It is tempting to call records like Achtung Baby transitional, in that they are very clear signs of a band changing their sound. But even more than that, I would say Achtung Baby is an album of tension. Despite the flippancy of the title this record birthing process was not a Producer-filled barrel of laughs, whether that be the very personal issues of The Edge’s divorce, production of this record moving to multiple studios, and with both this and new sonic ideas in turn causing massive band conflicts that almost led to their break up.
That experimentation was a reaction to another element of tension for the record, mainly the music scene around it. After Rattle and Hum U2 were seen as the symbol of the pretentious and overblown nature that characterised much of the late eighties (such as it did the late seventies), the kind of culture that Nirvana would symbolically – if not absolutely – blow down the doors of. In reaction to that, this album is a concoction of the music that would change the landscape of the nineties. A bit of shoegaze here, a dash of Madchester there, and some sprinklings of Nine Inch Nails debut that Flood – Achtung Baby mixer and great producer in own right – worked on before making this record.
Achtung Baby is sound of U2 taking crumbling institutions – their post-Rattle and Hum reputation; tensions in the band; the collapse of Edge’s marriage; the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it the worries of the Cold War – sorting out the rubble, adding the grit of new influence and self-deprecating irony before building the house they would live in for the next decade. But the most interesting thing about Achtung Baby is that they decided to build that house around the old one. Many of the songs and structures in the album – particularly “One” and the final third – could have easily fit into the sounds of The Joshua Tree and The Unforgettable Fire. It wasn’t the full dive into sensory overload set to dance grooves that Zooropa would be. But that tension between the new energetic exterior of bright colours and fractured parts (as the cover would indicate) and a sepia tone interior still concerned with spirituality and unity is what makes Achtung Baby not just (in my opinion and many others) U2’s best album, but also their most definitive. It is something they would strive for again in Pop, albeit with the music and emotions on further ends of the spectrum that helps to make that record so divisive, but more on that another day.
“Zoo Station” opens the record with an alien revving before driving on with clear impetus, although as Bono says himself his hands are off the steering wheel. The intentionally combatant tones of Edge’s textures dive in head first to the new sounds of the album, but the melodic bridges/choruses in between the verses suggesting U2 is still in the metamorphic process. Bono showcases the first of his more introspective and surreal lyrics through a processed and almost off key voice, adding to both imagery of new life and of propulsion with “I’m ready for the push.” This feeling can extend to many things, be that the reinvention of the band itself, Bono’s new life as a father, the new life of the baby itself or the push that came to produce a unified Germany (the song being written in Berlin during the time).
“Even Better Than the Real Thing,” has in the early verse the kind of harmonies and riff that characterised early Queen, but are masked in drill-like tones and an element of My Bloody Valentine-like shoegaze. The percussion by Mullen has a psychedelic vibe (befitting a song with Doorsesque “higher”), the bass grounded and forceful, all complementing the lyrics pertaining to confusing sense between the “real thing” and something that is somehow more. It also introduces another element to the record in the line “Here’s she comes,” a clear double-entendre that also acts as the declaration of U2’s newfound sexuality, one that had not really been present on any of their other records.
But with that push of a brand new sound, Achtung Baby then moves that sound into an emotional apex with what is a signature U2 song and without question a contender for their best: “One.” The go account for U2’s “black slate” approach to songwriting, and by all accounts the song that kept the band together, the intimacy of that section seeps into the lyrics the same way that the unification of Berlin did. And in the same way that “God Only Knows” opening proclamations of “I may not always love you” created a realistic basis upon which The Beach Boys could create maybe the most perfect love song ever written, the central line of “One” – “We’re one, but we’re not the same” – creates distance from simplistic ideas of togetherness to create what is one of the most unifying ballads. U2 were a band who had always reached for that kind of emotion in their songs, sometimes to a tiring effect, but on “One” they truly achieved it.
Eno hates the song. Oh, Ol’ Sourpuss.
If “One” is, um, one contender for best U2 song, then the next song of Achtung Baby “Until the End of the World” is my all-time personal favourite. As Wallflower noted in his great piece on the album for which this was originally created,, it is a mix of the modern (or post-modern) and the straight on dramatic. But that also makes it a different beast than most of this album, for where most of the lyrics are introspective and Dadaist, “Until the End of The World” is the most obviously narrative driven. The narrative is said to be a retelling the story of the betrayal of Christ, creating in this separation a kind of postmodern parable. And whilst the hesitancy of the decision of betrayal is there – mirror the bands new musical approach – there is also an element of clear sexuality, both in the music itself and in lines like the two subjects of the story being “Bride and Groom” and sorrows “going down on me” (a precursor to the emotions found in “the little death” line from “Love is Blindness”). Add to that the groovy bass, an amazing percussion line by Mullen and Flood combining all kinds from electronic to conga and the simple but iconic riff from the edge accompanied by all sorts of bright synth lines, and you have a song that is a RelgioSexualApocaRave of the highest order.
Although already experimenting with “po-mo” lyrics, the most modern line comes from the introduction to “Whose Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”: “You’re dangerous ‘cause you’re honest/You’re dangerous, you don’t know what you want.” With that lyric comes the break up song to “One’s” unity, with some soaring vocals from Bono and a mixture of strings and guitar that gives the whole thing an epic quality to counterbalance the song’s intimacy. The band say they have never been able to get this song right live and I hope one day they do, because this seems the perfect song to sway to during the encore.
This embittered sense of love is followed on in “So Cruel.” This track is strange in that its most prominent instrument is piano, though unlike any of the songs in October the piano is electronic, low-noted and ultimately a sense of darkness instead of religiosity. That’s not to say that spirituality isn’t here; in fact the line “Desperation is a tender trap, it gets you every time/ you put your lips to her lips to stop the light” seem to imply that a desperate sexuality can temper fate. That would definitely fit the instrumentation, with strings that are lush and beautiful, but are ultimately tempered by that piano.
The second half of the record begin with probably the most “out there” song next to “Zoo Station,” and the song in which they premiered their new sound by releasing it as their first single. The sounds from Edge’s guitar are industrial and abrasive, punctuated by hip hop drums and a rowdy bassline from Clayton. It’s on here that Bono introduces his alternate personality “The Fly” a parody of the braggadocios Rock star (though you do wonder how much of the parody he appreciate wholeheartedly) and the falsetto voice known as “The Fat Lady”. With the heartbreak of the previous two tracks, the introduction of multiple personalities at this point acts as a kind of escape from real emotions, which in turn become real themselves, and serves as a kind of commentary of the armour that the band put on themselves after Rattle and Hum. It also serves as a barrier to lash upon others and their previous selves, as in the song’s most famous verse:
“It’s so no secret that a conscious can sometimes be a pest/It’s no secret ambition bites the nails of success/Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief/All kill for inspiration and sing about their grief.”
Until the advent of Pop, “Mysterious Ways” was without question U2’s most danceable song, in the vein of Madchester acts like the Happy Mondays. That is down to the song’s awesome groove sections, both Clayton tight and prominent bass in the chorus, and the assortment of percussion coming from Mullen proving why he was worth more than a drum machine. That rhythm is that punctuated by the bright stabs of Edge’s guitar, and Bono loose singing and moves in its own mysterious ways towards the outro.
With the exception of the industrial drums of “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World,” this song could have quite easily have fitted into the spiritual tones of The Joshua Tree. Edge’s playing is more melodic, the bass mainly keeps to a sturdy pace, and Bono’s singing is quite breathy and reverent as some of those album tracks could be. Here though that sound serves as a melancholy base. It tinges the song with the emotions highlighted by the deprecating lyrics, both in the world saving imagery (which plays in to the bands previous reputation), and that ultimately this declaration of love doesn’t seem to working with the woman constantly moving dispite his calls (and the vague final lines of “woman I will”).
It is also the lead in to the tones that characterised the final third of Achtung Baby. “Ultraviolent” begins with a choir like ambiance before moving into a more subdued riff, but similar to that from “Until the End of the World.” The clash between spiritual and pop is made more apparent through the very conscious use of the refrain “baby, baby, baby, light my way”, as well as the term Ultraviolet linking both a modern term to mystical means, another link back to the sounds and themes of the entire record.
“Acrobat” is one of the most complex songs on the album, both musically and emotionally. In an unusual time signature (which Mullen nails), the song pertains to uplifting lyrics (“Don’t let the bastards grind you down”) that also come with a sense of pessimism and anger “No new ideas in the house and every book has been read”. Like the acrobat in question, it has to perform complex moves without messing up, and although it suffers somewhat from penultimate track syndrome – as the sounds sometimes don’t have the driving force you would like it to (the mixing of the guitar is quite low) – it does mostly achieves this. Probably the album’s weakest song, but that isn’t saying much with an album as consistent as this one.
U2 albums tend to conclude with a slow and melancholy track to end, and with “Love is Blindness” the band concocted this trend’s best example. Beginning with slow sparse organ notes from Eno, followed by some light percussion by Mullen and quiet rippling bass by Clayton, this ethereal bass holds some of Bono’s best lyrics, ones which wrap around the themes of love and darkness that eclipsed the whole album, and are great in how inseparable they are to the feel of the music. But that all serves to build up to the Edge’s simple yet power guitar solo, one that acts as the cry to let all the feelings out, and lead the album to its ultimately dark and uncertain conclusion.
With Achtung Baby the band fashioned a portrait of the hurt individual, longing for togetherness but not entirely knowing the means of doing so and what that will ultimately lead towards, that also accompanies and melds with some of the most inventive sounds in rock music. Twenty four years later and despite the obvious influences of its own time, this album still feels fresh with a much imitated sound.
The sometimes solemn nature of this album was both completed and masked by an embrace of the postmodern and artificial, though this was truer of the band’s outward image than its music. With the new image of the album came a tour to mirror it, ZooTv, a cavalcade of giant screens, sensory overload, prank phones calls and goofy characters. Barring the types of televisions the amazing collages were projected from, watching the tour today still looks contemporary. That fun extended to the attitudes of the members in the band. Everyone felt like they could just joke around and not worry about the previous pressure they felt of being a rock band. The Edge revitalized his love life by going out with, and eventually marrying, the belly dancer on tour with them. Everything was just plain fun.
And they recorded another album during the process too. That was nice of them…
What did you think, though?
U2 Album Rankings
- Achtung Baby
- The Joshua Tree
- Unforgettable Fire
- War
- Boy
- October
- Rattle and Hum