Cons: Could be considered a little samey in paces. Bono's voice.
The Bottom Line: If you like decent, heartfelt rock music then this is for you, but beware Bono's voice isn't the greatest ever and The Edge not one of the great axemen.
taylor-mayed's Full Review: The Best of 1980-1990 by U2
Few rock bands have divided critical and popular opinion as much during the course of their careers as U2 have done. Some see them as one of the most important, influential and gifted bands of the last twenty-five years if not of all time. Others see them as overrated, pretentious, musically ordinary and producers of songs that all sounds the same.
My own feelings towards the group lie somewhere between these two extremes. I wouldn’t place them at the very top of the ranking for the best group of all time, the area where bands such as The Beatles and Queen reside. Certainly Bono’s lead vocal is rarely anything to write home about – when the band was first formed he was only reluctantly placed in the lead singer role because he was such an awful guitar player – and The Edge is certainly not one of the great virtuosos of rock history in the mould of a Jimmy Hendrix or a Jeff Beck or a Brian May. But despite this, there is no doubting that they have produced some superb songs and had a consistent run of popular success for the best part of twenty years now.
“The Best of 1980-1990” is testament to the first half of this highly successful career as a group, and it also provides plenty of evidence for those who support and deride the band. It opens with one of the all-time classic rock anthems, “Pride (In the Name of Love)”, a song which The Edge was once quoted as calling the only real pop song they had ever produced. Certainly it has all the qualities that go into making a classic rock song, with its immediately memorable tune and powerful anthem chorus. But it also contains the religious allusions that populate so many U2 tracks, hardly surprising when you consider that they are such a vehemently Christian band. In this case, it is the line “one man betrayed with a kiss” that brings forth images of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus Christ to the Romans – but then again it could be a reference to anything, perhaps a kiss from a dangerous femme fatale. As with so many of their songs, there are ambiguous shades of grey with few questions answered.
The second track is “New Year’s Day”, a song which for me is an excellent piece of rock musicianship with an eerily haunting feel, spoiled by the quality of Bono’s vocal – or rather lack of quality. There is just something about his voice generally and particularly on this track that grates and doesn’t feel right. There is no denying that he always sings with a lot of passion and to the best of his abilities, but the fact is that those abilities are somewhat more limited than some of his contemporaries. But then again, he is no worse than singers such as Steve Tyler and Axl Rose, who have also achieved high levels of success on fairly limited vocal ranges, and he of course remains a very talented songwriter and a crowd-pleasing frontman.
Track three, “With Or Without You”, is quite possibly one of the finest rock songs of the 1980s and certainly the best track on this collection. From its gentle beginning with Bono’s adequately sensitive lead vocal it builds up a tender yet terse atmosphere and turns into an awesome rock ballad. It has a full and rich sound but at the same time never sounds over-produced, showing off what superb musicians and songwriters U2 can be when they are at the height of their powers.
This ability is also showcased on the closest rival to “With Or Without You” as the best song on the album; “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, the track that immediately follows it. This song could either be about the search for a particular love, any love in general or maybe the love of God, but however you interpret it the fact remains that it is a superb piece of rock musicianship. As with the previous song, it builds up slowly from a quiet beginning into another sing-a-long, powerfully anthemic chorus tat is strangely uplifting for a song about not having found something you’ve searched desperately for.
“Sunday Bloody Sunday” is an extremely difficult song to review because you can either review it purely in terms of being a rock song, which would simply be naïve, or as the political message which it was intended to be, which would lead me onto the thin ice of writing about matters of which I have very little understanding. Those who accuse the band of pretension would claim that a rock band has no cause to dabble in political affairs as rock music is trivial in comparison to the massacre of innocent lives, and they do have a point. But musicians write about what is important to them, and if they do so with real feeling rather than merely an attempt to cash in on a given situation then it is more than valid. Purely in terms of musicianship, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is not a great favourite of mine – the arrangement sounds a little bare, as if this was simply a live studio take of the four members playing and singing with little or no production work done on it afterwards. But then again, perhaps that was rather the point, scale down the production so that the message is put across very firmly and clearly.
“Bad” returns to the formula of “With Or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, perhaps adding some fuel to the fire of those who argue that all their songs sound the same, but beginning quietly before building into a powerful rock song. The musical arrangement of the introduction does sound very similar to “I Still Haven’t Found…” but to be honest this song doesn’t even come near that one in terms of passion and greatness. It’s not so much that it’s a bad song, simply that sounding so similar to such a great song merely reminds the listener of what it is not rather than what it is, creating one of the weaker tracks on the album as a result.
A hauntingly melancholic air inhabits “Where the Streets Have No Name”, although to be honest I personally don’t feel that the main body of the song comes anywhere close to living up to the excellent introduction. It always feels to me as if it is a song that should be building into something else but has remained stuck at one level, and added to this another fairly ordinary vocal performance from Bono, where a more talented singer such as Michael Jackson or Freddie Mercury would have soared to vocal highs that could have saved this song from the ordinary.
The beginning of “I Will Follow” evokes memories of “Pride (In the Name of Love)” in terms of The Edge’s guitar part, but this is forgivable as it is a pacey little number with a good powerful drum beat forcing it along at a cracking speed with a much better vocal performance from Bono, keeping to his limits rather than straining to overcome them. I would argue that this song disproves the notion that the band have only ever made one pure pop song, unless of course there is some deeper meaning to it that I have missed somewhere along the line.
“The Unforgettable Fire” is another of the real bona fide classics of the U2 catalogue, another song that has a haunting, slightly lonely quality to it – a ‘black and white’ song, if you can understand what I’m trying to get at. Like so many U2 songs it builds as it goes along and forms into another of the classic songs on the soundtrack of the 1980s.
A song that was originally a b-side and not a hit in itself until released in a new version to promote this album in 1998 is “Sweetest Thing”, a terse yet tender love song with some superb musicianship from the band, particularly the striking piano sound and a touching lyric that is easily one of the best U2 songs ever, although whether it should truly be included on a compilation of hits from 1980-1990 is open to question.
“Desire” has some unusually striking guitar work from The Edge and moves along at a cracking pace, almost feeling like a ‘proper’ rock song from one of those less highly regarded 1980s bands such as Def Leppard or even – whisper it quietly – Aerosmith. Again, more evidence to suggest the U2 have made more pure pop songs than even they themselves would care to admit.
“When Love Comes to Town” is a song that I cannot find anything in particular to criticise, but nothing in particular to praise either. In some senses it sounds almost as if it has come out of a time warp from the 1970s, it is in an old-fashioned rock mould but does not do anything particularly distinctive within that mould.
The penultimate track on the album is “Angel of Harlem”, an ode to a New York woman that is a real, traditional rock ballad and one of my favourite U2 songs. It has a nice pace to it and the arrangement in production is significantly different enough to make it stand out from the majority of U2 tracks and thus it does make a refreshing change on this album.
The collection closes with “All I Want Is You”, yet another of those songs that begins quietly with some very gently guitar work and an earnest vocal from Bono, before gradually building into another of those striking but not necessarily great rock tracks in which they specialise. In many ways this song sums up U2 – it’s nice enough and a great many people like it, but it just lacks a certain quality you can’t quite put your finger on that would raise it to the levels of true greatness.
“All I Want Is You” is however followed by a 2-minute ‘hidden’ track, of which I do not know the title but that it does contain some stunning piano, which I would happily listen to on its own without the Bono vocal and other instrumentation that briefly intrudes upon it towards the end. An impressive and most unexpected conclusion to the album.
This album if is a must for anybody who doesn’t have any U2 in their CD collection but has always had this nagging feeling that they really ought to own at least one album. It certainly distils their first ten years as an internationally successful group into an easily digestible whole for those who aren’t over keen on them but are prepared to be convinced, removing as it does all of the weaker moments that would come with buying the albums proper. But then again, that’s the advantage of buying any band’s greatest hits collection.
The music is unquestionably good throughout and the song writing on occasion amongst the very best of the 1980s, but even after all of that I still would not place U2 in the first rank of great bands. But there is no doubting that their considerable success is well deserved, their longevity if nothing else has been proof of that.
Over 75 million albums and twenty years since their formation this album brings together the Sweetest Thing. Other mega-hits include With Or With Out ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.