№ 45 of 100
Achtung Baby
Achtung Baby by U2 (1991), № 45 in The Lead-In’s 100 greatest albums. U2 break their own sound on purpose. The Edge plugs into Eno's TR-808 and the band re-invents itself as a Berlin disco group with an Irish accent.
U2's reinvention. Recorded at Hansa Studios Berlin (the same room that produced Bowie's Low) over 1990-1991. Released November 19, 1991.
- Released
- November 19, 1991
- Label
- Island Records
- Producer(s)
- Daniel Lanois · Brian Eno
- Runtime
- 55:23 (12 tracks)
- Chart peak (US)
- #1 (Billboard 200)
- Chart peak (UK)
- #2 (Official Charts)
- Certifications
- 8× Platinum (RIAA); 18M units globally
- Awards & honours
- Grammy Best Rock Performance ('One,' 1993); ranked #62 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums (2020)
U2's seventh album. Recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin in fall 1990, then completed at Windmill Lane in Dublin in 1991. The album that reinvented U2 from sincere 1980s stadium rockers to ironic 1990s post-modernists.
By 1990, U2 was in crisis. The Joshua Tree had made them the biggest band in the world; Rattle and Hum (1988) had been critically savaged as self-important. The band relocated to Berlin to record their next album with Eno and Lanois.
Hansa Studios was the room David Bowie had used to record Low and Heroes in 1976-1977. The band arrived in Berlin in October 1990 just as German reunification was being completed. The atmosphere, politically transformative, culturally uncertain, became part of the album.
The album's signature is its ironic reinvention. The Edge's guitar approach moved from his signature delay-based shimmer to more aggressive distortion. Bono adopted multiple stage personas (the Fly, Mr. MacPhisto). The band engaged with hip-hop, industrial music, and dance.
The album's 12 songs include 'Zoo Station,' 'Even Better Than the Real Thing,' 'One,' 'Until the End of the World,' 'Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,' 'So Cruel,' 'The Fly,' 'Mysterious Ways,' 'Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World,' 'Ultraviolet (Light My Way),' 'Acrobat,' 'Love Is Blindness.'
Achtung Baby belongs at number forty-five because it is the album that proved a major rock band could reinvent itself at peak commercial success. The album sits as the canonical 'reinvention' rock album.
Pressing guide — the one to own
The 1991 UK first pressing is on Island, carrying the primary catalog number 510 347-1 alongside the spine number U28. It is a single sleeve (not gatefold) with the multi-image montage cover, a printed inner sleeve of photos and credits, plus a separate black-and-white lyric insert. With CD by then the dominant format, UK vinyl LPs of this title were a comparatively small run, so clean originals are scarce.
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