U2 – 18 Singles (2006)

U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin, formed in 1976. The group consists of Bono (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), the Edge (lead guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals), Adam Clayton (bass guitar), and Larry Mullen Jr. (drums and percussion). Initially rooted in post-punk, U2’s musical style has evolved throughout their career, yet has maintained an anthemic quality built on Bono’s expressive vocals and the Edge’s chiming, effects-based guitar sounds. Their lyrics, often embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal and sociopolitical themes. Popular for their live performances, the group have staged several ambitious and elaborate tours over their career.

The band was formed when the members were teenaged pupils of Mount Temple Comprehensive School and had limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they signed with Island Records and released their debut album, Boy (1980). Subsequent work such as their first UK number-one album, War (1983), and the singles “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” helped establish U2’s reputation as a politically and socially conscious group. By the mid-1980s, they had become renowned globally for their live act, highlighted by their performance at Live Aid in 1985. The group’s fifth album, The Joshua Tree (1987), made them international superstars and was their greatest critical and commercial success. Topping music charts around the world, it produced their only number-one singles in the US to date: “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.

Facing creative stagnation and a backlash to their documentary/double album, Rattle and Hum (1988), U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s. Beginning with their acclaimed seventh album, Achtung Baby (1991), and the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour, the band pursued a new musical direction influenced by alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music, and they embraced a more ironic, flippant image. This experimentation continued through their ninth album, Pop (1997), and the PopMart Tour, which were mixed successes. U2 regained critical and commercial favour with the records All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), which established a more conventional, mainstream sound for the group. Their U2 360° Tour of 2009–2011 set records for the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour, both of which were surpassed in 2019. The group most recently released the companion albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017), the former of which received criticism for its pervasive, no-cost release through the iTunes Store.

U2 have released 14 studio albums and are one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide. They have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, and in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 on its list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”. Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and social justice causes, including Amnesty International, Jubilee 2000, the ONE/DATA campaigns, Product Red, War Child, and Music Rising.

U218 Singles is a greatest hits album by Irish rock band U2, released in November 2006. In most markets, the album contains 18 songs: 16 of their most successful and popular singles, and two new songs. The 17th track is a cover version of the Skids’ “The Saints Are Coming”, recorded with Green Day to benefit Hurricane Katrina charities. The 18th and closing track was a new song entitled “Window in the Skies”. In some markets such as the United Kingdom, an extra song, “I Will Follow”, was included as the opening track. A DVD compilation of music videos from throughout the group’s career entitled U218 Videos was released concurrent to U218 Singles.

The album debuted on the Billboard 200 albums chart on 9 December 2006 at number 12 with sales of 134,000 copies. It spent 45 weeks on the chart. Despite not being released until November 2006, it was the seventh-highest-selling album in the world that year. (wikipedia)

U2’s first two greatest-hits albums neatly divided themselves by decade, with the first covering the ’80s and the second summing up the ’90s. Their third hits comp, 2006’s U218 Singles, is at once more ambitious and more concise, offering an overview of their first 26 years on a single disc comprised of 18 tracks — and since two of those are new songs, that leaves just 16 songs to tell their whole story. That’s not much space for a band with a career as lengthy and ambitious as U2, so it’s inevitable that some painful cuts have been made. Nothing from October, Zooropa or Pop is here, and unless you’re buying various import editions that have “I Will Follow” as a bonus track, there’s nothing from Boy, either.

There’s only one cut each from The Unforgettable Fire and Rattle and Hum — and bucking conventional wisdom, none of their three widely accepted masterpieces — War, The Joshua Tree, or Achtung Baby — provide the most songs here. No, out of all their albums the one that dominates U218 Singles is All That You Can’t Leave Behind, their 2000 comeback from the depths of the misguided Pop, and one of two records that they’ve released since their last hits compilation, The Best of 1990-2000. (by Stephen Thomas Erlewine)

Personnel:
Adam Clayton (bass)
David Howell “The Edge” Evans (guitar, keyboards, background vocals)
Paul David “Bono” Hewson (vocals, guitar)
Larry Mullen Jr. (drums and percussion)

Tracklist:
01.Beautiful Day (2000) All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) 4.06
02. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (1987) 4.37
03. Pride (In The Name Of Love) (1984) 3.49
04. With Or Without You 81987) 4.57
05. Vertigo (2004) 3.11
06. New Year’s Day (Japanese single version) (1983) 4.18
07. Mysterious Ways (1991) 4.03
08. Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of All (2000) 4.32
09. Where The Streets Have No Name (Single version) (1987) 4.48
10. Sweetest Thing (Single mix) (1998) 3.01
11. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1983) 4.41
12. One (1991) 4.36
13. Desire (1988) 3.00
14. Walk On (Edited version) (2000) 4.29
15. Elevation (2000) 3.49
16. Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own (2004) 5.06
17. The Saints Are Coming (with Green Day) (new song) (2006) 3.23
18. Window In The Skies (new song) (2006) 4.07

All song written by:

except 17., written by Richard Jobson & Stuart Adamson

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I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes I’m still running
You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Oh my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

More from U2:

U2 – Achtung Baby (1991)

Achtung Baby  is the seventh studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 18 November 1991 on Island Records. Stung by criticism of their 1988 release, Rattle and Hum, U2 shifted their musical direction to incorporate influences from alternative rock, industrial music, and electronic dance music into their sound. Thematically, Achtung Baby is darker, more introspective, and at times more flippant than their previous work. The album and the subsequent multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour were central to the group’s 1990s reinvention, by which they abandoned their earnest public image for a more lighthearted and self-deprecating one.

Seeking inspiration from German reunification, U2 began recording Achtung Baby at Berlin’s Hansa Studios in October 1990. The sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over their musical direction and the quality of their material. After tensions and slow progress nearly prompted the group to disband, they made a breakthrough with the improvised writing of the song “One”. Morale and productivity improved during subsequent recording sessions in Dublin, where the album was completed in 1991. To confound the public’s expectations of the band and their music, U2 chose the record’s facetious title and colourful multi-image sleeve.

Achtung Baby is one of U2’s most successful records; it received favourable reviews and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 Top Albums, while topping the charts in many other countries. Five songs were released as commercial singles, all of which were chart successes, including “One”, “Mysterious Ways”, and “The Fly”. The album has sold 18 million copies worldwide and won a Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Achtung Baby has since been acclaimed by writers and music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time. The record was reissued in October 2011 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its original release. (by wikipedia)

Having spent a good part of the Eighties as one of the most iconic bands in the world, U2 hardly needs to resort to a cheekily absurd title to draw attention to its first album in three years. Then again, subtlety has never been one of the group’s virtues. In its early days and in its basic musical approach — a guitar, a few chords and the truth, to paraphrase one of Bono’s more garish assertions — U2 fell in with other young bands that cropped up in the wake of punk. But U2 immediately distinguished itself with its huge sound and an unabashed idealism rooted in spiritual aspiration. At their best, these Irishmen have proven — just as Springsteen and the Who did — that the same penchant for epic musical and verbal gestures that leads many artists to self-parody can, in more inspired hands, fuel the unforgettable fire that defines great rock & roll.

At their worst … well, the half-live double album Rattle and Hum (1988) — the product of U2’s self-conscious infatuation with American roots music — wasn’t a full-out disaster, but it was misguided and bombastic enough to warrant concern. With Achtung Baby, U2 is once again trying to broaden its musical palette, but this time its ambitions are realized. Working with producers who have lent discipline and nuance to the group’s previous albums — Daniel Lanois oversees the entire album, with Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite assisting on a number of songs — U2 sets out to experiment rather than pay homage. In doing so, the band is able to draw confidently and consistently on its own native strengths.

Most conspicuous among the new elements that U2 incorporates on Achtung are hip-hop-derived electronic beats. The band uses these dance-music staples on about half of the album’s twelve tracks, often layering them into guitar heavy mixes the way that many young English bands like Happy Mondays and Jesus Jones have done in recent years. “Mysterious Ways” is a standout among these songs, sporting an ebullient hook and a guitar solo in which the Edge segues from one of his signature bursts of light into an insidious funk riff.

Elsewhere, as in the fit of distortion and feedback that opens “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” Edge evokes the cacophony and electronic daring of noise bands like Sonic Youth. Indeed Edge’s boldness on Achtung is key to the album’s adventurous spirit. His plangent, minimalist guitar style — among the most distinctive and imitated in modern rock — has always made inspired use of devices like echo and reverb; his shimmering washes of color on “Until the End of the World” and soaring peals on “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” are instantly recognizable. But other tracks find the guitarist crafting harder textures and flashing a new arsenal of effects. On the first cut, “Zoo Station,” he uses his guitar as a rhythm instrument, repeating a dark, buzzing phrase that drives the beat while his more lyrical playing on the chorus enhances the melody. Similarly, “The Fly” features grinding riffs that bounce off Adam Clayton’s thick bass line and echo and embellish Larry Mullen Jr.’s drumming.

Bono’s task, then, is to lend his sensuous tenor and melodramatic romanticism to expressions that match this sonic fervor. He announces on “Zoo Station” that he’s “ready to let go/Of the steering wheel”; what follows are the most fearlessly introspective lyrics he’s written. In the past, U2’s frontman has turned out fiercely pointed social and political diatribes, but his more confessional and romantic songs, however felt, have been evasive. On Achtung, though, Bono deals more directly with his private feelings — not to mention his hormones. “The hunter will sin … for your ivory skin,” he sings on “Wild Horses,” and boasts on “Even Better Than the Real Thing” that “I’m gonna make you sing/Give me half a chance/To ride on the waves that you bring.”

Almost as surprising, and even more affecting, are Bono’s reflections on being an artist. On “Acrobat,” over an arrangement that recalls the apocalyptic frenzy of “Bullet the Blue Sky,” he pleads for inspiration: “What are we going to do now it’s all been said?” On “The Fly” self-doubt gives way to self-indictment: “Every artist is a cannibal,” he sings in a whispered groan, “every poet is a thief.” Squarely acknowledging his own potential for hypocrisy and inadequacy, and addressing basic human weaknesses rather than the failings of society at large, Bono sounds humbler and more vulnerable than in the past. “Desperation is a tender trap,” he sings on “So Cruel.” “It gets you every time.”

That’s not to say that U2 has forsaken its faith or that Bono has abandoned his quest to find what he’s looking for. On the radiant ballad “One,” the band invests an unexceptional message — “We’re one/But we’re not the same/We get to carry each other” — with such urgency that it sounds like a revelation. Few bands can marshal such sublime power, but it’s just one of the many moments on Achtung Baby when we’re reminded why, before these guys were the butt of cynical jokes, they were rock & roll heroes — as they still are. (by Elysa Gardner)

Personnel:
Bono (vocals, guitar)
Adam Clayton (bass)
The Edge (guitar, keyboards, vocals)
Larry Mullen Jr. (drums, percussion)
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Duchess Nell Catchpole (violin and viola on 06.)
Brian Eno (keyboards on 03., 09. + 12.)
Daniel Lanois (guitar on 01., 03. + 09., percussion on 04. + 08.)

Tracklist:
01. Zoo Station 4.36
02. Even Better Than The Real Thing 3.41
03. One 4.36
04. Until The End Of The World 4.39
05. Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses 5.16
06. So Cruel 5.49
07. The Fly 4.29
08. Mysterious Ways 4.04
09. Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World 3.53
10. Ultraviolet (Light My Way) 5.31
11. Acrobat 4.30
12. Love Is Blindness 4.23

Music: Bono – Adam Clayton – The Edge – Larry Mullen Jr.
Lyrics: Bono

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