Achtung Pollby

Zooropa had a lot of awesome on it but I feel like it's a "must be in the mood for it" album, whereas I could play Achtung, Baby pretty much at any time.

Ugh. I'm having a hard time thinking which one of this is less cringe-inducing. Turns out there's not a single song in this album which I'd care if I never hear again in my life.

http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo61/Achille-Pomeroy/a-winner-is-you1.gif

About half of the tracks here are really great. Voting for "Love Is Blindness", which may be the closest they ever got to sounding like Depeche Mode. But I love "Zoo Station", "Mysterious Ways", "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" too.

"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?" does drag.

This falls off on the last few tracks but almost everything else here has something to recommend it..I mean, "Who's Gonna Ride..." is kinda stupid but that bridge gets me every time. "DON'T YOU LOOK B-AAAAAACK" - great! Great stuff. For the top slot..."Mysterious Ways," TTEOTW or EBTTRT. Gotta sleep on it.

I'm pretty charitable with U2, even with their recent stuff. But there's one U2 song I ABSOLUTELY HATE, and it's "Mysterious Ways."

this is the best u2 album

I pretty much hate U2, but this album is very, very, very good indeed.

for a very long time this was the lp i was most ashamed of owning. lol indie hangups.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

it's no secret

"Zoo Station" would fit in the "album you knew would be awesome after 20 seconds" thread.

it's no secret

save this for the Kylie singles poll.

"The Fly" is probably my least favourite track here.

At age 13, "Mysterious Ways" prompted me to save up my paper-route money for a Crybaby pedal, which proved to be very useful over the years, so that gets my vote.

until the end of the world for that solo

EBTTRT and zoo station come close though

http://www.cassingle.info/cassingles/u2_o1.jpg

I love U2 and have yet to love this album--the first CD I ever sold out of disgust. But "One" is pretty awesome.

Gotta be "The Fly," but I love "Ultra Violet.."

This is an album I rarely play of my volition

Read this as "an album I rarely play on my violin," which seems fair.

along with "unforgettable fire", one of the only u2 album I still like

will be interesting to hear this when they remaster it ..

I bought this when I was in elementary school because I really liked 'mysterious ways' and was pretty disappointed that nothing on it was nearly as good. my opinion has only really changed in that now I also don't like 'mysterious ways'. zooropa is so much better.

lol at bono from the wikipedia article:

"I was explaining to people the other night, but I might've got it a bit wrong – this is just the end of something for U2. And that's what we're playing these concerts – and we're throwing a party for ourselves and you. It's no big deal, it's just – we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again."

zoo station > even better than the real thing > the fly >>>>>>>>> the rest

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I didn't know ILM could be so cruel!

looking at these results, there's a lot of things if I could I'd rearrange, but I guess love is blindness

and euler, you'd said you'd wait, until

the end of the

I've been trying to find a video of someone making the "Zoo Station" riff, on air guitar, in the Berlin train station; last time I was there that was pretty all I did, Beavis-style, which I'm sure endeared me to the general populace.

Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World 1
So Cruel 0

These and 'One' are my favourite songs on the record, voted TTTYAATW in the end. Love it's languid, sensual vibe, something Bono doesn't do often enough for my liking.

"The Fly" is still the worst track on the entire album.

You are, quite clearly, empirically wrong on this assertion, Geir. How about, for once in your miserable life, you say "The Fly is still my least favourite song on the album" rather than couching your opinions in such fascistically dictatorial absolutes?

you could always treat that as implied, thinking philosophically about it. he's hardly going to give you someone else's opinion, regardless of how it's couched.

The Fly" is probably my least favourite track here.

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 24 March 2009 02:42 (2 days ago)

wrong either way tho obv

well yeah. obviously.

listening to this whole thing for the first time in a VERY long time; it's startling how much better "One" works in the context of the album, and I'd also forgotten that I liked "So Cruel"

"The Fly", "Until the End of the World" and "Zoo Station" still pwn everything tho

^^^ so true, kind of always hated "One" as a radio single but when I got into the album it seems really just part of the texture, not this Grand Anthemic Statement or whatever. And I can't imagine liking "So Cruel" as much as I do except that it's part of this record.

I was talking to my friend the other night about how a lot of grand, arguably pretentious albums tend to have one song that kind of lighten the load, the band is just kind of having fun, goofing around, etc., and we were kicking around the equivalent songs for various bands, and my contention was that U2 just don't do this, that even their attempts to unwind and be authentic feel like Serious Gestures (with Rattle & Hum being kind of the main offender). Before I realized that they do have "The Sweetest Thing," he tried to sell me on "Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around the World" as the local equivalent of your "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"s and what-nots. I'm not buying - I think it's kind of a string of Serious U2 Is Serious signifiers - but he knows more about U2 than I do. What's the verdict?

The Sweetest Thing is just a nice, light, weightless pop song; and is very good for it. TTTYAATW, while hardly Sunday Bloody Sunday, is NOT anywhere near being a Maxwell's Silver Hammer. If that's the closest thing to a Maxwell song in U2's oeuvre then U2's oeuvre is an even more miserable, self-important, pompous thing than I thought.

I think there are several fun unwind songs on AB: "Even Better Than The Real Thing", "Mysterious Ways", and to some degree "The Fly"

It would never cross my mind to describe TTTYAATW that way

Dali/trolley rhyme most likely triggered that analogy.

"Even Better..." is the most fun thing on the album though, just like "...Wild Horse" is undiluted garbage.

nothing on this album is undiluted garbage, particularly considering that they were coming off of Rattle and Hum

rattle and hum is strangely the album that sold me on U2 but I was also 12 yrs old. I still think the studio tracks are mostly vb defensible. But anyway the fly is maybe U2's best song right?

Nah, that'll be Bad.

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

I was talking to my friend the other night about how a lot of grand, arguably pretentious albums tend to have one song that kind of lighten the load, the band is just kind of having fun, goofing around, etc., and we were kicking around the equivalent songs for various bands, and my contention was that U2 just don't do this, that even their attempts to unwind and be authentic feel like Serious Gestures (with Rattle & Hum being kind of the main offender). Before I realized that they do have "The Sweetest Thing," he tried to sell me on "Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around the World" as the local equivalent of your "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"s and what-nots. I'm not buying - I think it's kind of a string of Serious U2 Is Serious signifiers - but he knows more about U2 than I do. What's the verdict?

Always felt this way about "Trip Through Your Wires" - goofy harmonica, an Edge guitar break that owes more to Dick Dale, overall non-statement. About the only thing it shares with Serious U2 is the word "wire"

Has to be Party Girl, Trash &Trampoline or whatever it's called.

'Lemon' and 'Numb' surprised me more than this entire record. Is it still unfashionable to say you like Achtung Baby and Zooropa? It shouldn't be!

Eheh I listened to "the fly" again yesterday, following this thread's revival : still an amazing song !

This album is loaded with amazing songs. Okay, I'm not a huge fan of 'Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World', but it's still highly listenable and enjoyable.

'Lemon' and 'Numb' surprised me

Eh, I guess so. I suppose I still think of Zooropa as spillover from/adjunct to "Achtung Baby." I used to be lukewarm on "Tryin" but the song is important thematically. It's the last bit of light before the desperation and resignation of "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)," "Acrobat" and "Love is Darkness."

yeah "Tryin'" is great . Especially the middle 8/instrumental break, iirc.

it’s great, every song here is great.

the organ and guitar backing is magical

Def. the last time U2 was really surprising in its reinvention.

i think this is still the most surprising reinvention of any band in my lifetime. Blur was sort of surprising, i guess. so many others have tried to change it up in a similar fashion and it's never been as successful or as believable. and that's the craziest thing, the band that made Rattle & Hum three years before just slipped into this new style in such a convincing and confident way.

And they managed to become even bigger (I think ?).
there's clearly an element of going all-in on a risky bet !

i think this is still the most surprising reinvention of any band in my lifetime

great album, and for me their best, but i think the 'reinvention' is overplayed. 'we will record with eno in berlin and rediscover europe after burying our last three albums in american cliches' + making 'the fly' the first single + look at bono's shades! he and the band have invented irony on the zoo tv tour . . . makes it seem like more of a departure than it really was.

'one' and 'ultraviolet' (among others) could have easily appeared on earlier albums; 'bullet the blue sky' and 'exit' and 'god part ii' could have appeared on this one.

mostly it seems like they started listening to the remixes of their own stuff? maybe it is surprising -- most bands wouldn't bother

Julian Cope's transformation from My Nation Underground to Peggy Suicide was at least equally amazing, especially as his trajectory into bonkers territory accelerated. Also he hated U2.

well i kind of meant the entire U2 enterprise was overhauled, across the board. image and design and the music too, imo. the band's new image really emphasized the change, to an extent, and some of the songs could have maybe appeared on earlier albums, sort of...but not easily. they'd have been entirely different in production and performance. i think despite some of the more trad tunes, the reinvention seen in the other tunes couldn't be ignored.

Hum. Of course there's some packaging/marketing/story telling involved but it's hard to deny that their sound/songwriting approach changed A LOT between Joshua Tree/R&M and AB/Zooropa.
I don't think "Bullet the Blue Sky" could have been on AB/Zooropa both lyrically and sonically, for instance.
And some AB/Zooropa songs may have been on previous albums but they certainly wouldn't have sounded the same.

idk I do buy "bullet the blue sky" on AB (tho i don't know the rest of the earlier albums besides the singles). seems like the case is being made for a revolver->pepper's progression, where the band is unquestionably exploring new sonic ground, and the handful of songs that could have belonged to the earlier moment (critics later realize) are camouflaged by a major new look/concept/gimmick that makes it feel like *everything* must have changed...

I dunno, I kind of think everything *did* change. Which is not the first time the band did that - Unforgettable Fire sounds radically different from War and the entire first run, Joshua Tree is pretty radically different from Unforgettable Fire - but I think Achtung Baby was the first time everyone in the band really changed things up at once. Bono's singing is for the first time not just less histrionic but more playful, Larry's drums are not at all martial but dancier but definitely loopier and groovier than he'd been (and he switched to a cranked up snare), Adam's bass is dubbier and, to my ears at least, it's really the first time the Edge seems to be writing around a particular effect for each track. Even on the weirder moments of the previous albums he still had a pretty consistent sound, echo and delay and a bit of distortion and all that. But his toolbox greatly expands with this one, from the first sound we hear to stuff like the (phase?) effects in "Mysterious Ways." It's just a wholesale change in sounds *and* attitude, no longer strident and militant, maybe more ... personal? I think the crowning achievement of the band is that for all of its big changes this far along in a massively successful career, *this* suddenly became the sound of U2, even if people still talk chiming delay pedals and Bono histrionics.

yeah, otm !
Bass&Drums sound completely different from previous stuff.
Lots of sound FX/distorted instruments throughout the album (including on guitars and vocals).
I just listened to "Bullet the Blue Sky" to make sure and it definitely sounds NOTHING like ANYTHING on AB/Zooropa. There's no way it could have been on these albums.

They dialled down the reverb on the drums and Edge got a new set of effects, but the songs - at their core - are very recognisable as U2 songs, so I can see what mookieproof is getting at.

Zooropa is where they really start pushing the boat out. 'Lemon' and 'Numb' are barely recognisable as U2. The former feels like Bono guesting on someone else's record.

Except for the bass and drums, which are very much in contemporaneous character. What sets both of those songs apart really is the practical absence of guitar. If there's guitar in Lemon (from memory), it is very well disguised. And the guitar in Numb is so distorted and weird it is functionally just another synthesizer.

Numb was a really bold choice for a first single for those reasons as well as the fact that The Edge is the lead vocalist, Bono is relegated to the "too much is not enough" part, and Larry sings the "i feel numb". It removes all the comfortable elements from a typical U2 song and inserts some jarring ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvX596FyX40

this is legitimately the weirder one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZImRY8Wgtk

'Lemon' does indeed have guitar on it - those shimmering chords you hear right from the beginning of the song are all Edge's guitar, not a keyboard or synth.

Maybe! But my "Numb" point still stands in that they are functionally not identifiable as guitars. I mean, the drums could be all triggered by guitars for all it really matters.

(Speaking of guitars, I always thought the mood-setting four-note chiming pattern that starts "With or Without You" was a guitar, but on close exploration with a friend we determined it's massively awkward to play on guitar and then learned that it's actually a synth pattern.)

Nobody was arguing your 'Numb' point!

Yeah, that fast pattern at the beginning of 'With or Without You' is sequenced.

I was listening to "Miss Sarajevo" and some other Passengers songs lately and these are so good. E
specially considering how a U2 / Pavarotti political track about Sarajevo and war could/should have been atrocious !
The Pavarotti part which could have been an ott disaster is so moving.
Between Achtung Baby and Passengers, they were basically on fire creatively.
And the best songs from that time were so different from their sound ("The Fly", "The Wanderer", "Miss Sarajevo"...).