20 Years Gone: Rating U2

They're still a few years behind The Fall.

 

Yeah, The Fall and Neil Young are the 2 that come to my mind.

 

Also they've done better than REM.

 

Springsteen has had excellent albums since '92.

 

U2 are one of the most overated rock acts in the history of the universe.

 

Does anyone remember the baseball player, Dave Parker? At the beginning of his career, he looked like a sure-fire Hall of Famer, just a great, great hitter, with an amazing arm in right field. Then he decided to become a cocaine addict for about 4 seasons and suck. Then he got off drugs and was a powerful hitter again (when you take into account the inevitable deterioration of skills of athletes in their 30s.)

That's U2...a great 10-12 years, then they took a timeout to make merely average albums of experimental music, then they decided to be rockers again, and are great at it.

REM's fade is an interesting contrast. REM matched them album for album for a long time, and, altho fading, were better in the mid-90s. But they continued to fade, while U2 snapped back into form.

U2 is one of my 2-3 favorites bands, so I may be biased.

 

U2 Relative Scale (out of 10)

Boy - 8
October - 8
War - 10
Under A Blood Red Sky - 9
The Unforgettable Fire - 10
Wide Awake In America - 7
The Joshua Tree - 10
Rattle and Hum - 5
Achtung Baby - 6
Zooropa - 5 ("Stay" is a 10 pulling this album from the abyss)
Melon - don't know it
Pop - 2
All That You Can't Leave Behind - 5
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - Haven't heard it yet

I didn't bother with singles or greatest hits collection. In my mind there on a decline. They've been able to arrest the speed with which it's happening, their days of being an extremely intresting and/or powerful band are behind them. Still they've made the document and full respect for some of the best rock records of all time.

Superdave's assesment is pretty spot on.

 

Zooropa and Pop are infinitely better than the two albums they have put out since.

 

I'm not much of a U2 fan, but they have managed to stay relevant for an astonishingly long period of time. (That said, "Vertigo" is one of the most annoying songs I've heard all year.) There aren't many other bands who could equal that run.

Some possible exceptions:

The Fall is the obvious choice for me.

The Fastbacks broke up around the 20-year mark. None of their albums were ever perfect, but all of them (except "Very Powerful Motor") were good, and they came up with power pop and punk gems over their entire career. Honestly, when I think of how mediocrities like Green Day and terrible bands like The Offspring became huge while The Fastbacks were totally overlooked, it makes my blood boil.

Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto have been going strong for roughly 25 years each, albeit with different bands.

 

I assume you mean their two albums after their 20th year as a group? All That You Can't Leave Behind was released in 2000, How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb in 2004. Although since they first formed in 1976, one could argue that 1997's Pop falls in that category as well.

 

I finally got around to getting that Evens cd, MacKaye's latest thing, and wow. I like that as much as anything he's been a part of.

 

Musically, they reached their peak with Achtung, and everything since then has been pretty derivative. Of course, Achtung, in my opinion, is probably the best record of the 90s period. (Zooropa was awful.)
The problem is that many people think that U2 has always wanted to be The Clash, so when U2 outgrew their similar roots and actually made amazing music with some of Joshua Tree and most of Achtung Baby (and parts of the overblown Rattle & Hum are pretty good too) people have begun to consider them less "pure". Had U2 broken up right after Achtung (as they nearly did) they'd be on a similar plane with the Doors. (Who were nowhere near as good as U2 musically.)
With all that being said, I still haven't listen to most of their new album because it sounds so similar to me now. Its good workmanlike music that's better than 85% of stuff that I hear on the radio, but I'd much rather listen to their old stuff. As far as I'm concerned their live performance of One with an orchestra is one of the greatest songs I've ever heard, period.

 

There is definitely a contingent of U2 fans that agree with hangthadj, though more I suppose agree with MeridianFC. Some of that involves when people became fans as well. In my experience, people who first got into the band during Achtung Baby generally enjoyed Zooropa and Pop more than those who got in during the Joshua Tree period. Either way, there are quite a few folks who consider themselves hardcore fans but abhor anything off of Zooropa and Pop (not that I'm criticizing them or anything, just saying), as well as those who feel they lost their creativity and edge (no pun intended) and went straight for the Top 40 with the last two albums.

(Melon wasn't an album per se, just a collection of remixes put out by the band's official fan club, Propaganda.)

 

I remember reading good things about that, but I've never heard it.

The Argument, though, is as good as anything Fugazi have done.

 

Close, actually they almost broke up before the release of AB. The rest of the band wasn't particularly happy about Bono having them holed up in a crappy studio and motel in what just weeks before had been East Berlin. Plus they couldn't figure out whether to keep with their old musical direction or choose a new one entirely. And something else involving the prevalance of Trabants on that side of Berlin.

Well my fanboy arse is out.

 

Yes, I know - One is supposedly the song that got them to stay. I'm well up on my U2 stuff; I just slightly changed info to score a larger point. I'm like Fox News!

 

You gotta get it, and yes, I agree with you bout The Argument.

 

Like I said, prefer the term "fanboy".

 

Wow, Meridian...I like most of your ratings, but The Unforgettable Fire was no 10, Achtung Baby is possibly U2's best record, which means it's a 10, and ATYCLB is great too...8 or 9, depending on how much I'm thinking about 9/11 when I'm listening to it.

Now, I can see you ratings better if you're putting alot of stock in being sonically fresh and unique and changemaking. I mean aLOT of stock in it. But I mostly want records that are good, with innovativeness being a bonus, so my first criteria is, how good are the songs? That's why I don't rate TUF as highly as you, and AB and ATYCLB more highly.

 

Sorry, man...you lose all credibility in my mind with that.

 

I seem to be one of the few people that like both the pre and post Achtung eras--and there's no doubt that 1991 is the dividing line in their career. There seems to be 1 out of ten people like me--and the rest are divided into the camps of pure-old U2 fans (Pop sucks, man!) and the under-30 Achtungers.

I am a huge fanboy. Sadly, next summer's trip has limited my show allotment this time around to three concerts.

And Zak always comes off as that snob all of us knows that cannot love music appreciated by the masses. Thank Jeebus for those that take on the role so the rest of us can shake our collective heads.