Pay Attention, Kiddo!

October 24, 2011 11:56 AM

In anticipation of the upcoming 20th anniversary re-release (and gargantuan money sink opportunities) of U2's Achtung Baby!, Q Magazine (UK) is issuing their December issue with a bundled CD of covers of every track by big name stars. You can find a couple of them now for listening online -- Damien Rice doing One, Garbage doing Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, and Jack White doing Love Is Blindness.

The full covers album will be available October 25, but the CD will (reportedly) only be bundled with UK shipments of the magazine. Order a single copy here if you live in the appropriate areas of the globe, or find it at your local newsstand. (Those outside the UK will have to find alternate methods of obtaining the tracks).

Also currently-available Achtung Baby! madness -- From The Sky Down, the film festival circuit documentary about the recording of the album which is part of some of the higher priced anniversary sets, and which will be making its Showtime premiere on October 29. In 6 parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6.

Bonus: An apparent leak of a new U2 track from earlier this year: Light Speed. Whether this will ever actually appear in any form on an upcoming album remains to be seen.

posted by hippybear (56 comments total)

When the U2 2-disc 'Best Of' came out 10 or so years ago, I would say that I didn't need a U2 best-of, as I already owned Achtung Baby.

I'm rather excited for this.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 12:01 PM on October 24, 2011

Wow wow wow wow.....I need this CD of covers.

My favorite cover of One is by R.E.M. - Mr. Rice's cover here is pretty good, too.
posted by glaucon at 12:03 PM on October 24, 2011

I've got the Super Deluxe on pre-order. (The Uber is just a bit too uber.)

Achtung Baby changed my musical life. It was one of the first CDs I ever bought, based purely on the album art. I'd vaguely heard of U2 before, but since I was mostly a classical music snob before then, I wasn't all that familiar with them. From those first discordant chords on Zoo Station to Love is Blindness's haunting conclusion, I was fucking mesmerized. There's not a dud on the entire album.

If you're a U2 fan and especially if you're an AB fan, you need need need to read U2 At The End of the World. Amazingly personal and intimate stories of U2 throughout the creation of AB and then ZooTV, Zooropa, etc.

And thanks for reminding me, I'd gotten a copy of From the Sky Down but I haven't watched it yet.
posted by kmz at 12:11 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is really neat and look forward to hearing those covers.

(Vaguely related 50 Great Albums Celebrating Their 20th Anniversary in 2011)

However...and I've thought this a couple of times in posts lately... lately, the 20th anniversary of [X] album/movies/video game/etc. really reminds me how genuinely fucked up life was 20 years ago*, even when I didn't know it. And yes, a lot of people -- probably most, maybe all -- can say that about their high school years, it's just that, though I love these albums/movies/video games/etc., they can still be really weird reminders of what one was feeling at the time -- even before you do the math, you'll always know when X came out because of where you were at in your life.

* But as they're saying these days, kids, it gets better. And even if it doesn't, as you get older, the years just blur together.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:11 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

This was played in heavy rotation during my university days... Probably the only U2 album I still regularly listen to.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:14 PM on October 24, 2011

Obligatory comment about feeling old, as I still think of Achtung Baby as new, late-era U2 and remember lots of discussions with friends (after college!) about whether it was a good direction or they had finally jumped the shark after years of good records, and eventually deciding it was pretty good.

But I didn't ever bother with anything after that. So anyway, I'm old. These covers sound pretty cool though.
posted by freecellwizard at 12:16 PM on October 24, 2011 [3 favorites]

I am even further in the "feeling old" camp than freecellwizard - I wasn't even aware that Achtung Baby! was considered a "classic" U2 album at all, as I only remember it as "that one they did after they got way too famous". Looking at the track listing, I might recognize a few more songs if I heard them, but the only one I know how it goes is "Mysterious Ways".
posted by Curious Artificer at 12:21 PM on October 24, 2011

Hey USians. Did you know you were denied the full album experience?
posted by stinkycheese at 12:22 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

My soundtrack to the roughest patch my wife and I ever went through in our 24+ years (and counting) marriage. Thanks.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:26 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here's the Oakenfold remix of Even Better Than The Real Thing, which was actually a bigger hit than the original at the time, I think.
posted by empath at 12:26 PM on October 24, 2011

lately, the 20th anniversary of [X] album/movies/video game/etc. really reminds me how genuinely fucked up life was 20 years ago*

On the contrary, I think of how optimistic everything was 20 years ago, in this slice of time between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Internet. Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV tour was talking about satellite TV as the harbinger of a new world of communication.

DUDE. Bono. You. Have. No. Idea. You think it's getting better? It's getting even better than that.

It's kind of like looking back on The Jetsons as a vision of the future.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:26 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

The Edge is proud of his penis.
posted by stinkycheese at 12:28 PM on October 24, 2011

Hippybear's earlier writing about Achtung Baby on Metafilter got me to check out the album a few months back. I had put it in the same "too famous" camp as Curious Artificer and never really listened to it as it's own work rather than a collection of singles. I really like it now, and hear a lot more nuance and bitterness, especially in One, which is now a go to sad morning headphone song for me. (Hippybear's also turned me onto other music I had previously dismissed- his comments about music are insightful and personal, check his comment history. I was just rocking Barry Manilow today thanks to his recommendations in the Meatloaf thread.) So thanks for this post HB.
posted by kittensofthenight at 12:29 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

My soundtrack to the roughest patch my wife and I ever went through in our 24+ years (and counting) marriage. Thanks.

I can't tell if that's a sarcastic thanks or not, but the album does coincide with the Edge's marriage breaking up, and you can hear obvious reflections of that pain on a lot of the tracks.
posted by kmz at 12:32 PM on October 24, 2011

I've never really understood the appeal of U2. Never connected with them at all, but damned if that Uber Deluxe box isn't cool.

Uber Deluxe Box: a magnetic puzzle tiled box which will contain: 6 CDs including the original Achtung Baby album, the follow-up album, Zooropa, B-sides, remixes and re-workings of previously unheard material recorded during the Achtung Baby sessions. 4 DVDs including From The Sky Down, Zoo TV:Live From Sydney, all the videos from Achtung Baby plus bonus material. There will also be the Achtung Baby double vinyl album plus 5 clear 7" vinyl singles in their original sleeves, 16 art prints taken from the original album sleeve, an 84-page hardback book, a copy of Propaganda magazine, 4 badges, a sticker sheet, and a pair of Bono's trademark 'The Fly' sunglasses.

I mean, stickers, a puzzle box, sunglasses? Awesome.
posted by madajb at 12:33 PM on October 24, 2011

I can see in hindsight that Achtung Baby was a pretty good album, but U2 had already lost me as a fan by the time it came out. I'll be more excited in a year and a half when we do the 30th anniversary of War.
posted by rocket88 at 12:34 PM on October 24, 2011 [4 favorites]

Heartfelt thanks.

Z
posted by ZenMasterThis at 12:34 PM on October 24, 2011

Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV tour was talking about satellite TV as the harbinger of a new world of communication.

DUDE. Bono. You. Have. No. Idea. You think it's getting better? It's getting even better than that.

I don't think they were trumpeting media saturation as a good thing necessarily. They were talking about broadcast, which is mostly one-way communication. ZooTV is eerily prescient of things like the barrage of 24-hour cable news networks and 500+ channel TV packages.
posted by kmz at 12:35 PM on October 24, 2011

My favourite U2 album. Really looking forward to the album of covers.
posted by jimmythefish at 12:37 PM on October 24, 2011

Where is that exclamation point coming from? It's listed as simply Achtung Baby on the CD.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:38 PM on October 24, 2011

I was a big U2 fan from the beginning and by Joshua Tree thought that they could do no wrong. But I was pretty "meh" on Rattle and Hum and by this album I'd really soured on them. It just seemed like they gave up doing anything but pumping out ready-made album rock station hits. I heard all the singles from it incessantly throughout the early nineties listening to rock radio while working in construction and could happily not have to hear "One" ever again.
posted by octothorpe at 12:40 PM on October 24, 2011

I was studying abroad in a small town in the North of Japan (Nakajo in Niigata) when the album came out and I got it to listen to on the train. I was actually kind of over U2 at that point having been a fan of Boy and October from much earlier. But I was in a mood for something that combined new and exciting of travel with the homesickness salve of a known entity so I bought it.

It turned out to be a remarkable fit for that particular time in my life. Riding the Shinkansen to Kyoto for a Thanksgiving holiday trip was enervating yet, for an introvert loner, slightly scary. Zoo Station perfectly captured that mood for me and helped me transform a little bit of panic at the idea that I might get lost in Japan into a little bit of ecstasy that I might get lost in Japan.
posted by Babblesort at 12:45 PM on October 24, 2011

my roommate got a copy right when it came out... he put it on and when I heard the opening of Zoo Station, I stopped in my tracks, looked at the CD player - thinking it was broken or skipping or something - and thought "what in the hell is THIS??" (in a good, shocked, mind-blown way) -- went to the show, bought the shirt-- it's been a favorite since. I'll get the deluxe dealio.

also.... for a fun discussion, try debating which is better "Joshua Tree or Achtung" with a music fan... (the answer is 'Achtung' bytheway)
posted by mrmarley at 12:59 PM on October 24, 2011

Zooropa isn't a "bluer kind of white is it?"
posted by humanfont at 1:05 PM on October 24, 2011

It's funny, when I think of U2 of today I often think of Actung, Baby as the point where I started to lose interest, but then I look at the track listing and realize just how many great songs are on there. So I guess I do sort of put that one up there as a classic.

the album does coincide with the Edge's marriage breaking up

Isn't that because he was banging the dancer they brought on tour with them?
posted by bondcliff at 1:15 PM on October 24, 2011

On the contrary, I think of how optimistic everything was 20 years ago

I'll tell you what's optimistic: writing MCMikeMcNamara's link to 50 great albums from 20 years ago and including "Uriah Heep." That's all I'm gonna say without derailing based on that list.
posted by rhizome at 1:19 PM on October 24, 2011

I'd just like to make a note of the existence of a small group of people who thought U2 was pompous and creepy and self-absorbed 20 years ago and continue to believe that today. Like me.

*ducks*
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 1:20 PM on October 24, 2011

As a fan I parted ways with U2 during the Unforgetable Fire era due to a combination of overkill and my feeling that they no longer had excitment that made me love them in the first place. Achtung Baby is the record that brought me back into the fold and made me a fan again. It was nice to see the band pushing their sound, apparently having a great deal of fun doing it, and trusting their fanbase to come along for the ride. It even made me go back to Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree and finally appreciate those records.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 1:27 PM on October 24, 2011

Isn't this album the beginning of Bono's "perpetual sunglasses" period?
posted by rhizome at 1:27 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

U2 marks the time for my memory of my youth. I had a poster of The Unforgettable Fire in my room, growing up, and picked up Joshua Tree after standing in line for its release. I remember going to college and finding other, new people, who loved all of the small perfections of that album and who may have listened to it as often as I had. When Rattle & Hum came around to local theaters, my (the woman who would one day marry me) girlfriend took me, and I refused to speak to her during the entire play of the movie.

Achtung Baby marks the period prior to my first son being born (he turns 19 on November 5th), when I was starting to really hear sounds like Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins, and coming to regard U2 as something belonging to my youth. Still, Edge playing at the beginning of Zoo Station brings back such clean memories of that time, I can't deny its impact.

I didn't really connect with U2 again until All That You Can't Leave Behind, when something clicked in me (and most of the listening public) after the events of 9/11, and their music seemed extremely relevant.
posted by thanotopsis at 1:29 PM on October 24, 2011

One hour and twenty minutes before the first "this band sucks" comment. That's gotta be some kind of MetaFilter record.

Especially considering it's U2!! Even unrelated threads often get a "Bono sucks" type comment within the first few.
posted by kmz at 1:36 PM on October 24, 2011

It just seemed like they gave up doing anything but pumping out ready-made album rock station hits

I'm not sure if I'm missing your point here, but Achtung Baby wasn't full of the type of rock radio hits that were popular at the time. It came out around the time "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was getting big and just breaking into rotation on mainstream radio stations. In my corner of the world, Achtung Baby was a pretty refreshing break from the kind of rock in rotation on mainstream radio. I could be wrong but I remember 1991 rock radio as having a lot of Bryan Adams, Sting, and the tail end of the big hair metal bands.

Except One. Jeez, they played the hell out of that song. It was good too, but now I turn it off every time I hear the opening notes cuz I'm just so sick of it.
posted by Hoopo at 1:39 PM on October 24, 2011

I wish I could hear this one fresh for the first time again.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 1:44 PM on October 24, 2011

Ya know, it just sort of occurred to me what a leap this one was from it's predecessors.

I think on its release in 91 I was just young enough to think "of course they sound different, that's what bands do"
But looking at it now in reverse, for them to jump from Rattle & Hum Americana bluesiness to this blippy, Krauty stuff and to make the landing look effortless is a pretty remarkable thing.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 1:47 PM on October 24, 2011

Bono said the opening riff of Zoo Station was "the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua tree." I always kind of liked that quote. It makes more sense than 99.9% of the stuff he says.
posted by bondcliff at 1:50 PM on October 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

Gee, I can't wait. No, really, I'm not being sarcastic.

*eyes turn downward*

OK, I am being sarcastic.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:09 PM on October 24, 2011

my Achtung Baby comment
posted by Lucinda at 2:18 PM on October 24, 2011

I don't think they were trumpeting media saturation as a good thing necessarily.

Get your head out of the mud, baby.

She's gonna dream up
The world she wants to live in
She's gonna dream out loud
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:18 PM on October 24, 2011

This year is the 30th anniversary of October.

I kinda wish they'd re-record October with the originally planned lyrics.
posted by Lucinda at 2:21 PM on October 24, 2011

I don't think you can elicit the strong feelings of ? hate and/or disgust that Bono brings out in people without a movement from a feeling of true love; I now tend to think of him as a species of pompous windbag (see expensive luggage commercial and the perpetual coolness of the perpetual shades), but back in the day this was some lovely shit.
Cleaning up a record store (CDs were not even the dominant media if I remember correctly) after closing and blasting this through the dead mall gave me some lovely memories. And my then wife thought that dancing to Mysterious Ways was the sexiest thing she ever did, and she was right.
Good times.
Will look forward to listening to this again, for the first time in a long time.
posted by el riesgo sempre vive at 2:53 PM on October 24, 2011

The news that Patti Smith is covering "Until the End of the World" has made my week. Thanks for posting.
posted by Currer Belfry at 3:05 PM on October 24, 2011

Garbage doing Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

Nice work. Now please don't be pulling my leg with this "no we swear our new album's coming out next spring" line. It's been so long...
posted by psoas at 4:13 PM on October 24, 2011

One hour and twenty minutes before the first "this band sucks" comment. That's gotta be some kind of MetaFilter record.

You can hate on U2 all you like. Hating on Bono is encouraged. This album? You can't hate on it. It's right there with Sgt. Peppers, LZIV, and Paul's Boutique. There's at least one song on there for you, no matter how rarified you think your tastes are... it transcends the musicians.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:49 PM on October 24, 2011

Edge gets too much crap. Yes, it's a gimmick, but it's a damn good one that he uses for tremendous effect, when they let him off the leash. It's Eric Zahn's guitar, careening into the void of forever, summoning a dread power better left nameless and unknown. When he's kept in check, he's terrible.

You can hear him phoning it in with the "Lightspeed" single "leaked" in the FPP - gawd, was there ever a song more blatantly and cynically constructed to appear in a Lexus commercial? You can just picture Bono looking into a hand mirror while singing it. Edge was probably playing it with his toes while reading a magazine.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:02 PM on October 24, 2011

You can hate on U2 all you like. Hating on Bono is encouraged. This album? You can't hate on it. It's right there with Sgt. Peppers, LZIV, and Paul's Boutique. There's at least one song on there for you, no matter how rarified you think your tastes are... it transcends the musicians.

Agreed. Its the band that's always creeped me out. In an incipient Pink Floyd kind of way.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 5:24 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Geez, just reading this thread required me to put on Achtung Baby. So. Damned. Good.

I was one of those people who though Joshua Tree was pushing it and Rattle and Hum was unbearable. And then...this. Blew me away.
posted by jburka at 5:38 PM on October 24, 2011

This is album came out when when I was about ten years old, and it made U2 into one of my first real favorite bands before I'd even heard their other stuff. I set out to scrape together their entire back-catalog, no mean feat given how thinly stretched my weekly $5 allowance already was by X-Men-related periodicals and collectibles. I was so deep into "old" U2 by the time Zooropa dropped that it didn't even sound like the same band to me. If anything, Achtung Baby should be celebrated as their last good album; every U2 release to follow it has made even Rattle and Hum sound focused and unpretentious by comparison.
posted by Rustmouth Snakedrill at 6:29 PM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry but when Johnny Cash covers a song, it's like retiring a number.

See also.

Still, looking forward to it despite my misgivings about the most insidious crypto Christian band of all time.
posted by digitalprimate at 6:45 PM on October 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

Is that "leaked" song legit? It doesn't sound a lot like Bono at the start.
posted by Locative at 8:10 PM on October 24, 2011

My thought on hearing "Mysterious Ways" for the first time was, "Yay, sneering at disco is officially over."
posted by straight at 8:13 PM on October 24, 2011

I never bothered to replace the factory-installed cassette deck in my car, will occasionally prowl around for tapes in thrift stores, Amoeba Music, etc., and recently found AB for a buck or two.

I liked it when it came out, hadn't heard it in a long time, but hearing it in recent weeks, from the first song to the last, it sounded damn good.
posted by ambient2 at 12:21 AM on October 25, 2011

I always thought Achtung Baby marked the start of the less interesting era of U2. Give me "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Years Day" any day. I also remember it not being all that well received at the time, probably because it was such a departure from Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum.

I'm in the UK, so anyone who really wants a copy, mail me and we'll work something out.
posted by salmacis at 6:51 AM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Achtung Baby is the 1990's opening salvo -- it presages what will come, the technological flood and information overload, the electronic torrent, but it is rooted in love and pain and emotion, the dissolution of Edge's marriage, the relationship between man and God, in the personal. For all the darkness of the album, it seems hopeful for the future, hopeful for what will come.

OK Computer tells us where we went in the 90's and what happened to us. It's disassociated, strange, off-putting, and steeped in the technology that Achtung Baby so accurately predicted we'd fall in to. When Fitter, Happier is given over to a computer singer, OK Computer shows just how far the technological promise of Achtung Baby devolved into something we never could've predicted.

To me at least, those albums perfectly bookend the decade.
posted by incessant at 8:33 PM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

'91 was such a great year in terms of seminal records. As a diehard shoegaze fan my favorite is of course Loveless, but there were so many.
posted by ifjuly at 8:25 AM on October 26, 2011

Slint! That was the other major one for me. I couldn't remember...I just knew there was one vying for the title with Loveless, something more rollickin' but post-rockish, but which group it was had slipped my mind. Thanks for the reminder. This is a bit derail-y (ok, a lot actually) but I saw them do the Pitchfork thing where they performed the entire album in order in Chicago a few summers back and ah, it just reminded me how much weight it had/has for some of us. From the opening sound you knew, this was something different and Important.

Of course, neither hold a candle to Time Love and Tenderness. /snark
posted by ifjuly at 6:51 PM on October 26, 2011

The Jacque Lu Cont mix sounds like the Jacque Lu Conte remix of The Killers but worse. Really half-assed.
posted by empath at 10:23 PM on October 29, 2011