U2000s (Part One): All The Decade We Must Leave Behind
December 16, 2009 · Print This Article
Once called “the band of the 80s†in the group’s inaugural decade, U2 remains, according to Rolling Stone magazine, one of the best in the world at the end of their third decade.
As music critics, bloggers, fans, and radio hosts from around the planet engage in epic list-making and taste-staking to recall the first ten years of the century known to some as “the oughts,†U2 fare fairly well. In the Rolling Stone Top 100 Albums of the period, all three U2 records hold formidable rank (All That You Can’t Leave Behind, No Line on the Horizon, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb coming in at 13, 36, and 68 respectively).
In the Rolling Stone retrospective, Rob Sheffield describes this as the decade when U2 “regained their mojo and started making unabashed U2 records again.†In the feature on the group, David Fricke echoes what many fans know when he writes that U2 sustains “experiment and ecstasy like no other group of any vintage, with a sustained passion and belief in the big statement power of rock & roll.â€
North of us, Canadian journalist Mike Devlin described All That You Can’t Leave Behind as U2’s “best [of the decade] by a long shot,†calling the record “an intensely personal offering†that “rivals anything in the band’s catalogue.â€
Here in the Interference forums, devoted fans disagree about how to rank U2’s contribution to the 2000s. In a poll of those that post on the discussion boards, No Line on the Horizon holds a formidable lead with 68%, with All That You Can’t Leave Behind taking 24% of the votes.
Throughout the vigorous discussions, each album has its advocates and detractors, and the only thing close to a consensus feeling is the gratitude many fans feel following a band with such a long career and consistent catalog with members about to turn 50 years old.
Feel free to join the best of the year and decade discussions all over our forums, including U2’s year and decade as well as our discussions of the best non-U2 music out there for this year and for the first 10 of the century.
Stay tuned for special reports from our staff on our own interpretation of U2’s decade as well as on all the other great musical artists of the last ten years.
–Andrew William Smith, Editor
Uh, did anyone stop to realize that this decade isn’t actually over until December 31, 2010. 2009 is the 9th year of the decade. 2010 is the 10th and final year of the decade. U2 still has more to do before the decade has ended. Hello people: we count 1 through 10, not 0 through 9. There was never a year 0. The first year of the A.D. period was 1 AD, not 0 AD. People made this mistake with Y2k, when in fact 2000 was the last year of the previous millenium, not the first year of the next one.