2. The Joshua Tree (1987)
“Sleep comes like a drug, in God’s country / Sad eyes and crooked crosses, in God’s country.”
— “In God’s Country”
U2′s two most popular albums are also their best. That happens, sometimes. When I reviewed the 20th anniversary reissue of this, the most iconic and best-selling set of U2′s career, two years ago, I called it U2′s “finest 50-minute hour.” I was right, but only because Achtung Baby clocks in at closer to 55 minutes. On this album, U2 combined the shimmering sonic landscapes Eno and Lanois had opened up for them, and the improved musicianship nurtured by Lanois, with a quantum leap forward in their songcraft. There are songs about Dublin heroin addicts and British coal miners, but the broad topic here is America, and the record somehow manages to hold itself together as U2′s tightest and most specific.
The first four tracks — “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “With or Without You,” and the incendiary “Bullet the Blue Sky” — all remain concert staples, but side two is almost as good. “Still Haven’t Found” and “With or Without You” were U2′s only two No. 1 hits in the U.S., if you care about that kind of thing. Um, what else? My mom gave me a cassette of it for my 11th birthday, the tragic results of which you see before you now. It’s as enduring an album as anybody made in the 1980s.
