U2: The Best of 1980-1990

Slightly annoying but lovable, U2 is the musical equivalent of a frisky sheepdog who jumps up and licks your face. The first retrospective in U2’s 20-year history, The Best of 1980-1990, comes in two formats. The single-disc edition covers the hits through Rattle and Hum, and the double-disc adds 15 B-sides and rarities. In the Reagan years, the recordings were erratic. U2 could be bombastic, but it had heart and spirit. The studio versions of the early productions included here are drenched in reverb. Drums drown out guitars. The best renditions of early hits such as “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “I Will Follow” — the songs that broke the band in America — appear on the live EP Under a Blood Red Sky. Producer Brian Eno’s cerebral touch made U2’s albums more adventurous and focused. Wide Awake in America was U2’s Eighties masterpiece. The music was spectacular, the lyrics dealt more maturely with spiritual crises and hopes, and Bono had learned to “shout without raising his voice.” The three songs included are faultless, but any fan should have the whole album. Rattle and Hum, its flawed roots album, is overrepresented.

(Article continues with a review of R.E.M.’s Up album; there is no further mention of U2)

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