Achtung Baby

[wertsie]

Hey, let's talk about it!

I'll never forget when this album REALLY hit home for me. It was 1998, the Popmart tour had ended, and this guy decided to stomp my heart into a million little pieces. Oh, yeah, and then one of my friends killed herself...1998 was a BAD year for me, especially after all the fun I had in 1997. Sorry, not trying to bring everyone down. But my point is that AB really helped me to get through that time. I still like to turn off all the lights in my bedroom, lay on my bed and close my eyes and play AB really loud, just EXPERIENCE it, you know?

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"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[*Stormy*]

I know what you mean about turning off the lights, talk about a 'dark' album! It's also the very best for DRIVING at night! It's so cool driving or riding at night to it and the faster you go and the more open the road the better! The stars, the lights from a distant city up ahead on the interstate, it's AWESOME!!

AB is an album that did 'grow on me' and now it has grown all over me and inside me and I am consumed by it!! At first all I listened to were the hits, MW, WGRYWH and One. I am a skip- around type of person. Then I went on a trip with my brother who has to listen to everything all the way through. WOW! It totally kicks butt as a WHOLE album, I think more than any of U2's or anyone else's! It just "rocks so damn hard!"

Once I saw ZOOTV and the the ZOOTV Sydney tape I was fully obsessed. MacPhisto and the Fly are the coolest! Bono is SO HOT! Once I experienced UTEOTW live, it will never be the same! This is a thrilling and exciting and enjoyable album. It's a masterpiece!

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~"A little out of touch, little insane, just easier than dealin' with the pain!" ~Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"

~**The LONE She-Wolf of PLEBA!**~

 

[*Stormy*]

See Wertsie this is what I mean, and a few others have noticed. Because there is no controversy and nothing to disagree on, no one has anything to say. No one wants to come praise and album and just say how great it is and how much it means to them if there is nothing to fight over or try to prove. We ALL love AB so no one wants to argue. If I'm wrong, prove it people by expressing your love for this great album! Let's hear it for AB!

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~"A little out of touch, little insane, just easier than dealin' with the pain!" ~Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"

~**The LONE She-Wolf of PLEBA!**~

 

[RufusYoungblood]

Originally posted by *Stormy*:
See Wertsie this is what I mean, and a few others have noticed. Because there is no controversy and nothing to disagree on, no one has anything to say.

It's a pity isn't it? I was soundly shot down for expressing a similar opinion and requesting a forum just for talking about music.

As for AB, I bought it as one of those midnight openings, and went home and played it all night, in the dark. For some reason I was laying on my bed the wrong way around. Maybe sub-consciously reflecting the 'turnaround' in U2.

- On Average, still my favourite album. Meaning, how often I've played it since it was released. It has less peaks and troughs for me. If you know what I mean. And I adore the out-takes.... yumm.

 

[u2loopy]

*applause applause* for Achtung Baby. When I listen to Achtung Baby it brings me back to the revitalization of U2.

I'll never forget when I heard The Fly for the first time. It was so.....DIFFERENT!!!

I gladly accepted U2's change. Alot of people couldn't accept the bedazzled pants, and the hot leather....wait is this PLEBA???? Sorry, I mean, people didn't want to abandon 80's U2 (some still don't) and accept this new U2. That's perfectly fine, but for me at that point they had been so long gone from the scene that if they came back as a Polka group I would be estatic!!!

But, as much as Achtung Baby is dark (almost every song is about love breaking down) I find it to be a very sex-ay album.



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What are we going to do now It's all been said,
No new ideas in the house and Every book has been read....

 

[wertsie]

Originally posted by *Stormy*:
See Wertsie this is what I mean, and a few others have noticed. Because there is no controversy and nothing to disagree on, no one has anything to say.

Oh, hogwash! We don't have to disagree about it to talk about it. I like hearing people's stories, how they "experience" the album.

Here's a question...Apparently the guys hardly ever play "So Cruel" live and I know that it's a favorite among U2 fans. Don't they know that we'd like to hear it? Why don't they play it more?

Oh my god...I LOVE UTEOTW live. It's magic. I mean, the album version is great, but it sounds 100 times better live!

I loved reading about when they were working on the album in Flanagan's "U2 at the End of the World." I hadn't been aware before that they were so divided about what direction to take. I think that makes it even more marvelous that they stuck with it!



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"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[oliveu2cm]

Originally posted by *Stormy*:
See Wertsie this is what I mean, and a few others have noticed. Because there is no controversy and nothing to disagree on, no one has anything to say. No one wants to come praise and album and just say how great it is and how much it means to them if there is nothing to fight over or try to prove.

maybe it's statements like these that put people off from responding to a thread.

i myself just opened the thread, and i'm sure there are more out there who haven't read it yet (maybe b/c the subject is sort of vague, I don't know)

Being as I just read it, I'll reply to wertsie

Oh, hogwash! We don't have to disagree about it to talk about it. I like hearing people's stories, how they "experience" the album.

Acthung Baby is my favorite album, and my first real U2 discovery.. Macphisto blew my mind. AB helped me through freshman year of college so much it's scary to think of having gone through it without that firmhold on Bono's hand. IMO it's the best of Bono's lyrics, best of their sounds, best of the ideas as whole coming together and weaving into each other. Not to mention it saved U2

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She never really belonged to me

U2 Take Me Higher
Macphisto's Mansion

 

[wertsie]

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:
IMO it's the best of Bono's lyrics, best of their sounds, best of the ideas as whole coming together and weaving into each other. Not to mention it saved U2

I agree with you there. It's weird to think that my favorite album's conception started out with the band bickering. IMHO, nothing is as powerful as AB. As Stormy said, it's a great "driving" album and also great when you're working out.



------------------
"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[spanisheyes]

You have to know the deep pain and hurt that is 'So Cruel' to know why U2 may never play this song live. It is a song that has it's beauty in being captured in studio, and leaving it at that may just be one of the high point of Achtung Baby, but at the price of exposing a love that was once so pure turned painfully wrong. It also may be that it is a song so personal that it doesn't do for U2 what others songs may do in reaching their audience with the hope and inspiration that is in so much of U2's music.

There is no hope in 'So Cruel', but of a relationship that is at the point of no return. U2 takes a lot of their music, and have transformed it live. But the pain is in not being able to transform this relationship gone bad. I may be the only one who feels this way about this song, and I'm in no way discarding this song, because it has always been, and always will be one of my favorites on Achtung Baby. I'm able to appreciate it lyrically and sonically for what it represents, but I also realize that the story being told was lived by someone, and at a cost that was very great in the emotional and spiritual sense that I have never known, but still appreciate it for what it simply is: deceit, selfishness, and the cruelty we sometimes find in bad love that many experience, and in the case of this song, someone very close to Bono.

This appreciation is more so the opposite we find in say 'All I Want Is You' where the lover that Bono speaks of chooses to want their story to remain untold. In the case of 'So Cruel' the story is allowed to be told of one's lover past, and the pain of rejection experienced is almost unbearable to listen to, and yet told so poetically that it sweeps us off our feet. 'So Cruel' is the epitomy of what 'All I Want Is You' is not, so opposite in their desires, and yet stand next to each other as two defining moments in U2's musical journey in showing us the beauty and the awfulness that love sometimes becomes.

Chris

[This message has been edited by spanisheyes (edited 04-16-2002).]

 

[wertsie]

Believe me, I know what the song is about. I've experienced that before. I think it would be really powerful live, personally.

------------------
"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[Mrs. Vedder]

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:
maybe it's statements like these that put people off from responding to a thread.

Exactly! It's like okay. Same thing with the "October" thread.

Anyway, I love Achtung Baby but I rarely listen to it. I dunno why that is. I really need to be in a huge mood for it. But when I do listen to it, I can never get enough. Although, I go back and forth between my love for this album and the Joshua Tree.... I think AB is my favorite U2 album by far.

I love all the songs... although it really took me a long ass time before I could tolerate "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses." For some reason that song at first used to irrate me so much. I always ended up skipping it for some reason. But over the years I've learn to really like it. So I can listen to AB from start to finish without skipping any songs!

Although, I still have this habbit of re-peating "One" and "Your So Cruel" for at last 3 times before I go on to the next songs!

I love those songs! They are my favorite from the album.

"Your So Cruel" is so dark and yet so poetic. "Her skin is pale like god's only dove, screams like an angel for your love..." It's just a really AWESOME song!

Bottom line, I LOVE THIS ALBUM!



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"It's Evolution Baby!"

 

[Mrs. Vedder]

Spanisheyes, that was a great post!

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"It's Evolution Baby!"

 

[U2girl]

Heyyyy, the album that got me into U2!

I mean, i heard earlier stuff on my brother's radio, and i saw Streets video (and loved the vibe of the song - not yet understanding the lyrics as my English had yet to be improved), but when i heard AB on his radio...

WOW! It was just this incredible sound (especially the guitar), the haunting vocal, drums like i never heard them before, groovy base.
But more specifically - So cruel (my fave U2 song).
The piano/drums/strings combination hooked me (still, my English was not what it is today, so i only understood the chorus), and the anguished voice took me places i never went to before.

 

[oliveu2cm]

Originally posted by spanisheyes:
but I also realize that the story being told was lived by someone, and at a cost that was very great in the emotional and spiritual sense that I have never known, but still appreciate it for what it simply is: deceit, selfishness, and the cruelty we sometimes find in bad love that many experience, and in the case of this song, someone very close to Bono.

Such a good point Chris. To play this song live it would seem to almost be exploiting the situation and experience. I don't think Bono could ever sing it live, b/c there really is no way to convey that emotion (esp night after night) knowing that it cannot match the feelings that resulted from the circumstances this song is about.

It's almost like putting it on the album was a gift to us, to share with us this poignant experience, to let us feel the raw emotion, the uncertainty and pain present (How hard is it to admit you are in pain - so much more "easy" to just get angry) and being on the album we can experience it and if we have similiar feelings, perhaps find comfort in it. And I think that gift of it even making the album is enough, and playing it live might be expecting too much from the guys as humans who have lived this song.

------------------
She never really belonged to me

U2 Take Me Higher
Macphisto's Mansion

 

[joyfulgirl]

I bought AB the day it was released, took it home, put on my headphones, and listened to it about 5 times without taking a break. I was up all night! I was completely mesmerized from the get-go. Edge's spacey guitar solo in "Real Thing" sent me into some kind of reverie from the moment I heard it and I hadn't even gotten to the masterpieces yet. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I can honestly say that this record was a watershed musical moment for me. It was the first "life-changing" record of my adulthood (previous ones include Sgt. Pepper when I was little and Born to Run as a teenager). AB took me from loving U2 (as I had since Boy) to recognizing that they would one day take their rightful place beside the Beatles and the Stones et al in R&R history. That is what AB means to me.

 

[david]

I really got into the album in late 92 early 93. It was a great alternative to what was the alternative at the time, the seattle scene. It was different, and that's why I liked it. The lyrics were very poetic, and the music took you through it's ups and downs while listening to it.

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The more of these I drink the more Bono makes sense.. - Bean from the KROQ Breakfast with U2.

 

[elevatedmole]

Achtung Baby was played for about a month straight, no other music at all, in May 2001. It is, and probably always will be my favourite U2 album. It is just perfection. The Fly hooked me right from the first time I heard the opening notes, and the entire album is just packed full of awesome songs, no filler. I love it to death.

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"You must not look down on someone just 'cos they are 14 years old. When I was that age I listened to the music of John Lennon and it changed my way of seeing things, so I'm just glad that 14 year olds are coming to see U2 rather than group X." - Bono, 1988

 

[oliveu2cm]

Originally posted by RufusYoungblood:

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:

maybe it's statements like these that put people off from responding to a thread.

Nope. That aint it.

the only reason i replied is because i respected wertsie and the question. but this stmt did annoy me, some people here seem to post only to seperate people and argue.

 

[*Stormy*]

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:
this stmt did annoy me, some people here seem to post only to seperate people and argue.

Which is exactly what you just did. I already explained why I said what I did in my last post. I know Wertsie understands that because that's why she started the threads! If you twisted my meaning to something that was not there, it's not my problem.

Once again- NOTHING negative has been posted about this album! YAY!

[This message has been edited by *Stormy* (edited 04-16-2002).]

[This message has been edited by *Stormy* (edited 04-16-2002).]

 

[oliveu2cm]

Originally posted by *Stormy*:
Which is exactly what you just did. I already explained why I said what I did in my last post. I know Wertsie understands that because that's why she started the threads! If you read something else into it, you are the one with the problem, not me. Now go blame me for causing trouble if it makes your day.

I was defending myself to a ridiculous statement.

your explanation made no sense anyway since AB has no controversy.

nothing about you "makes my day" and i'm not going back and forth with this. I'm here to read and contribute to the intellectual conversations on this forum, which too often get overtaken by bickering.

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She never really belonged to me

U2 Take Me Higher
Macphisto's Mansion

 

[wertsie]

Originally posted by *Stormy*:
Which is exactly what you just did. I already explained why I said what I did in my last post. I know Wertsie understands that because that's why she started the threads! If you twisted my meaning to something that was not there, it's not my problem.

Once again- NOTHING negative has been posted about this album! YAY!

[This message has been edited by *Stormy* (edited 04-16-2002).]

[This message has been edited by *Stormy* (edited 04-16-2002).]

Ah, it has been a long, hot day. So why did I start this thread? Well, I started this thread because AB is my favorite album and I wanted to talk about. I enjoy discussing things in an intelligent manner. That's why.



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"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[*Stormy*]

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:

I was defending myself to a ridiculous statement.

your explanation made no sense anyway since AB has no controversy.

A) So was I

B) That's the point I was trying to make! That no other album but Pop draws controversy and therefore no one wants to discuss the good things about them. Wertsie set out to prove that wrong, but when the thread got no response but mine, I told her maybe it is true, no one wants to discuss unless they can argue. Then I challenged everyone to prove me wrong. I shouldn't have said anything until the end of the day. Now I will never know if there would have been much response without what was said.

One thing about 'bickering'- I think there are a lot of misunderstandings on the internet because all we see are words. We cannot see each other's facial expressions or hear each other's tone of voice. Sometimes I think we may jump to conclusions based on what we THINK the person means, due to some past experience with someone else in our lives,or just the way we personally percieve things which can be very different from another person's intentions.



[This message has been edited by *Stormy* (edited 04-16-2002).]

 

[wertsie]

Well,to be fair, Stormy, I originally posted this earlier in the day, which doesn't really seem to be one of the busy times for this forum.

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"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[*Stormy*]

Originally posted by wertsie:
Well,to be fair, Stormy, I originally posted this earlier in the day, which doesn't really seem to be one of the busy times for this forum.

Like I said, I regret not waiting longer to post what I did. Now we will never know. I'm sorry

 

[Gina Marie]

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:

I'm here to read and contribute to the intellectual conversations on this forum, which too often get overtaken by bickering.

Which is what you do.

I usually stay out of this kind of stuff, because quite honestly it's just beyond belief sometimes. That's why I avoid threads like this. I agree with Olive, that statements like the one she was referring to could put people off-speaking for myself, they do.

I saw no evidence that she was 'twisting' anything. I really see no reason for what was said to her here.

And btw-I have no intention of going back and forth either. And AB is a superb album.

 

[wertsie]

Originally posted by *Stormy*:
Like I said, I regret not waiting longer to post what I did. Now we will never know. I'm sorry

No problem. I understand what you were trying to say now. It's cool. Back to AB...

It's really weird...I remember hearing AB constantly when it first came out because my mom was always playing it. At that time, WGRYWH was my favorite song off the album...Fast-forward to 1997, when I truly became a fan and re-discovered AB. For awhile that was the one song I couldn't seem to get into as much. But now I can again and I love it, although I like the single version better.



------------------
"We're one, but we're not the same..."

http://U2Baby.com

 

[*Stormy*]

Originally posted by wertsie:
No problem. I understand what you were trying to say now. It's cool. Back to AB...

It's really weird...I remember hearing AB constantly when it first came out because my mom was always playing it. At that time, WGRYWH was my favorite song off the album...Fast-forward to 1997, when I truly became a fan and re-discovered AB. For awhile that was the one song I couldn't seem to get into as much. But now I can again and I love it, although I like the single version better.

Thanks

I'm glad someone can understand what I was doing and not take it the wrong way.

Like I said in my first post I used to only listen to the 'popular' songs until I listened to the whole thing all the way through. It's weird for me too, because now MW and WGRYWH are the songs I may listen to LEAST (though I still love them!) and the ones that are my favorites are the less popular ones, like Acrobat, Ultraviolet and UTEOTW! I admit to 'rediscovering' AB again after ATYCLB came out and I got on my big U2 frenzy. I really shouldn't even pick favorites because it's best when listened to all the way through! Especially those last three together, WOW!

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~"A little out of touch, little insane, just easier than dealin' with the pain!" ~Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"

~**The LONE She-Wolf of PLEBA!**~

[This message has been edited by *Stormy* (edited 04-16-2002).]

 

[Zoocifer]

I remember like it was yesterday. I believe I was in 6th grade (don't laugh, I was 13). This was way back when Pop was being released. There I was sitting in my brother's room watching VH1/MTV (can't remember which one) and they were showing tons of U2 videos while selling the Popmart tickets. I had the Batman Forever soundtrack for sometime and loved "hold me thrill me kiss me kill me" so I decided to check out this famous band called U2 and see what the buzz was about.

The first whole video that I saw was "The Fly". It was like nothing I'd ever seen before! Here was this singer with long black hair slicked back wearing this gigantic sunglasses. Then there was the sound. A total erotic gospel stretching over this voice of firey distortion. The guitar riff knocked me down and with it the whole world.

I bought Achtung Baby 2 weeks after that at Best Buy. Going to the store the weather was cloudy. Leaving it became sunny. I had my portable discman and after visiting a relative, I popped it in and started my journey into U2.

It was the first album I ever bought and it has remained my number 1 pick my favorite U2 album. It's hard to describe everything in the album that moves so I'll cut this short. Achtung Baby rocks!

~z~

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" You love this town - even if that doesn't ring true. You've been all over, and it's been all over you " - Bono

" Don't you know there ain't no Devil, that's just God when he's drunk " - Tom Waits

 

[RufusYoungblood]

Originally posted by oliveu2cm:
the only reason i replied is because i respected wertsie and the question. but this stmt did annoy me, some people here seem to post only to seperate people and argue.

If it annoys you, then stop doing it!

 

[elevatedmole]

Originally posted by Zoocifer:
I remember like it was yesterday. I believe I was in 6th grade (don't laugh, I was 13).

Why would we laugh?

I don't find it stupid or silly at all.

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"You must not look down on someone just 'cos they are 14 years old. When I was that age I listened to the music of John Lennon and it changed my way of seeing things, so I'm just glad that 14 year olds are coming to see U2 rather than group X." - Bono, 1988