8. War (1983)
“And so we’re told that this is the Golden Age / And gold is the reason for the wars we wage.”
— “New Year’s Day”
It’ll be heresy to some that this one doesn’t place higher, but its middling position befits its status as a Great U2 Album I Don’t Ever Really Need to Hear Again. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day” have never fallen out the live rotation, and you understand why: They’e iconic. Even people who loathe this band can sing “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and “New Year’s Day” was simply their best song to date. This is U2′s arrival as a political force.
There are other great tunes here: “Seconds” features the first of only three lead vocals in the U2 songbook by The Edge (he sounds just like Bono), and the elegiac “Drowning Man” hinted at the blurrier, more impressionistic side that U2 would explore on their follow-up, The Unforgettable Fire. (Never performed live, U2 rehearsed “Drowning Man” for their current tour but have thus far proven unwilling to bum out a paying crowd of 60,000 with it.) But the rest of the album, especially goofy disco numbers “The Refugee” and “Red Light,” has aged like Bono’s hairweave.
War was one of the four runners-up for Best Album in in the 1983 Rolling Stone critics poll, alongside The Police‘s Synchronicity, Thriller, and X‘s More Fun in the New World. R.E.M.‘s Murmur took the crown. I’m not sure War is as good as any of those records, but you know, we can talk about it. At length.
