Wiki
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Release Date
12 November 1991
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Length
12 tracks
Achtung Baby is the seventh studio album by Irish rock band U2, released on 19 November 1991. The album arrived nearly two years after lead vocalist Bono announced the band would have to "go away and dream it all up again", following the mixed response to 1988's Rattle and Hum. While recording Achtung Baby, there was a rift between band members over the direction of the band's sound. Tensions almost prompted U2 to break-up until the band rallied around the writing of the album's hit One.
The album marks a dramatic change in the band's image and sound, with the band being heavily influenced by alternative rock and electronic music. Their music also features more detailed production, more guitar effects, and darker, more personal lyrical content. The results were considerably more adventurous than their previous efforts, yet Achtung Baby was very commercially and critically successful, winning a Grammy Award and having sold approximately 18 million copies worldwide. In 2003, the album was ranked number 62 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The band embarked on the elaborately-staged, multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour to support the album.
History
Achtung Baby was a departure for the band. Bono has often described the album as "the sound of four men trying to chop down The Joshua Tree". U2 sampled techniques and sounds from other musical genres previously unused by the band, including dance, house and electronica, whilst maintaining their original feel of rock and roll.
The album's new sound was a source of conflict in the band because The Edge and Bono favored the new sounds they were coming up with while recording their sessions in Berlin, while drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton were partial to the band's traditional sound. The conflict amongst the members of U2 very nearly led to the band breaking up, but the fighting subdued after The Edge, struggling with two bridge sections for the song Ultraviolet (Light My Way) was encouraged to combine them by the band and producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The band rallied around the riff and was inspired to write the song One. It changed the band's outlook on the album, helping bring them back from the brink during recording sessions. One was responsible for a renewed sense of optimism towards the material they had already recorded. Leaving Berlin on a high note, the band was able to complete the rest of the album in Dublin.
Achtung Baby was also darker sounding than previous efforts, thanks in large part to songs such as The Fly, Acrobat, and Love Is Blindness, which deal with themes of helplessness, broken relationships, and (in the case of Love Is Blindness) violence in the name of love. The spiritual yearning of U2's 1980s work began to take on a more existential, despairing element in Achtung Baby. The band's political activism moved to the AIDS crisis and environmental issues. At the same time, the band also took on a lighter tone, electing to use irony rather than earnestness in its music and public appearances, and poking fun at its own self-importance during the 1980s. This evolving outlook culminated in the pleaful soul-searching (and jaded skewering of contemporary life) on 1997's Pop and would not subside until the more hopeful tracks on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind.
Other tracks included the distorted opener Zoo Station, the danceable single Even Better Than The Real Thing, and the thumping rocker (and future live favourite) Until the End of the World, written for the soundtrack of Wim Wenders' eponymous 1991 science fiction film. The song may be an allegorical afterlife confession of Judas Iscariot.
Achtung Baby expanded the group's fanbase. New fans were perhaps drawn in by the hit song Mysterious Ways and the ballad One.
The album was followed by the Zoo TV Tour, a ground-breaking and, in Zoo TV: Live from Sydney, Grammy-award winning multimedia concert production.
The U.S. LP is the only American release to contain the uncensored picture of bassist Adam Clayton naked. On the U.S. CD and cassette, his private parts are censored with a black "X" or a four-leaf clover.
As for the album's title, "Achtung, Baby!" in German means "Attention, baby!" or "Careful, baby!" Frequently used by the band's engineers during the making of the album, the phrase came from the Mel Brooks film The Producers.
Achtung Baby was the first of 9 albums to feature 3 songs to reach the top of the Modern Rock Tracks.
Reception
On the Billboard Music Charts (North America), Achtung Baby topped the Billboard 200 chart selling 295,000 copies in its first week. It won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Rolling Stone magazine declared that U2 had "proven that the same penchant for epic musical and verbal gestures that leads many artists to self-parody can, in more inspired hands, fuel the unforgettable fire that defines great rock & roll."
The album is frequently cited as one of the greatest in rock history. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted Achtung Baby the 15th greatest album of all time; in 2001 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 65. Also in 2003, Q declared its third track, One, "the greatest recorded song of all time". In 2003, the album was ranked number 62 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was voted #11 on Spin's "Best Albums of the Last 25 Years" list. In a 2007 VH1 countdown, One was named the #2 on its list of "Songs of the 1990s". Entertainment Weekly named Achtung Baby the #3 album of the last 25 years.
Studio bootlegs
U2 entered the studio in late 1990 and began recording the album before they had written any material, mainly improvising and developing ideas into songs. The more interesting ideas were preserved on working tapes. In April 1991, these tapes fell into the hands of bootleggers, well before the album's November release date. The most widely circulated compilation of these tapes is the three-disc Salomé: The Axtung Beibi Outtakes, released in February 1992. Another bootleg surfaced, entitled, The Achtung Sessions in 1993.
Later that same year, another single disc bootleg of the tapes was distributed underground. Called [album artist=U2[Studio Session '91, this single disc contained material of songs that were near completion. Most notably; Heaven and Hell, The Darkest Night, and Blow Your House Down. Interestingly, none of the "Salome" mixes were included on this disc.
Since these songs were leaked very early in the production process, they provide a rare insight into the band's songwriting process. On the same note, many of the ideas—including eight different takes of the song "Salomé"—were frustratingly undeveloped, so the bootleg remains a curiosity strictly for hardcore fans. Bono says, "There were no undiscovered works of genius, unfortunately, it was more just gobbledy-gook."
Some of the ideas were revisited—there are, for instance, early instrumental versions of Even Better Than the Real Thing and North and South of the River (the latter of which wouldn't be recorded by the band until 1997)—and one song—the B-side Where Did It All Go Wrong?—was even officially released as a rough composite of the two takes available on the bootleg. There are also a handful of developed ideas that were wholly abandoned, such as She's Gonna Blow Your House Down, a song the group had been working on since the Rattle and Hum days.
Video
Following the successful release of the album, U2 released Achtung Baby: The Videos, The Cameos, and a Whole Lot of Interference from Zoo TV, a VHS compilation of music videos from the album. The compilation featured nine videos, including three videos for both One and Even Better than the Real Thing. In between the videos were clips of "interference" — documentary footage, media clips, and other images, similar to what was shown at shows during the Zoo TV Tour. The videos for Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses and Love Is Blindness were the only videos from the album not included on this release, as they were not released until after the compilation's release.
Professional Reviews
AllMusic - ★★★★★
Rolling Stone - ★★★★☆
The Boston Globe
Entertainment Weekly
Trouser Press
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