Month: August 2024

Record #1001: U2 – The Joshua Tree (1987)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / Leave a comment

There are fixed points in music history. Records that are so singular that they transcend reality and become the thing of myth. For U2, that mythology is The Joshua Tree. While people can debate what their best record is all day, The Joshua Tree is certainly the U2-iest.

All of their tendencies are indulged to satiety. All of their sonic experimentation, spirituality, sociopolitical consciousness, rock and roll historicity, American fetishism, and grand ambitions are at play, without much restraint. It’s not a perfect record—a couple moments just don’t land just right.

But my word, when they do land…

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Record #1000: U2 – The Unforgettable Fire (1984)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

After War its subsequent tour made them into The Next Big Thing, U2 pushed back. Per Bono’s own account, the world was waiting for the next The Who or Led Zeppelin, and it seemed that they were poised to fill ascend to that throne.

But they didn’t want to be “the Next” whoever or other. They wanted to be the first U2. And so they eschewed the throne waiting for them and took a hard left turn instead. They rented a castle and hired Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to produce (a decision that Bono had to talk both the label and Eno himself into). Eno and Lanois took the sense of atmosphere that had always been a spice on their albums and turned it into a main course.

The resulting album was unlike anything before or since, forecasting shoegaze and post rock in prescient detail. And even in the light of thirty years, The Unforgettable Fire remains the most consequential album they’ve ever made.

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Record #999: U2 – Under a Blood Red Sky (1983)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For all of their innovation in the studio, it is impossible to fully grasp U2’s body of work without considering their live show. They are the posterboys for arena rock, which is less a genre than it is a touring designation, and a cursory look at any of their live shows will show you why. Even if you don’t consider their inventive use of multimedia elements (see: ZooTV, US 360º Tour, their recent residency at The Sphere), the electricity of the four Irishmen is often enough to captivate crowds in the tens of thousands.

On Under a Blood Red Sky, their first live record, they hadn’t yet become the entertainment juggernauts they would pupate into. However, the energy the group brings to the stage is palpable through the speakers.

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Record #998: U2 – War (1983)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It’s hard to quantify just how big of a record War was.

Up to this point, U2’s brand of anthemic post-punk had brought them modest success, but they were hardly a household name to anyone. War, on the other hand, knocked Thriller off of the top spot on the UK charts.

Thirty-one years later, it remains one of the group’s most definitive and celebrated works, and with good reason. For my own part, it was a chance purchase of this record in a used bin when I first started collecting records that made me a U2 fan in the first place, and it was my favorite of theirs for quite a few years.

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Record #996: U2 – Boy (1980)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

After a career of arena tours, high-profile philanthropy, Platinum records, Broadway soundtracks (remember the Spider-Man musical?), unsolicited album releases, and more hits than you can shake a stick at, it can be hard to remember that U2 was birthed out of the same scene as the Clash, Wire, Joy Division, and the Cure.

But even the most shallow listen to Boy will snap that picture into focus, simultaneously forecasting a prescient image of the iconic band that they would become.

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