Achtung Baby

Flood and Eno. every song's foundation, its rhythm is so tight and opens up to lyrics intuitively. Like even if you don't like Bono, listen and ignore the lyrics. The pockets are so natural and deep.

Two stinkers in a row. Hard pass.

This is a great album. Felt such a new sound whilst all the key components of U2’s existing sound being there.

Zoo station is such an under appreciated opener and sets the tone for the whole album. This is one of those albums where virtually every song could've easily been a single, which obviously means tracks like One ,the Fly snd Mysterious Ways were pretty fucking special to be the singles.

U2 are the absolute definition of "meh" to me - I'm not going to rush to press skip if the appear on shuffle, but I'm also never going to choose to listen to them. The first play through of this I was really distracted with work, so I had a second go in the evening so it got a fair shot.

Yeah, it's just not really for me. I like Mysterious Ways and One but pretty much everything else passed me by. None of the album tracks seemed any more enjoyable to me than the singles I already knew.

This is really a 2.5 for me, but I'm going to say it scrapes:

3/5

Incredibly tedious to get through. Lyrics seemed (to me, at least) surface level and cringy. Not to mention, overall boring as SHIT

I already can’t stand U2, so I tried to keep an open mind, but this album encapsulates all the things that irritate me about this band (mostly Bono tbh). They try too hard to sound deep, but it doesn’t seem like they actually know what that entails.

Trash

Favorite songs: Mysterious Ways, Acrobat

Least favorite songs: One, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, So Cruel, The Fly, Ultra Violet (Light My Way), Love is Blindness

1/5

I was 21 when this album came out. I was a massive U2 fan right from the first notes of Boy in 1980. And I adored every album up to this point. When this came out I was really disappointed and considered it the end of U2 as I had known them. I didn't like the change in sound. And then Zooropa confirmed that this wasn't an anomaly, it was a whole new direction. I gave up on them

Looking back on that and re-listening to this album now makes me realize that I was just an obnoxious 21-year-old elitist fanboy. This is a fucking awesome album full of incredible songs! Your favorite band evolving with the times is a GOOD thing.

With that said, I still can only give it four stars (9/10) because even at this point I don't think it was as groundbreaking as most of their previous albums.

But I'll probably listen to it 6 times through today!

Easy to mock, harder to admit they're actually extremely good at writing overwrought anthems that work on you despite yourself. After an incredible run in the 80s this is a re-invention for a new era, but since they reinvented themselves to be the omnipresent bland wallpaper of a slowly fading genre (radio friendly pop rock), it's their last good album. Three huge hits are great, most of the rest is decent unobjectionable stuff, but there's a lot of it to get through - they really are a greatest hits band. The less said about the Fly the better though - a vehicle to launch Bono's new persona as 'guy with a big pair of sunglasses', what a twat.

Like the much better War album, this bears the marks of its time and place, 1990 Berlin; it's the soundtrack of an earnest optimisitc post-coldwar liberalism anticipating the end of history, celebrating universalism, unification one-ness. One especially - the rest has a bit more ambient darkness and introspection to it.

Daniel Lanois has them sounding great - huge, sweeping, polished - pure bombast. The rhythms nod toward acid house as they're starting to adopt some electronica elements here they'd soon dive way deeper into. The guitars are bright and chiming with a bit of break up scuzziness, some wah wah wildness, all echoing through the mix with that distinctive Edge AC30 tone and melodic phrasing.

This one was pretty generic. Nothing particularly special about it. It wasn't really anything special to begin with about U2, but at least the first records were more interesting. From this album on, they became uninspired.

Makes for okay background music, but it isn't all that interesting a listen.

My dad had a couple U2 CDs that we listened to growing up and I liked them enough, but not enough to listen to on my own. The fact that this is "their most transformative album" makes me curious about how different their earlier works were. It's not that its bad, it's just not very exciting.

Following The Joshua Tree was no easy feat—an almost impossible task, in fact. But U2 rose to the challenge not by repeating themselves, but by reinventing their sound. Achtung Baby marks a bold and brilliant departure from their earlier work.

With this album, U2 leaned into experimentation, embracing new sonic textures and a more modern, edgy feel. The lyrics carry deeper emotional weight—often more reflective and positive—and the melodies are vibrant and fresh. The result is a confident, innovative record that stands tall in their discography.

Highlights include the hauntingly beautiful “So Cruel”, the emotionally charged “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”, and, of course, the iconic “One”—a song that has become one of U2’s most enduring anthems. Honestly, every track holds its own, making this a cohesive and thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish.

Favourite song: One
Least favourite: None – every track shines in its own way.
Album artwork: Easily U2’s best cover. It's vibrant, chaotic, and full of energy—just like the music. There's so much to look at; it perfectly captures the spirit of the album.

Solid stadion rock album.. Still not really that fond of his way of singing.

I’ve always said I don’t like U2 but I got The Joshua Tree about a month ago and I really enjoyed it, even gave it 5 stars. This is my second album from them and while I didn’t enjoy it quite as much, it’s still bloody good. The line between a 4 and a 5 is razor thin.

Top Track - I do hate going for cliche choices but it’s gotta be One.

I need to work out at what point do I change my tune and say I like U2 lol.

Decent, but nothing that really stood out to me except for One. Though I'm missing the vocals of Mary J. Blige.

It's weird, when this came out, it felt like a huge departure for U2, maybe because the music press said it was. But in retrospect it doesn't seem that different from their previous stuff. One is decent enough, but I still don't really like Bonos voice.

Maybe more nostalgic than good...

U2 enters the 90’s with a bang. Right off the bat with “Zoo Station”, you can tell this is going to be a very different album for them. Everything is a lot drier and close mic’ed; there is a lot less reverb on this record, fuzzier guitar tones, and a bit more experimentation in general, and the results are great. I think that Bono is such a great, unique vocalist that even when there’s such a huge stylistic shift within the band, they still sound like themselves. Achtung Baby may not sound like War, The Unforgettable Fire, or Joshua Tree, but it does sound like U2. And that’s not just his voice: it’s his melodic and lyrical writing and the band as a whole. Clayton is such an awesome bassist that when you hear something like “Mysterious Ways”, it definitely checks out that this is U2. And man, that track is so damn cool, simultaneously so dirty and rocking, but also groovy and melodic. The aforementioned “Zoo Station” is a killer opener, and makes for a great 1-2 punch with “Even Better Than the Real Thing”. “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” is probably the closest they get to emulating their 80’s sound, and I think they do a great job with it. And then you’ve got two all-time ballads in “One” and “So Cruel”. I like every song on this record; there are a few songs I don’t *love*, so it stalls out at 4 stars for me, but it’s definitely a higher 4 stars, and it would almost certainly make my top 10 albums of my birth year, 1991.

4/5

3.75

Not very good. Wanted to give it a 2 but it's not even bad enough. Just bland. Radiohead a few years later took everything good about U2 and just used that to create a muuch better sound. I think they're waay overrated.