"It's a musical journey" - U2 POLL RESULTS

right, last one for tonight then bunk for me

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/9889/021redhillminingtown.jpg

21 Red Hill Mining Town
307 points, fourteen votes, one first place
The Joshua Tree (1987)

They've always done openers well, but after rattle and hum they were really stick-a-fork-in-em done. It's hard to remember that Achtung was basically a comeback record.

Were they? The album got middling to poor reviews, and only "Desire" took in America, but it sold spectacularly. It's perceived as a disaster cuz the band has done such an expert job slighting it over the years.

it's also perceived as a disaster because it is fucking terrible

I agree but it's not a flop.

and for me actually The Joshua Tree was the beginning of the decline and R&H is the bottom.

cmon there were some good songs on there
the suffocating romance of "all i want is you" for instance

RHMT was a late cut from my ballot, iirc.

Never liked "All I Want is You," although I'm biased because I was appalled by how terrible it sounded in Reality Bites.

Red Hill Mining Town my #1! Though I could have picked any of 4 or 5 off JT tbh.

x-post - lol I love how it's used in that movie

The longing in that song just kills me but I'm a sucker for that sort of thing and a total romantic fool in a lot of ways.

If you cut the live songs off Rattle and Hum (& "When Love Comes To Town" & "God Part 2"), then it's a pretty decent album.

I think it's hilarious that they're skipping it in their deluxe edition reissue series.

Alfred that was so much later, though! Reality Bites is revolting (sorry enbb, special loathing for ethan hawke), but the song is lovely imo.

There are enough great songs noted already, outside our top 20, that it really underscores how much outright U2 haters are working overtime to justify their disdain for this band.

I totally voted for "All I Want Is You," I think. Really caught be off guard a few years ago when I was listening to the best of (don't own Rattle and Hum).

i actually enjoy angel of harlem when it comes on the radio.
hi, u2 thread! i didn't vote, but i was a big fan for a little while there as a kid. i guess the last album i bought was zooropa. saw the zoo tv tour at dodger stadium. had terrible seats.

If you cut the live songs off Rattle and Hum (& "When Love Comes To Town" & "God Part 2"), then it's a pretty decent album.

No it isn't! It's a steaming pile!

Like literally, the only songs I can abide on there aside from the live JT tracks and live "Pride" are "Desire" and occasionally "All I Want Is You"; everything else evokes a massive phobic reaction in me that makes me want to travel back in time to destroy the master copies before the album was ever released. The only good thing I can say about RAH is that it was the genesis of the creative backlash spark that led to their next three albums.

61 Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
88 points, four votes, one first place
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004)

hiya

Reality Bites is revolting (sorry enbb, special loathing for ethan hawke

lol it's OK it's totally terrible, I know this

OK I'm listening to "All I Want is You" right now and it is still great.

I'll stand up for "Heartland", "All I Want Is You", & "Hawkmoon 269" (! yes, even despite the appalling title). "Desire" is not that far from Achtung Baby (especially the Hollywood mix).

aw, grant me a little rhetoric. maybe "comeback" isn't quite right. they were assured the audience they'd picked up with Joshua Tree but no longer assured of any kind of relevance. Like, they could have gone on for a while making boring hits like, I dunno, REO Speedwagon post-Hi Infidelity or something.

But instead they sort of shockingly understood the situation and the stakes and gave a fuck and answered the bell in a serious way and held off the descent into ever more arena-packing irrelevance for nearly a decade.

btw I expect "all I want is you" to do well itp

all i want is you is great. string arrangement by van dyke parks! kinda liked that edge solo track on R&H, too.

you heard it here first: "Van Diemen's Land" is gonna be the #1 here

"rhmt" would have probably been my no. 2. "unforgettable fire" probably no. 1. i need to remember to just bang out these ballots in an hour or less.

hold me nowwwwww ... i don't remember the rest.

i voted for van diemen's land! can't believe i was alone in wishing dave "the edge of heaven" evans a happy 50th tbrr.

xp:

woah oh hold my heart
stay with meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
let loving start
let loving start

I had good times in college doing drunk renditions of "Van Diemen's Land" & feel guilty about it now because it's probably about the potato famine.

in this dawning AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

sweet, glad someone voted for it. sounds good! who needs the rest of those jerks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux8qXTZetk4

No matter how bad Rattle & Hum may be, remember that without that project we'd never have got to see Larry really wanting a sit on Elvis's Harley, while the woman tries to palm Bono off with a snowmobile instead.

terrible Spanish translation

xpost

Live!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXxefgAlrag

Zoo Station is such a classic, agenda-setting opener. I didn't really care about U2 at all in the 80s beyond a few hits I taped off the radio, but Achtung Baby felt like a miraculous turnaround. From When Love Comes to Town to this. I remember seeing The Fly on TOTP and thinking, Fuck me, what's happened here?

lol I was one of those guys who said admiringly "They're jumping on Jesus Jones' train!"

haha i was 13 when achtung baby came out and it was a pretty huge album for me that year, but yeah, it totally fit with all the english dance-rock that was all over mod rock radio for the few years before nevermind and the rest really hit hard.

kinda makes me pine for the days when bands made aaaaalbums, maaaan.

bc seriously looking back these guys were masters of the opening track.

i dunno, when i heard The Fly (age 12?) i thought U2 was going hard rock or something. my musical frame of reference was fairly limited i guess.

"coming up next we've got the farm with 'groovy train,' stereo mc's, and the new one from u2, 'the fly.'"

never forget

i wanted a whole album's worth of van diemen's land tbh

think 'the fly' was the first single and remember liking it but thinking wtf

for all the welcome clamor, achtung baby really isn't *that* much of a departure -- 'one' and 'ultraviolet' could have been on earlier records

I was a big industrial head at the time so I got excited when they said they were listening to KMFDM and MC 900ft Jesus. Imagine my surprise when Achtung Baby was even better than KMFDM.

basically if you had heard "Trust Me" off of Doubt by Jesus Jones, you could totally see where U2 was going (and it was obv awesome)

"Red Hill Mining Town" is wonderful.

My no.8, and I regret not putting it higher

yeah, i voted for it too

basically if you had heard "Trust Me" off of Doubt by Jesus Jones, you could totally see where U2 was going (and it was obv awesome)

a fantastic referent.

"Even Better..." and "Mysterious Ways" are going for the "International Bright Young Thing" groove.

I know a U2 thread is kryptonite to jjj but he should really be in here to drop some Info Freako knowledge