Episode 42: Albums Revisited-U2's 'Achtung Baby' Turns 30

Smells Like Infinite Sadness

30 years ago this week, U2 released Achtung Baby, the 1991 opus that helped them roar back to relevance after being sidelined by the commercial and critical disappointment of their 1998 documentary and album Rattle and Hum.

Click here for the best albums of 1991

Produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, Achtung Baby saw the Irish outfit refresh their sound with the emerging alternative flavors of the day, including industrial and dance music, while also largely abandoning the self-serious tone of earlier works. It also produced some of the band's biggest hits (One, Mysterious Ways, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses) and some of their best deep cuts (So Cruel, Love Is Blindness, Ultraviolet (Light My Way).

On this week's podcast episode, myself and co-host Chris Logan dive into the album's legacy, why it helped keep the band relevant in the face of Nirvana and the alternative rock revolution, how its held up over the years, why The Fly isn't better remembered as the monster single it was at the time, and the biggest question: which album is better, it or The Joshua Tree?

*Side note: During my intro I noted U2 were a British band, along with a few other minor inaccuracies. Whoopsies. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep this week.

You can listen via the above embed, or click here to listen on Apple Podcasts, click here for Spotify, or you can listen via the podcast buttons at the bottom of the post. We've also included an Amazon link for the newly announced 30th anniversary deluxe edition of the album.

You can also click here for our recent episode about the legacy of Nirvana's Nevermind.

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