Friday, May 27, 2005

Best Albums- The Joshua Tree

U2- The Joshua Tree
March 1987

My wife and I went to see U2 in concert last night in Boston, so I absolutely have to mention their best album, the Joshua Tree. War and the simultaneous spread of MTV brought U2 to the attention of the world's youth, but The Joshua Tree made even the adults pay attention. This album was a monster and you've probably (hopefully) already spent a lot of time with this album playing in the background.
(If not, click on the album cover and buy a copy from Amazon, you can thank me later).

Though the biggest hits on this album are "Where the Streets Have No Name", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "With or Without You", I think that the strength of the album is that the rest of the songs are just as good, if not better than, the big radio hits. "Red Hill Mining Town," "Trip Through Your Wires", "One Tree Hill" and of course the rocking "Bullet the Blue Sky" are all fantastic songs. Give this album a listen soon. Whether you've heard it a zillion times and got sick of it or have never played it all the way through, put it on and be amazed with these lads all over again.




1. Where The Streets Have No Name
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
3. With Or Without You
4. Bullet The Blue Sky
5. Running To Stand Still
6. Red Hill Mining Town
7. In God's Country
8. Trip Through Your Wires
9. One Tree Hill
10. Exit
11. Mothers Of The Disappeared

Ps- for a quick review of the u2 show last night, including their set list, go to my blog, Kicked Puppies.

4 comments:

Annie said...

I agree with this - it is in my top 10 favorite albums!

Anonymous said...

Way off track amigo. They were sooooo much better before the ventured into commercially viable stuff. Go back and give "Boy" and "October" fresh listenings. It's still great stuff and without their sometimes cloying sweet production that they later OD'd on.

The Village Idiot said...

No no no no.
Whattaya mean "better"?
More insightful?
More melancholy?
More melodic?
More rocking?
More poetic?

The albums before Joshua Tree were good to great, but U2 didn't truly have their poop in a group until this album. There are some absolutely brilliant songs, some of U2's best work, on those earlier albums, but this is by far their best ALBUM.

I've always been leary of the "they were great until they sold out" argument with most bands because they usually have little to do with the actual music, and we hear this a lot with U2. I will go back and give the other albums a listen, but only if you spin The Joshua Tree a few times with the volume up loud. It rocks

Mona said...

I wholeheartedly agree...I recently played this in the car on a road trip with a friend; we couldn't stop getting sucked into the songs...