U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind" - is it Underated / overated / Mastepiece (Poll)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lynd8, Aug 21, 2019.

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  1. Ghost of Ziggy

    Ghost of Ziggy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hell
    If I told you, you’d obviously not agree with me.
     
  2. It’s a good album but not great.
     
  3. Roberto899

    Roberto899 Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    I put underrated because nothing else seemed to fit for me. I find it to be solid and enjoyable in a safe way. It has a hopeful sound to it which considering the time it was out was a nice change. No one is going to complain if you put this one on. Which I'm fine with. It's the last U2 album that I liked. It's not top 5, but it's much better than what has come since. It's a nice contemporary music album.
     
  4. DolphinsIntheJacuzzi

    DolphinsIntheJacuzzi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    It's not quite a masterpiece - it runs out of steam a bit towards the end. But it's a fantastic album, and it's in my Top 3 (behind Achtung & Joshua Tree).
     
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  5. Chemguy

    Chemguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Western Canada
    Top 5. Great record.

    They have a lot of great records.
     
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  6. Aggie87

    Aggie87 Gig 'Em!

    Location:
    Carefree, AZ
    While it may be a "valid statement", for me it's an overly commercial attempt and isn't interesting in the way that most of their previous albums were.
     
  7. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I find it funny that anyone would single out any U2 album as a “commercial attempt.” They’re all commercial attempts. From day one, they openly aspired to be the biggest band in the world, and they got there. Pop was a commercial attempt supported by a stadium tour. That not every stadium was completely full and that Pop has sold “only” 6 or 7 million copies worldwide doesn’t mean U2 didn’t hope for it to sell as much as The Joshua Tree. That they kept re-recording the Pop singles further suggests they wanted to have hits from that album.
     
  8. Couldn’t vote for any of the options.
    I think it is a great album but not a masterpiece.
    I don’t think it is one of their best 5 albums.
    It can hardly been underrated given the numbers it sold.
    Possibly the next U2 album we will get a deluxe box set for.
     
  9. Aggie87

    Aggie87 Gig 'Em!

    Location:
    Carefree, AZ
    I don't find it funny at all. This one is a more blatant attempt at commercial success than what preceded it. For the first time, they came out not trying to evolve, but to play it safe.
     
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  10. daca

    daca Currently on Double Secret Probation

    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    A GORT may may want to look into this. It appears Bono has 19 SHMF accounts (and counting.)
     
  11. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I'm not a big U2 fan, and by the time this album came out I wasn't even listening to too much rock music at all anymore. But I love this album. When it came out it just totally captured it's moment and time like almost nothing else. That last verse of Kite -- Did I waste it?/Not so much I couldn't taste it/Life should be fragrant/Roof top to the basement/The last of the rockstars/When hip-hop drove the big cars/In the time when new media/Was the big idea/That was the big idea -- captured my life at the time and the lives of my peers like little other pop art did. And the album's songs were everywhere all the time, one of the last if not the last rock album I can remember having that kind of big, popular, shared cultural presence. I vote masterpiece, if masterpiece means a work of art that completely spoke to its zeitgeist and lives on. If I took Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and this album, I'd have all the U2 I'd ever need.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2019
  12. The MEZ

    The MEZ Forum Resident

    Location:
    CT
    I really like this album
     
  13. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I don’t agree with that on any level. As I noted above, the album is a synthesis of their 80s and 90s work, not merely an attempt to record Joshua Tree 2.
     
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  14. Panther

    Panther Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tokyo, Japan
    Yes, I feel the same way (I also couldn't find an accurate choice to vote for).

    When I first heard this LP in 2000, I gave it one or two listens and then completely dismissed it as it sounded like they were trying for a 'boy-band' production sheen (super-high vocals, low guitar and bass) in a desperate bid to get back on mainstream charts. Which they probably were. But at some point in spring 2001, I gave it further listens and belatedly recognized the quality of several songs (the top-tier tunes were 'Beautiful Day' and 'In A Little While' -- the former works much better if you crank up the bass).

    But the track-listing was crap. I hadn't listened to it in years, but last week I cued up a playlist of All That You Can't Leave Behind and ran it like this:

    Side One
    1. Beautiful Day
    2. In A Little While
    3. Stuck In A Moment... (acoustic version)
    4. Walk On
    5. Kite
    6. Flower Child

    Side Two
    7. When I Look at the World
    8. Summer Rain
    9. Stateless
    10. Peace On Earth
    11. Grace


    ...and it was beautiful. The 4 tracks in BOLD are ones that don't appear on the actual LP ("Stuck" appears, of course, but in a boy-band version that I can somehow never quite tolerate). I removed the dreadful 'Elevation', 'Wild Honey', and 'New York' ('New York' isn't a bad tune as such, but it just doesn't fit the record).

    'Flower Child' is one of U2's prettiest melodies and has a whistful, playful feel that would have been perfect here. 'Summer Rain' is just a great song. And 'Stateless' is ambient and cool, shifting the feel of the record to a bit less 'pop' and a bit more 'arty'.

    So, if they'd released something like this (and preferably with better mixing), I think the album might penetrate their top-5. But as it actually was, it's not even close.

    Incidentally, I rank U2's studio LPs like this:

    1A - The Joshua Tree
    1B - Achtung Baby
    3 - The Unforgettable Fire
    4 - Rattle & Hum (if studio tracks only!)
    5 - War
    6 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
    7 - Boy
    8 - Rattle & Hum (as actually issued)
    9A - Zooropa
    9B - Songs of Innocence
    9C - All That You Can't Leave Behind
    12A - Pop
    12B - October
    14 - No Line On The Horizon

    (I haven't heard Songs of Experience enough yet to really rate it fairly.)
     
  15. aravel

    aravel starchitect...then, father!

    Location:
    GDL - MEX
    ::: let's take a picture of late 2000 when the album came out: there were Limp Bizkits, Creeds, Eminems and NSyncs in every video tv channels, radio, whatever...there was no stream services, or youtube and real player took half of my life trying to catch a broadcast of U2 concert on dial phone modem (Notre Dame Show)...The band deliver a good product (we never know if it was really finished or was the showcase like 'Pop')...Kid A was too alternative for the rock followers in their early 30s and Coldplay was like Luke Skywalker in Episode IV (now we see how it turned out)...

    We all forgot also that the album won Grammy awards for 'Record Of The year', 'Song Of The Year' 2001 and 2002 and it was a big achievement at the time; also awards for 'Rock Album' and 'Pop Song'...but 20 years after there's plenty of memes about winning a grammy that you can insert below my comment. It was well received, and I don't remember someone claiming that U2 pulled a Jethro Tull at the ceremony.

    Personally, I love the Side 'A'...strong like previous classic albums, but it fails on Side 'B'...I was a member at u2.com and previous to the album release you could download some kind of 'postcards' made in shockwave or macromedia flash with 5-7 secs of the new songs and pictures of the band, and I was very excited about many of them just because those few seconds...

    As the tour started, months later we watched a VH1 special (that later was released in Full in VHS as Elevation Tour), but the tour didn't make a stop in my country, so after that I was dissapointed and since then, I rarely listen to the album in full either CD, LP,mp3, stream or whatever, sometimes the singles pop-up in my playlists...

    I was 29 back then, and I bought the cd right away and late at night I could sit down to listen to it with headphones and a couple of marlboro because I was a smoker back then...as I already knew 'Beautiful Day' the rest of the songs were a total surprise: 'Kite' made me cry. 'Walk On' was so bright and colorful but 'Stuck...' was the highlight, easy the best song of the band in years...as my late brother said: "Mick Jagger sings this one better than Bono, who tried to sing Like him but failed"

     
  16. davers

    davers Forum Resident

    As a long time fan I think this was their first album didn't have the U2 spark. The catchier songs are pleasant, but not really unique in the way their prior work had been.

    I saw an early leg of the tour (pre-9/11) and that was similar - the only U2 show that bored me. To their credit, I've seen some fantastic U2 shows since then!
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2019
  17. Aggie87

    Aggie87 Gig 'Em!

    Location:
    Carefree, AZ
    Good for you. I agree it's not an attempt to create Joshua Tree 2, for sure.

    You say it's a synthesis of what came before. I say it doesn't move forward or evolve, compared to what came before.

    We're saying about the same thing, and coming to two different conclusions, based on what we want or expect from the band.
     
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  18. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I want to add to the above that the album's sensibility of hitting middle age and looking back on everything, the successes and the failures, the achievements and the losses, the things that you grew up with that are gone and the new world in front of you that you're not sure you fit it to, the things you're still clinging too including who you once were but maybe aren't anymore, the sense of loss in that -- all you can't leave behind -- and that great rock uplift ability to pep talk yourself (and stadiums full of fans) into not letting that break you but seizing the day -- be strong, walk on, don't let at least this one beautiful day in this moment slip away....man, that was a powerful album.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2019
  19. seaisletim

    seaisletim Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia PA
    The second half is better than the singles heavy first half. In a Little While is a wonderful tune
     
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  20. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    Like everything that came after Achtung Baby, it failed to rekindle my love for what had been my favorite band for a few years. I don't fault them for growing and changing with the times, but I do feel they lost their spark and never really recaptured it. ATYCLB is neither better nor worse than their other albums of that era in that regard.
     
  21. Erik B.

    Erik B. Fight the Power

    Like all U2, boring and grossly overrated
     
  22. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    That’s true of most of their albums, I find.
     
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  23. ausgraeme

    ausgraeme Forum Resident

    Another one of U2’s efforts after the 90’s that has hints of greatness but some truly terrible moments as well.
    Peace on Earth is one of the biggest, stinkiest turkeys they have ever written. Awful, banal lyrics using the same 2 chords many a U2 song has been written with. A truly cringe inducing song rivalled only by the dreadful Yahweh from the next album. Songs like this are why some many people believe Bono to be a twat. When I Look At The World follows a similar banal path, just not quite as vomit inducing.
    Then there’s some great singles - Beautiful Day, Stuck In A Moment, Elevation (despite questionable lyrics).
    My personal favourites are In A Little While which I’d place as a contender for one of Bono’s best ever vocal performances, New York, and the majestic bonus track Ground Beneath Her Feet, which mines a sonic territory that really suits them.
     
  24. HotelYorba101

    HotelYorba101 Senior Member

    Location:
    California
    There are some production issues that IMO took the balls out of some of the rockers on that album like Elevation (the Tomb Raider mix is so much better). It just.... after the creative explosion of 90's U2 it seems like a very safe, bland album with few shining moments

    Stuck In A Moment, Walk On, Beautiful Day, and Elevation are the highlights of this album to me, but ultimately this album is the start of the era of U2 that I just find less exciting compared to '80s and '90s U2
     
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  25. Merrick

    Merrick The return of the Thin White Duke

    Location:
    Portland
    I voted overrated because it’s consistently mentioned as one of their best records when only the first half is good. Now, the first half is very, very good, but the second half is a complete mess. Easily as bad as the worst of Pop, but U2 had returned to their classic sound and were more upbeat, being earnest again after a decade of irony, so people forgave it. If we’re playing the “best album since their last best album” game, I’d say Songs of Innocence is their best since Zooropa. ATYCLB is half great, half terrible.
     
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