Album of the day (#857): Achtung Baby by U2

[Evandar]

I can like this in very small doses, but overall I don't like the album much. I remember my brother having this album when I was a kid, and I hated it back then. While I like it more now, U2 in general just isn't my thing.

[useless]

Well, seeing previous comments I realize I belong in the minority here: I really, really like U2's '80s output a lot and The Joshua Tree is an all-time favorite. Hell, I even enjoy their cruelly bashed '00s stuff. But as hard as I've tried to get into this, all I gain is disappointment. Not to say it's not a good album-Mysterious Ways is a devilishly catchy, addictive tune, The Fly combines a lot of surprising elements along with great lyrics, Until The End Of The World and Ultra Violet are also fantastic songs. As a cohesive whole though, it's definitely not as good as its finest moments would suggest. One's cool, but it always stroke me as way too melodramatic, the opening track is a bore (the two closing ones are slightly better, but still just decent) while stuff like Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses and So Cruel is just meh. So yes, it's uneven to my ears. For all of Eno's efforts to make this sound more sophisticated and complex than their previous work, sometimes it sounds unfittingly exotic (not in a good manner) and pretentious. That said, it's still a pretty good album, thanks to Hewson's fantastic vocals at some parts (most memorably Ultra Violet) and the slightly dark attitude, along with departing the political preaching (which worked incredibly well for them up until they came back to it during the '00s with much less amusing results). Anyway, solid, but really overrated.