U2 Achtung Baby

On January 13, 2022, U2 announced their newest fan club subscription gift, Achtung Baby 30 Live for the 2022 subscription year. The gift will be a limited edition CD set in a “special presentation package” featuring live tracks from Achtung Baby recorded over the last thirty years. Downloads of select tracks will be made available in advance of the physical release, and a full download will be available after the CD is sent to subscribers. The tracks are all taken from Achtung Baby from various tours throughout the years, and all of the tracks are unreleased to date with the exception of “Zoo Station” (Live from Buenos Aires, March 2, 2006) which was previously released on the “Window in the Skies“ single, and “Mysterious Ways” (Live from Cape Town, February 18, 2011) which was featured on the “U22“ fan club album. The gift will come in a photo booklet, and will include commentary by author Bill Flanagan, who accompanied the band on their Zoo TV tour.

Achtung Baby is the seventh studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 18 November 1991 on Island Records. Achtung Baby is one of U2's most successful records; it received favourable reviews and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 Top Albums, while topping the charts in many other countries. Rolling Stone ranked the record at number 63 on its 2012 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Recorded at Hansa Studio in Berlin and Windmill Lane in Dublin, "Achtung Baby" was U2's seventh studio album and went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance, becoming one of the most significant records of the 1990s. The Grammy-winning album debuted at number one in the US and spawned five hit singles, including "One", U2's highest song on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, ranked at number 36. This Deluxe editon features the original album plus an additional 14 tracks including B-sides and remixes.

New, 30th anniversary editions of U2’s seminal Achtung Baby album are to be released by Island Records, Interscope, and UMe. The Standard and Deluxe vinyl release will be this Friday (November 19) with a 50-track digital box set available from December 3.
Achtung Baby (30th Anniversary Edition) will be available on standard black vinyl and deluxe color vinyl on November 19, with Achtung Baby (2018 Remaster) and Achtung Baby (Unter Remixes) available digitally the same day. The 50-track box set will include Uber Remixes, Unter Remixes, and B-Sides, featuring 22 tracks never before available digitally.

Thirty years ago, Bono described Achtung Baby as "the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree" while Jon Pareles of the New York Times wrote that "stripped-down and defying its old formulas, U2 has given itself a fighting chance for the 1990's".

This infamous bootleg of the 'Achtung Baby' sessions. Unlike the majority of the numerous other CD pressings of this material, this was mastered directly from the DAT's that U2 produced as working tapes during the recording sessions. As such, the recording quality is outstanding. The titles I have used here match those found in the Salome "pseudo liner notes" (I'm not sure of the author of that document, but it can be found at several U2 WWW sites. Quite interesting.). Many of these songs are early versions of 'Achtung Baby' tracks, while others are unique and unreleased songs or musical "ideas". The material is somewhat repetitive (nine versions of Salome), but provides interesting insight into the development and evolution of the songs. I don't know of any bootlegged 'Achtung Baby' session material which does not appear on this recording. Earlier pressings have Tracks 9 and 10 on Disc 1 indexed together. There are no titles anywhere on the packaging. The back cover simply lists the length of each track. Discs 1 and 2 are listed as having only 11 tracks each.

All That You Can't Leave Behind is the tenth studio album by rock band U2. Following the mixed reception to their 1997 album, Pop, All That You Can't Leave Behind represented a return to a more conventional sound for the band after they experimented with alternative rock and dance music in the 1990s. U2 brought back producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois who had produced a number of the band's previous albums.

U2's first two greatest-hits albums neatly divided themselves by decade, with the first covering the '80s and the second summing up the '90s. Their third hits comp, 2006's U218 Singles, is at once more ambitious and more concise, offering an overview of their first 26 years on a single disc comprised of 18 tracks – and since two of those are new songs, that leaves just 16 songs to tell their whole story. That's not much space for a band with a career as lengthy and ambitious as U2, so it's inevitable that some painful cuts have been made. Nothing from October, Zooropa or Pop is here, and unless you're buying various import editions that have "I Will Follow" as a bonus track, there's nothing from Boy, either. There's only one cut each from The Unforgettable Fire and Rattle and Hum – and bucking conventional wisdom, none of their three widely accepted masterpieces – War, The Joshua Tree, or Achtung Baby – provide the most songs here. No, out of all their albums the one that dominates U218 Singles is All That You Can't Leave Behind, their 2000 comeback from the depths of the misguided Pop, and one of two records that they've released since their last hits compilation, The Best of 1990-2000.