In a piece written for Rolling Stone 20 years ago this month, producer Brian Eno identified why the rock band U2 is singularly enduring and enervating. “Cool,” he wrote, “sums up just about everything U2 isn’t. The band is positive where cool is cynical, involved where it is detached, open where it is evasive.” For 35 years, rock journalists, culture’s self-appointed guardians of cool, have monitored U2’s ups and downs, smash hits and embarrassments. The relationship between critics and the band was fraught from the start, with their anthemic, highly emotive music winning them millions of fans but just as many skeptics. The rock of rebellion and decadence seemed allergic to a band this earnest, emotive, inclusive, politically engaged, and, worst of all, openly Christian. You couldn’t invent a more mock-worthy outfit.
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I became a fan of U2 in 1985. Just back from a Little League game, locked onto the TV set, I watched Bono win over a crowd of 70,000 people by jumping off the stage to slow-dance with one of them. Rewatching the Live Aid performance from a 26-year remove, it’s obvious how calculated the antics were, how deliberately the band “rose to the occasion.” Yet the gestures, canned and symbolic as they are, are still effective. The young rock god exhorts, and thousands roar in response. I know what I’m about to see, but it still moves me. When it comes to U2, you’re either attracted to the act or repulsed by the earnest calculation. Over the years, I’ve been both. I recently listened to all of the band’s studio albums anew—as well as errant singles and side projects—and organized them into the following five qualitative categories.
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