....and I'm f**cking loving it (Achtung Baby - U2)

Member Name: markhobbs

Product:	Achtung Baby - U2
Date:	04/09/01 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reinvented rock

Disadvantages: U2's diehard eighties fans will hate it

You’ve just released an album that is your tribute to the blues, heck, you’ve even dueted with B.B. King, as well as turn one of your biggest hits into a gospel song. What do you next? You do, of course, decide to reinvent rock for the nineties.

This was a bizarre turn of events indeed. The eighties U2 were a band of unrivalled integrity and ideals, a band so far apart from the glitzy world of showbiz and fame that what they did next seems to be the biggest contradiction of all-time. Oh well.

So out came the shades and the leather jackets, an increase in egos and hey presto, U2 were now the world’s biggest rock band. All that remained was for Adam to pose naked on the sleeve of the album. Oh, I wish I was joking.

It wasn’t quite that easy though. Before struck upon the masterpiece that is One, they had a patch so unproductive they were considering breaking up. But that seemingly sparked a run that would produce some of U2’s best and most famous songs.

Imagine the shock of the diehard fans when they stuck in Achtung Baby for the first time. From All I Want is You to the sheer brashness of Zoo Station, the opening track of the album. The guitar is very prominent and the vocals are unrecognisable as Bonos. And after is Even Better than the Real Thing, a song that was even given a dance remix! Bono himself said of his new rock star lifestyle, ‘I’m surrounding myself with everything I’ve come to hate about the music industry, and I’m f**king loving it.’ Which would be pretty much the sentiments of U2’s fans at this stage.

The crowning track of the album, and one of the best songs ever, is One. A perfect song in every respect, One is simple yet epic, an anthem if ever there was one. It came about because the band felt they were writing songs that were strictly heterosexual, thus the ‘One love’ nature of it.

Other key tracks incl
ude The Fly, another heavy guitar track, and Mysterious Ways, a song which sees God referred to as She. The tracks I’ve mentioned are pretty much the best, I haven’t gone into the rest because, frankly, they’re all brilliant, there isn’t one bad track. That’s the glory of this, it’s a proper album, the tracklisting is perfect so that everything is just kind of there. There’s no emphasis placed on any of the songs, there’s no need to skip any track.

This, along with The Joshua Tree, is an undisputed masterpiece. It’s an important record, one which really showed that U2 weren’t afraid to do anything new, and one that cemented their position as the best band in the world.

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