Dear Spirit of Cecilia Readers, two close friends—Kevin McCormick and Ivan Pongracic—and I recently had a lengthy email discussion about the virtues of U2.  You all know Kevin as he’s a regular here and one of the SOC editors.  Ivan, though, might not be as familiar.  He’s a fantastic guy and friend.  He’s a professor of economics at Hillsdale College, and he’s the lead guitarist of several surf bands, including Lords of Atlantis and The Madeira.  As you’ll see, he’s also the most passionate about U2.  Kevin and I tend to like the earlier albums.  Here’s a slightly (only slightly) abbreviated version of our conversation.  Yours, Brad

Brad: Dear Ivan, since we talked a week or so ago, I’ve been listening to lots of U2.  My favorite album is definitely October.  Hope you’re doing well!  

Ivan: Excellent! But you remain your own man, a true individual – I think almost everybody thinks of October as a bit of a backward step between Boy and War, suffering from the dreaded “sophomore jinx” syndrome! So, the fact you’d consider it your favorite, well, you’re definitely unique! 🤣 (The same goes for “Zooropa”!). Have you, BTW, checked out “No Line on the Horizon”? 

Brad: Ivan, thanks for the note!  I’m glad to know I’m my own man!  Ha.  I’m including my great friend, Kevin McCormick, on this email—just to get his input on the best U2 album.

Ivan: Hi Kevin!  Here’s my (three-tier) ranking:

Top tier: The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Middle Tier: Boy, War, No Line on the Horizon

Bottom Tier: October, Rattle and Hum, Zooropa, Pop, and Songs of Innocence/Experience

(I should point out that there are tracks on October, R&H and Zooropa that I really love, I just find them overall a disappointment – but Gloria is amazing, and All I Want Is You is almost certainly my all-time favorite U2 song. The title track of Zooropa is killer, and there’s some good stuff on Pop, too. I can’t say the same about the last two albums, which have zero redeeming qualities, as far as I’m concerned.)

Brad: Thanks, Ivan.  For me, top tier would be October, Under a Blood Red Sky, The Joshua Tree.

Mid-tier would be War, Boy, Unforgettable Fire. Rattle and Hum (I love Desire)

Ivan: I’m telling you, my friend, you’ve really GOTTA do a deeper dive into their post-’90 catalog, especially Achtung Baby, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Those are just amazing albums! 

Brad: I also think that U2’s b-sides from 1980-1990 are stunning.  Love them.  Not as much as I love Cure b-sides, but close.

Kevin: Okay, here goes:

Top Tier: October, War, Unforgettable Fire,

Middle Tier: Boy, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby

I’m with Brad on the b-sides!!

Ivan: Kevin, et tu on nothing after ’91? 😁

Kevin: (I forgot to include Under a Blood Red Sky–top tier!). Here’s my honest response to the later albums. If they were made by any other band, I’d probably be more impressed. But there was such a shift toward the “rock star” thing, beginning with The Joshua Tree that it was a personal disappointment for a band that held great promise for something beyond a rock band. I don’t hold it against them anymore. That’s a tough road to travel. But it was a pretty personal thing at the time.  No doubt there were many influences that shaded my reception of those albums.  And you (Brad) and I have discussed it a lot. The Joshua Tree concert that I saw was really what changed things for me. To me, October has the real songs of innocence and that’s why I love it so much. Despite the rushed songwriting and lousy production, the album just shines with sincerity. And after reading Bono’s autobiography, I would say it’s much harder to keep that up once it has become your job and the salaries of other people depend on your success.

Ivan: Quite funny how different our preferences are – even only on the ’80s albums!  I’m personally just blown away that Achtung Baby would do nothing for you, Brad. Well, de gustibus non disputandum est! (dammit! 😁)  And Kevin, I think I understand where you’re coming from. But I also followed them on that journey they took in the ’90s, which is that they were starting to realize that they had turned into a total caricature by the end of the ’80s, and the only way forward was to go in the opposite direction. I also remember Bono saying, who really wants a super-successful, rich and famous rock star that’s always miserable and hates his success? So, they embraced all the cliches, but in a mostly ironic way – most importantly embracing FUN along the way, which I thought was pretty brilliant. The Zoo TV tour was mind-blowingly innovative, too, really setting the stage for so much of what was to come with stadium tours over the past three decades, they did it first, going from very barebones stages and concerts to the most high-tech things available at the time. I think they absolutely had to do all that to avoid becoming even more of a joke than they were by the end of the ’80s, that super-earnest, save-the-world stuff had really worn thin. They thought that, and I think they were right.  That’s my take on it, anyway. 🙂 The bottom line is I think they continued to make some amazing music, even though it was quite different from their ’80s stuff. A feature, not a bug.

Kevin: Well said Ivan.  Yes, I think that Bono himself (and my brother, Colin😄) would agree with you. There’s no doubt that as an ensemble they learned to make really great music and hold themselves to a high standard. And they definitely invested a fortune on making great albums and producing incredible live shows. But that wasn’t what was so interesting about them to me. The same was true for me with R.E.M. I love the early stuff and dislike most of the later music. Not because I don’t hear some quality music in the later records, but because it lacks the charm of the earlier recordings. Not their fault. Just my preference. That early music is connected to much more than just my ears.

Ivan: Fair enough. I definitely appreciate the (potential) genius of innocence – but also the (potential) genius of experience, knowledge, and skill. They can both be wonderful. But the bottom line: the music either connects with you or it doesn’t, and nothing else matters. Obviously something that cannot be forced.   I think most of Bono’s lyrics in the ’80s are very naive, very black and white, and with Achtung Baby there’s a newfound depth. He’s now truly an adult, addressing adult themes and issues, and writing from the perspective of a great deal of shades of gray and ambivalence and complexity. And that’s a pretty remarkable thing, I think. (And all this is coming from a guy that almost never cares AT ALL about lyrics with any band! 🤣)   BTW, there are definitely similarities in the lyrics of AB to Rush’s Counterparts album, I think. 

Brad: Ivan, you’ve inspired me to re-listen to things.  Achtung, Zooropa, and Pop.  Here’s what I like:

On Achtung:

I really, really like: Until the End of the World (especially the bass), Who’s Going to Ride Your Wild Horses, Ultraviolet (my favorite), and Love is Blindness

On Zooropa:

I really like: Zooropa, Some Days Are Better Than Others (again, great bass), Dirty Day (the buildup is phenomenal), and The Wanderer

On Pop:

I absolutely love Please (but nothing else on the album)

Ivan: You’ve told me that Ultraviolet is your favorite Achtung Baby track by far. And it’s funny since to me that track is the most conventionally U2 track on that album, and it seems like a betrayal of the innovative, bold, groundbreaking spirit of that album, it seems like a retreat. To use another Rush analogy, Alex has often talked about how disappointed he was that they didn’t stick to the Spirit of Radio/Free Will format of short, to-the-point songs with the rest of Permanent Waves, that he felt it was a copout and disappointment that they did Natural Science and Jacob’s Ladder, which could have nicely fit on Hemispheres or A Farewell to the Kings, and he thought they made a decision to be done with that. Anyway, that’s how I see Ultraviolet, FWIW.

Kevin: Okay Ivan, gotta reply to your last comment on Rush. Whatever Alex thinks in hindsight, I would argue that “Natural Science” is the best song Rush ever did, by far: conceptually, lyrically, musically, compositionally.  It is the summation of who Rush was/is. It doesn’t matter where they were “going” or where they wanted to be. Even “Moving Pictures” had “The Camera Eye” and “YYZ” is total prog. “Natural Science” captures it all in 9 1/2 minutes. Pure gold!

Ivan: Well, Kevin, I think you’re the first person I’ve met that feels that passionately about Natural Science! Wow. Alas, I can’t say I share your feelings about that track, though it’s fine, I don’t mind it – but on that album I much prefer the two big ones and Jacob’s Ladder, FWIW. (That may be a function of my relative “youth” 😁, as Brad mentioned, as my favorite Rush is ’80-’88, that’s the stuff I grew up with, and all the serious proggy stuff, 2112, AFTK, Hemispheres, was before my time, and still in general doesn’t do all that much for me (with a few notable exceptions.)  Anyway, I think your point certainly stands that the artists themselves may be biased about particular tracks in a way that the fans are not, and their own perceptions are not ultimately really relevant. But I do feel that way about Ultraviolet. I’ve never heard any of the U2 guys talk about that track in such a way, so this is just my personal perception, and I thought that Alex Lifeson tidbit was relevant, but I could be way off! 

Kevin: Ivan and Brad, I’ve enjoyed hearing our different perspectives (our “different strings” perhaps?🙃). I would never claim an objective take on any of the music I like: I’m totally partisan to what I connected with at a particular time.  And Ivan I agree–I think the Alex reference is very relevant to the discussion. Your observation is quite true: the creators of the art don’t often have an objective understanding of what they’ve created for most listeners. It’s too close for them to see it.  But it’s fun to talk with two people who actually know a lot about both Rush and U2 enough to discuss them in depth. I don’t suspect that there are a huge number of people who match that venn diagram.

Ivan: Thanks for the lovely email, Kevin, and I couldn’t agree more, much fun to talk about all this stuff with other knowledgeable individuals!  I was thinking a bit more about this whole conversation and reflecting on my own musical background. The Beatles were my formative musical love, the band that made me develop a passion for music – and their first two albums I was exposed to were Help (’65) and The White Album (’68). Well, those two are about as far apart as two albums of music can possibly be – and I loved them both equally. So, from the beginning I loved when bands dramatically changed their sounds, evolved and grew. I’ve always tried to give maximum grace to bands I loved that engaged in such things and tried to not get stuck in the past. It obviously doesn’t always work, but I’ve discovered that stuff that the fans sometimes react badly to may actually have a lot more merit than apparent at first, if I can just open my mind and my heart to it. That’s what I’ve tried to do with U2, and I was able to hang in there with them until this most recent period, where they finally lost me. And I think it’s definitely paid off with Rush in the past, too – even if they did some albums that I don’t love, they also eventually produced stuff like Counterparts and Clockwork Angels, which I think are really excellent.   Anyway, there you go! Maybe persuade you at least a bit to give some of the post-’91 U2 more of a chance (which Brad has already done – kudos to you, my friend!).