Achtung Baby Is One of U2's Best
Achtung Baby by U2
After spending the late Eighties trying (and succeeding) in their quest to become giants on the American music scene in the 1980s, U2 went all Euro on us for 1991's Achtung Baby. The album initially surprised fans looking for U2's signature big rock fans, but this album is now considered one of the Irish band's best, successfully blending anthemic classic rock with modern dance sounds.
Knowing the music that was popular in Europe in the early Nineties, it's fairly easy to see Achtung as a reaction to the dance-rock revolution bands ranging from The Happy Mondays to Jesus Jones and Soul II Soul had brought to the forefront over the previous year and a half. While there are songs that recall the epic sound of The Joshua Tree (Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses being a clear example), the more common sound on this album can be found in the jagged rhythms of Mysterious Ways (with its bleating, fuzzed-out guitar, it might be the first-ever danceable U2 song) or the seductive grooves of songs like So Cruel, a track where Bono's blending of the sacred and the profane reaches its peak (the delivery of the line "I'm only hanging on...to watch you go down" on that song is a classic Bono moment).
There's not much to argue with here, beginning-to-end, it might just be the most consistent of the band's albums. Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World has a hazy, slow-motion quality to it that goes right along with the lyrical imagery (where he quotes Gloria Steinem and imagines Salvador Dali in a supermarket), and the album's high point — U2's career high point — pops up three songs into the album in the form of One. Certainly the greatest single of the Nineties (in my humble opinion), it encapsulates everything great about U2 — despite Bono's occasional self-righteousness. It's heartfelt, emotional, beautifully played and sung and proves that U2 is equally skilled with a bare bones ballad as they are with layers of experimental production.
The Joshua Tree might have been the album where U2 secured their American success, but Achtung Baby is the album that made them legendary. The success of this album may have been obscured slightly by the grunge revolution that popped off immediately after this album's release, but don't let Nirvana and Pearl Jam take away from the fact that this album is just as essential as Ten or Nevermind.
