There was a time as a teenager in the 1980s when it was edgy to like U2 (before the Unforgettable Fire???), but that didn't last for long when they became mainstream with the 1987 hit album Joshua Tree and then the frat boys were all over it right around the Achtung Baby era in the early 1990s.
More than anything, I think I just enjoyed watching K-SHE stumble over how to treat a band like this when I was rebelling against their misses of the time.
Taking all that into account, it's hard for me to like U2 after all these years. You couldn't help but get sick of them after what seemed like a long overexposure that drug on for 10 years. The icing on the stale cake was recently added when they forced their new album into my iTunes account against my will...not cool. I'll never listen to that record simply on principle. But the potential distaste doesn't end there: the questionable political alliances, the excesses to which they'd taken their live show in the Zooropa era, the 1980s drum sound on the early recordings, etc.
That said, you can't block them out if you lived through their heyday in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. But if like me, you bought some of their records and watched their videos and saw their rise, there are some good moments you cautiously but respectfully admire in very, very limited doses in retrospect...most of which are linked to fond personal memories.
You can't deny their musical chops and they were above average songwriters. They made some great songs and forged their own sound and changed it enough to keep up with the changing times. Some of their songs I NEVER want to hear again due to intense over exposure (e.g., Pride (In The Name Of Love), Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Streets Have No Name, Desire, Lemon, Even Better Than The Real Thing, etc). These were hollowed out by too many spins in too many bad/bland settings.
But, it feels like the time is right to revisit the band's nearly 34 year history of releasing albums. I couldn't really rank their proper albums, because at this point in my life, I don't listen to them from start to finish, which says something on its own. But instead, I recently dug through their catalog to mine ten songs I still think are good and worthy of hoisting them up as an important band and not just pop schlocksters. Some of these songs are associated with some very fond memories of a small above ground pool in a suburban neighborhood called Heritage Estates on a hot summer night when just hanging with a friend and listening to music that was more pithy than Rick Astley, Guns N Roses or Whitney Houston was the purest, most simply, happy thing that could ever happen to a teenager with no girlfriend, no particular future and no desire to be at home.
I also remember going to BAC Cinemas in Belleville, IL to see the U2 concert film "Rattle and Hum" and we were two of maybe ten people there...I was seventeen years old and thoroughly impressed.
So thanks Scotty for the memories and drawing U2 on your Converse Chuck Taylor's with Sharpie...that was hard shit at BTHSW at the time.
Anyhow for better or worse, these are the ten U2 songs that hold up for me after all these years and actually still sound pretty good:
1. Running To Stand Still from Joshua Tree
2. In A Little While from All That You Can't Leave Behind
3. Red Hill Mining Town from Joshua Tree
4. Trip Through Your Wires from Joshua Tree
5. All I Want Is You from Rattle and Hum
6. Sunday Bloody Sunday from War
7. "40" from War
8. I Will Follow from Boy
9. Out Of Control from Boy
10. One from Achtung Baby
A complicated, sentimental part of life paired with an equally sappy and sentimental band to ring in the times, rarely seem/sound good in retrospect, but this song list still hits home no matter how much I think I'm over it.
