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Customer Reviews of Achtung Baby

The most famous songs here are the radio-friendly "One" and "Mysterious Ways." Yet some of the greatest tunes never got airplay. "The Fly" is a lyrical masterpiece about the frailty of human love. "Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World" ranks as one of U2's "deepest" pieces of musical experimentation. "Love is Blindness" is my favorite song on the disc.

All the songs here explore the divide between reality and appearance in love and rejection. There is a darkness to the songs of Achtung Baby that was not present in the earlier works of U2. The addition of this facet to their music has made them more mature as artists over the years. Yet, for better or worse, this darker outlook has never again reached the pure, undistilled heights it did in Achtung Baby.

"Achtung Baby" is a more than solid five-star album. I give it my highest recommendation.

A classic of its generation
Many great bands achieve perfection on one album, a high point of epiphany and clarity that is so obvious that it can't be denied - though that band's avid fans often like to. Be it the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, Led Zeppelin's fourth album or Elton's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - all of these albums transcend time and genre, and are immediately and eternally accepted as classics by almost everyone, far beyond the bands' fan base. That happened for a record number of artists in 1991 - perhaps the greatest year rock had since 1973. Guns n' Roses had their Use Your Illusion; Red Hot Chili Peppers had Blood Sugar Sex Magik; Nirvana scored with Nevermind, and the list goes on - Pearl Jam, Temple Of The Dog, Spin Doctors. And U2. U2 achieved perfection on Achtung Baby both in their songs and in their sound. Much of the thanks should go to the production team; Achtung is the last U2 album produced by Daniel Lanois, but Brian Eno's (the master-producer who worked with David Bowie, Talking Heads, Bryan Ferry, Robert Fripp and Devo, among others) influence is at its strongest here, and with the help of Mix-artist Flood (techno-wizard who helped Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins to the top) he creates a new sound for U2, a sound that is rougher, harder and more electric, but also more captivating and more powerful than they ever were before. U2 dragged themselves kicking and screaming out of the 80s, emerged out of pop-rock and into the alternative and the avant-garde, and created an album that is at once catchy and groundbreaking.

From the very first sounds of the album's opening track, 'Zoo Station', it's clear that this will be a very different experience from The Joshua Tree or anything else they released before. The song is by far the heaviest and hardest track on the album, which makes for a great opener and a great introduction to the 'new', more produced, more experimental U2. That is not to say that the band mates' celebrated skills are nowhere to be seen; in fact, The Edge's guitar sounds better than ever, but he abandoned the clean tone that made him famous during the Joshua Tree / Rattle & Hum period for a much harsher, more distorted sound. What attracted me to U2's music was always the sound rather than the songs, and on Achtung Baby the sound is all around perfect. That can be felt on the album's catchier, mellower pop tunes, like the hit ballad 'One' and the successful single 'Mysterious Ways', as well as on the more experimental pieces - 'The Fly', 'Love Is Blindness', or 'Even Better Than The Real Thing'. U2 made a completely new band out of themselves in 1991, in terms of both music and subject matter; politics are nowhere to be found on Achtung Baby, and even the love songs have become more complex and sarcastic. U2 and Bono are darker here than they ever were.

But all that does not mean that they lost they skill for making catchy tunes; on the contrary. Each song on Achtung Baby is a perfect pop song, and it produced a number of hit singles that equals its massively successful predecessor. Thus the ideal balance is struck between the qualities of each member of the band and the production team - Bono's pop poetry, The Edge's explosive guitar, Eno's always expanding experimentation, Flood's electronics. That balance will not - could not have - lasted for more than one album; Eno would take over on Zooropa, then Flood would have his own on Pop, and Bono would reclaim the group on All That You Can't Leave Behind. All of these albums are great for their own reasons, but not one of them could be compared to the inspiration of Achtung Baby. Even the most cynic of U2's haters should give it a listen; it really is one of the masterpieces of its time.

New Ground Broken
Berlin, 1990. U2 are months removed from the end of the "Lovetown" tour, and they are struggling to figure out what to do, as the recording sessions for the untitled new project began. For the first time in their career, they were getting nowhere, and fast. Add this to the fact that there were massive disagreements about the creative direction they should take, and the fact that The Edge was going through a difficult split from his wife at the time, and you have one very tense, very uncertain atmosphere for these recording sessions. It was a breakdown of sorts, and U2 nearly broke up. Were it not for one song, they may have never released anything together again.

Fortunately, that song did come to be, and the rest is history, as it quickly led to U2 finding their groove and figuring out what they wanted to do. Achtung Baby was a much darker, much more techno and dance-oriented then anything they had ever done. Bono's lyrical fortes have always been politics and sexual innuendo, and after a decade of political music, this album is straight a love-sex-relationships-loss record, which is no surprise as The Edge was going through his own marital split at the time and Bono was also having some problems(which have since been resolved) concerning touring and being away from his family for so long. This record captures all the different ways love can manifest itself, and, in contrast, the different ways it can be lost. Highlights include chart hits 'Even Better Than The Real Thing', 'The Fly', and 'Mysterious Ways', live favorite "'ntil The End Of The World'(which has generated so amazing performances), unknown gems 'So Cruel', "'Ultraviolet', 'Acrobat', and 'Love Is Blindness'.

When one things "Achtung Baby", however, one thinks of one song. 'One' is often considered as being right up with "Yesterday" in terms of the greatest rock ballads ever written, and more importantly is the song that saved U2 from breakup. To quote Larry Mullen Jr., "I remember walking into the control room, and hearing this riff, it's the riff from One, and just thinking, 'that is IT, THIS is something special". For me the brilliance of "One" is that it has so many different meanings that no one has ever been able to pinpoint its original genesis lyric-wise. It could be talking about tolerance and acceptance amongst the human race, it could be talking about AIDS, it could be talking about a relationship gone bad, it could even be talking about the band itself, as in the band members are not the same but they have to carry each other in order to make the band work. Just a brilliant song, as are most of the songs on this record(come on, there are only three songs on it that I haven't mentioned).

What's perhaps even more brilliant than this record is the way in which U2 decided to tour it. I am convinced that no tour will ever be able to touch the spectacle that was, "ZooTV". The brilliance of this tour lies in its intent: on the outside, when you see Bono strut on stage in a leather outfit with fly shades and slicked back hair, the band with massive amounts of hardware behind them, the first reaction is that they're a band that has let superstardom go to their heads, a group of arrogant individuals. However, this is not the case. The intent of this tour is to, in fact, make fun of the importance the media puts on things like U2 by putting all those huge TV screens on stage, while at the same time using them to bring more important issues to the public's doorstep: the gulf war, the sarajevo linkups(in which Bono talked to young people in Sarajevo during its wartime, via satellite, during shows), etc.

The most amazing part of all this is that U2 were able to make such drastic changes, take such big risks for already being the biggest band in the world, and be able to not only maintain that title, but attract legions of new fans at the same time, while still being true to the music THEY wanted to make. That hasn't happened very often at all. Ever. Fans will argue over which of masterpiece #3("The Joshua Tree") or masterpiece #4(This) is better, but I say, just appreciate "Achtung Baby" for what it is: A great, groundbreaking rock record.