God, what a weird album to make it to number 1. I don’t mean this as an insult. As previously discussed, U2 is my favourite band, so it’s hard to have a completely objective opinion. But it’s weird. Good weird.
It has a rap spoken word song (Numb), a dance song (Lemon), Johnny Cash appears in Sci-Fi western type song (The Wanderer), and there’s a bit of industrial noise (Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car). They even take the most traditional song on the album (Stay) and inject it with a European sheen that twists what would normally be a standard song into something special. No wonder the fans who liked With or Without You checked out at this point.
While it is weird, I always found it to be exciting and fearless. This album won best Grammy for Alternative album which, at the time, was met with a few raised eyebrows. I mean, U2. Alternative? But if you listen to the music on the album and also what else was in the musical landscape at the time (I can just point to the Spin Doctors and Kenny G as examples) this really was an alternative.
Frankly, they were never the same after the 90s for me. They second guessed themselves too many times and wanted to be “popular” rather than “good”. And, unfortunately, not weird.
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