records for a more observant, contemplative, mature attitude, and in these two things, added considerable musical and emotional depth to their 'fist-pumping, heart-on-sleeve' element - this is abundantly clear on tracks like A Sort Of Homecoming, Wire, the epic, indescribable title track, and the uber-classics Pride(In The Name Of Love) and Bad - while also immersing themselves in music that was less anthemic and less U2, and nearly wholly atmospheric, as evident in tracks like Promenade, 4th Of July, Indian Summer Sky, Elvis Presley And America, and MLK. The overall product could have benefited from the inclusion of b-sides like Love Comes Tumbling and Bass Trap, but it's still a great record as it is, and one cannot overestimate the importance of it in U2's growth as musicians, because it was the record where U2 first entered the emotional plane that they would nearly have a monopoly on for a long time, and that made so many people feel such love for them over the years.
The Joshua Tree *****
Easily the most cinematic record of their career, the record on which the sound still referred to today as 'the U2 sound' is the most prominent, this is one of U2's absolute masterpieces, - it was the peak of Edge's chiming era, it was arguably the peak of Bono's vocal career(although he gives a superb vocal performance on AB as well) - and throughout the record, from 'Where The Streets Have No Name' to 'Bullet The Blue Sky' to 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' to 'Exit' to 'Running To Stand Still' to 'One Tree Hill' to 'Mothers Of The Disappeared' to my personal favorite 'With Or Without You', it is by far the most passionate record of their career, and with such an impressive and broad spiritual range - from the absolutely uplifting(Where The Streets Have No Name, Red Hill Mining Town) to the darkest despair(Exit, Running To Stand Still, Bullet The Blue Sky, Mothers Of The Disappeared) to the place where the two combine to form a stunningly complex emotional viewpoint(I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, One Tree Hill, With Or Without You) - it is no wonder that so many people are so very attached to this majestic record. What makes it truly incredible is the prolific nature of the sessions that it came from - the b-sides are mostly a-side quality and had this been a double album, it would've have gone from 'Top 50 of all time' calibre to 'Top 10 of all time' calibre.
Rattle And Hum ***1/2
After reaching the end of their first musical thread on JT, this is the record on which they first started the experimentation that would dominate much of their work in the 90s - here they dabbed in country on tracks like Love Rescue Me and When Love Comes To Town, dark soul music on tracks like Hawkmoon 269, Heartland, and God Part II - but despite this, the tracks that most sounded like JT material - Desire, Angel Of Harlem, and All I Want Is You - were still the big hits, and despite the high quality of some of this studio work(Angel and AIWIY are brilliant) and the high quality of some of the live performances on the record, the whole is plagued by poor sequencing and total lack of flow.
Achtung Baby *****
Arguably the masterpiece of U2's career, this record takes the sound U2 spent all of the 80s creating, evolving, perfecting, and refining, and turns it on its head, adding far more nuance, subtlety, and depth to it then ever before, and allowing it to come from a far more introspective place than ever before - while making this record, the band was divided against itself creatively, their personal relationships were going through a rough time(Edge's first marriage failed and Bono and Ali had some issues), and the world changed(communism ended, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed), and all of the pain, friction, uncertainty, fragile mental states, frustration, and a million other emotions associated with all of these things led to the most personal record the band has ever made - they ended up taking the core soul of their sound from the 80s and building it back up while experimenting with sound ranging from dance music to electronic music to grunge music to metal music and the result of this new sound mixed with everything they were going through was an incredibly moving darkness - not of anger but of pain and sadness and love - that was masked, perhaps intentionally, in all of these brilliant new electronic, trippy soundscapes. By far the emotionally deepest record of their career, and arguably the musical high point for all four members.
Zooropa *****
With the overwhelming critical and fan success and praise of Achtung Baby and the subsequent ground-breaking revolutionary ZooTV tour, U2 felt like they could do absolutely anything - as evidenced in the line "and I don't know the limit, the limit of what we got" in this album's title track - and, that being the case, put out the most uncalculated, free-spirited, experimental record of their career(except for Passengers - yes, contrary to popular belief, Zooropa was more out there than Pop), and probably because of that, this addition, rather than a follow-up, to Achtung Baby is just as brilliant, albeit in different ways, as the latter, showcasing U2 stretching their artistic muscle on tracks like the epic title track, the polarizing Numb, Lemon, and Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, the restrained rocker Dirty Day, and the pop-country The Wanderer, while at the same time proving that they could still make very U2-sounding songs while still sounding fresh on tracks like the classic, gorgeous Stay(Faraway, So Close) and The First Time. I would also add that with tracks like Babyface, Lemon, Stay, Some Days Are Better Than Others, The First Time, and The Wanderer, this record was a more artistically successful 'pop' record than ATYCLB, when they were trying to make a pop record.
Pop ****1/2
The product of the highest point of ambition U2 ever reached, this is the hardest rocking record U2 have ever put out, and the techno atmosphere of a few of the tracks, along with perhaps its somewhat unfinished state(something that was magnified after U2 put out drastically different single versions of some of these songs and played drastically different live versions of some of them, and often took to calling the record 'unfinished' in subsequent years), led to it being far less appreciated than it should have been, and if Mofo, Last Night On Earth, Miami, and Please had been more like they were live, and the absolutely kick-ass stand-alone single Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill had been included, it would have been indisputably one of the greatest rock albums in recent history and certainly much more highly regarded in U2's canon.
All That You Can't Leave Behind ****
A record that was made with two goals in mind - to make a 'pop' album, and to make an album that would sound like 'four guys in a room' and reclaim many of the fans they felt that they had lost with Zooropa and Pop - I dock this record a star not so much because of what's on it, but more because of what's not on it - I loved this record when it first came out, it was the first U2 record that I got when it was actually released, and I listened to it end to end all the time - but after eight years, I can't forgive the fact that The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Stateless, and Falling At Your Feet - the three 'U2'-credited MDH tracks - were not included on the album, since they were recorded during the same time period, and since they would have made the album 5x better while not at all deviating from the 'pop album' goal or the 'four guys in a room' goal. But overall a very enjoyable listen, not at all boring the way much of Bomb is to me, because they were still attempting something new, to grow as musicians, with tracks like Stuck In A Moment, In A Little While, Wild Honey, When I Look At The World, and Grace, and the ones that weren't as 'new', like Beautiful Day, Elevation, Walk On, Kite, and New York, were still interesting enough to warrant listen after listen, although today I find myself bored of Walk On.
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb **1/2
A record that just sounds stale for at least half the time, that offers little the band hasn't done before and better, and that suffers from the worst production by far of any U2 record - the saving graces are A Man And A Woman, Fast Cars, One Step Closer, Love And Peace Or Else, and Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own(and this one takes half its time before it gets interesting). I loved City Of Blinding Lights when it was new, but I've grown totally bored of it. The record would've been helped immensely if Electrical Storm and The Hands That Built America had been saved for it.
LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
^ Rate The Official Albums + 1-sentence comment on each, dude. 
namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
^ Rate The Official Albums + 1-sentence comment on each, dude.
Look at all the hyphens I used - There's still only like one or two periods max for each album.
Zoots
Blue Crack Supplier
LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
Look at all the hyphens I used - There's still only like one or two periods max for each album.
Haha, smooth. I used semicolons.
Another HTDAAB disliker. I really feel that this record will grow in stature as the years pass. With a little distance, I don't think people are going to care too much that it doesn't "hang together" too well as a complete piece (but I could be wrong -- Rattle & Hum still seems annoying in this regard). By the way, I think HTDAAB works perfectly as an album -- there are common themes to several of the songs, and a consistency of sound. I also love the production (I like loud, with lots of reverb).
It may be the case that as U2 get older and take a longer time between albums that those albums are not going to feel as much "of a piece" as the 80s' ones that were knocked off in a month. After all, they are "albums" (i.e. collections of songs), not symphonies.
Same here. The soaring guitar riff is so cheesy and irritating in that song. It's all bells and whistles with no substance.
LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
How do you figure? It would probably sound just as good acoustic with all of the production stripped off.
Because it depends so heavily on the intro, the woo woos, and the grandiose bells progression.
the tourist
Blue Crack Addict
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2003
- Messages
- 27,919
I think it would sound way better that way, personally.
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