When 1987 rolled around, I still only really knew a few U2 songs: "Pride," "New Year's Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," plus I think I might have heard a few songs from
War since my brother Tim had that on cassette and listened to it a lot. So when a song called "With or Without You" came out in the spring and instantly got played seemingly every hour on MTV, I was initially a tad turned off. It just didn't grab me for the most part, except for the outro (the last minute), which I did think was great, and slowly but surely, I grew to like the whole song. Before I knew it, a second single from the new album, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," was all over the place, and that was one I did like a lot at first. When the third single came out, in the form of "Where the Streets Have No Name," I was hooked. i think it wasn't long after that that I went out and bought the cassette of
The Joshua Tree.
It sounds like a cliche, but you really had to be there at the time to recognize just how truly massive this album was. Even in, 1987, a year where hair metal was nearly at its popularity peak, U2 dominated, thanks to those hits and the overall greatness of the record. The record is an easy listen, and the running order couldn't be any better, and the story behind that is kind of funny. When the band was finishing up the album, they hadn't decided on a running order, but the wife of Steve Lillywhite, who was there to remix the potential hits, said she'd do it, and they let her do with it, with the only caveats being that "Streets" had to first and "Mothers of the Disappeared" had to be last. Tracks 2-10 pretty much consisted of her putting them in order of how much she liked them, her favorite being track 2, 2nd favorite being track 3, etc.
Back to "Streets," even back then, even though I loved it, I knew it had that "it could have been better" feel to it. Edge specifically wrote the song to be their ultimate live song, and in that regard, he slammed it out of the park; it is their best live tune. The band themselves have even said they really didn't play the song to its full potential for years. Tweaks over the years have only made it better and better.
During my initial stage of getting to know this record, the back-to-back of "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Running to Stand Still" were real eye-openers for me. I listened to those songs as much as any songs that year, and the band, knowing how well they go together, have always played them back-to-back live. "Bullet" is another tune that is far better live, and it is pretty awesome in the studio, so that says a lot. It's hard to top the studio version of "Running," but I think the version on the Zoo TV tour came pretty damn close. I still listen to both versions a ton.
As for Side 2, my favorites are "One Tree Hill" and "Red Hill Mining Town," the latter of which, unbelievably, has never been played live. "In God's Country" is a fun little rocker, and "Exit" was a pretty good tune that really came to life when played live (imagine that
). The aforementioned "Mothers of the Disappeared" is a fine closer, ending the album on a depressing note, but really showed how well the band could do other things. "Trip Through Her Wires" is just kind of there for me, although it's fine when listening to the whole album; it's just not a song I seek out on its own.
Overall, I would call this the 2nd best album U2 has ever done. It's a true classic, in every sense of the word.