The Joshua Tree

The Good: U2
The Bad: U2
The Ugly: U2

Is that me cheating above? Should I be more creative? Maybe. However, I’ve never been a U2 fan, even if I really like a lot of their music… I just find that Bono has re-invented the term Ego

However, holy crap, what an album!
Many of my friends in high school and college had this album, yet I never bothered listening to it, the album that is. Because, unless one was living under a rock, there was no escaping several of the massive hits that are included on this album.

A great listen. An album to played with frequency, and thus, sadly for me, a 5*

The Joshua Tree is a pretty good album. This album does tend to play it safe throughout most of the songs as it doesn't really try anything to help it stand out from all the other alternative rock bands that were around a lot throughout the 1980s. It does try some things but not all that much to make the album feel like it's own. That being said, it's still a solid album and while the songs do tend to play it safe, a lot of them actually sound pretty good and there was also no point when i was so bored to the point where i was losing track of the songs. This album isn't anything all that special but it's still a solid one nonetheless.
Best Song: Bullet The Blue Sky
Worst Song: With Or Without You

Undoubtedly their best. Fuck the haters.

5/5

huoh U2. en ihan ykköstä kehtaa antaa kun kai tää on teknisesti kelpo musaa, mutta lähellä ollaan.

ah que merda
como pode um album ter 11 músicas iguais. pop rock gringo na sua pior forma, credo
gostaria mais se eu fosse um pai divorciado

It was alright. First half was better than the second for me

As popular and sell outs as they became, I never really hated the material U2 put out. I mainly like their earlier 80's output but almost anything they've done is fine by me. This one starts off with 3 of their biggest hits and then runs through a bunch of great deep cuts. Bullet the Blue Sky and Red Hill Mining Town were my favorites this listen. Not a big fan of the last track though, doesn't add anything and the album was already hard enough to cram onto 1 LP.

Classic album by an all-time great band. The first four tracks are still huge nearly forty years on.

Another one that's really good, very musically solid (bass and guitar especially!) - might not be a life changing experience, but very good

Wow, the first three songs are back to back bangers. I’ll never not like Where the streets have no name with its subtle start from nothing to that great guitar line. Didn’t know the rest of the songs but enjoyed what I heard. Atmospheric sounds and nice rising melodies. Doesn’t sound like it’s from the 80s. 5*
Highlights: where the streets have no name, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, with or without you

Good vibe for walking to work on a sunny morning slightly hungover

Fave tracks:
Where the Streets have no name
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Exit - unexpectedly rips

A bit front-loaded

never understood why these guys are so liked and popular, maybe because they popified rock music?
anyway boring, one track that wasnt a single was not boring to me but thats it

Some heavy hitters starting out the gate. The rest was just standard U2, never really been my favorite for some reason. I can't put my finger on it, but they have always grated on me.

I wasn't a fan of U2 in the 80s, my dad was, I became a fan of U2 in the 90s through Achtung Baby and the retina searing intensity of the Zoo TV tour. "Where The Streets Have No Name" is an experience played live with the dark build up and soft red lights all cascading towards the crescendo when the house/stadiums lights are turned up and everyone goes fucking bananas, so that was my vision when I started listening to The Joshua Tree in the 90s.

And the album version of Streets doesn't live up to that memory, core memory, its flatter, the bass is dead in comparison, its just so overproduced. Same goes for the other songs I knew so well like "Bullet The Blue Sky" and "With Or Without You" but instead of being down that these versions just didn't live up to the later interpretation, I realised that age and wisdom had made them that much better.

(Tangentially they d a different composition of "Even Better Than The Real Thing" when they play it live nowadays and its fucking sick and I would have killed a man for spouting such heresy back in the day)

So, myself being advanced in age and wisdom, a relisten to this was like meeting an old friend, things have changed, but its comforting all the same. It has an absolutely killer side A.... "Where the Streets Have No Name", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", "With or Without You", "Bullet the Blue Sky", and "Running to Stand Still" is a HALL OF FAME WORTHY run of hot shit after hot shit AND THEN you get "Red Hill Mining Town and "In God's Country"

You people don't deserve to be this close to perfection.

Like the best bands, the best albums are of a piece.

The last of the great rock-era U2 albums, before they "reinvented" themselves - as what, many of us fans STILL do not know. I guess just "not this anymore." Yet this album (and the little portion of their career it represents) was a career plateau that they never really got back to.

They hold up a mirror to America, more as their own introspection than as a preachy diatribe. There is a respect and disappointment in the romanticism. And it's not all about America, either. Running to Stand Still, Streets Have No Name, most of these are about everywhere. Like a daydream, images fade in and out, some more lucid than others.

The themes and lyrical content give the whole thing its emotional underpinning. U2 as musicians have hit their stride, confident in the style that they invented for themselves and unapologetically galloping from one rendering of it to the next. Instrumentally, U2 have a tension between the piercing staccato of guitar and the down-to-earth smoothness of the bass. This tension is not so much antagonistic as it is a framework or scaffolding. The drums/bass/guitar push against each other and work together to support whatever chaos is happening on top of and around them. Kind of a cool trick that works really well for them in that the singer isn't doing pop tropes all the time. He requires an instrumental pulpit that the band are happy to provide. Neither can exist without the other. This structure sounds great on an album with outsized and ambitious anthemic thrust.

It does fail for some listeners who aren't up for that level of commitment, maybe. U2 have attempted to take on difficult and far-reaching themes, inside and outside of themselves. It can be a lot. I always really loved that about them, though. They are committed to each other, the fans, the music, and what they are trying to say. When it works, like it does here, it can be a religious experience.

Absolute dilge

That's nice!

Okay album. Not a U2 fan, but Bullet the Blue Sky is a banger.

I now understand why the first three and only the first three were radio singles. Amazing five star ep that grew into a four star album

the first 4 songs are incredible. cosplaying as americans. love it. gets a bit wishy washy as it goes along though.