I guess not having any hits on it doomed it to relative obscurity. Gloria is a great, classic tune, but I guess it wasn't I Will Follow or New Year's Day.

Nice dissection of the albums. Certainly, none of them are top-tier DM. Agreed on Exciter's title, which is terrible even before being applied to THAT album. Were they being ironic? Though I already thought Ultra was a bit of a let down after SOFAD. (The singles on that one were great, but the rest was sometimes iffy.…

Well, you're more forgiving of Damaged People than I am—I think the last Martin song I liked was maybe Breathe, from Exciter, but even that's stretching. Home was his last great vocal—probably his best. And you're harsher on those three albums overall. None of them are stellar, but I thought Sounds of the Universe…

I just had the pleasure of seeing her sing David Bowie's Life on Mars?, with a local (Chicago) David Bowie tribute band, Sons of the Silent Age—just a couple of weeks ago. She's astonishingly good.

Upvoted for Judas. Ah, back when the "Martin" songs on Depeche Mode albums weren't awful dirges.

Funny, your picks are a bit different from mine (I find Discotheque to be mostly ridiculous), but the overall impression is similar.

That's a fair assessment. It was a weird time, where they had to follow up AB and Zoo TV, and instead of doing a predictable "return to form" (which they would end up doing with ATYCLB/Elevation), they tried to one-up themselves and go bigger/louder/more. It was an impossible task, and their advancing age did them…

That Bon Iver cover is the one track on And I'll Scratch Yours that rivals the original. The rest are quirky, or interesting, but that one's essential.

Scratch is the one I have a hard time with—I like a few of the songs, but it's a weird one overall. It's like he had to completely dismantle his "sound" on that album, in order to build a new one on Melt.

Oh man, that show. My first time seeing him (only third big concert over all), and I somehow thought that him being "older" (younger than I am now, ffs), it would be somehow sedate and mellow. Then that song happened. Holy sh*t. One of the most incredible shows I've ever seen.

Might as well jump!

That EP is great. I loved that you got 4 great songs—two live favorites (well, new at the time), and two b-sides/obscurities. 20 minutes of just good, good stuff. Predictably, my favorite was the live version of Bad.

LOL. Well, they can't all be winners! I suppose that song is at least interesting in a time capsule sort of way. OJ Simpson! Michael Jackson! Uh…Coke!

Zooropa is great. I also particularly like Passengers, which always seems like Zooropa's sibling, as much as Zooropa was Achtung Baby's.

More accurately, in the name of Trump.

It's funny how October is usually the go-to for "worst U2 album" (well, maybe until NLOTH…), but it's so solid. No, it doesn't really have any hits on it, but there's an energy there that I love. I particularly like Rejoice.

That whole thing started on the wrong foot with that K-Mart appearance. I get that they were making fun of commercialism and having to sell the album, but it really came off—unintentionally, I'm sure—as mocking K-Mart/their shoppers/discount retail/etc. And then during the press conference, it came out that ticket…

Wait…..is that an entire thread of comments below, discussing U2, and not just slagging them off? What's happening? Is this real?

Has Pop been re-assessed? It seems like the one album die-hards love, and everyone else either loathes, or forgets/doesn't even know it existed. I've always liked it, but I have to acknowledge there's an element of "trying too hard" running through it. But at least they were trying.

Agreed. Seeing him open the Secret World show with that song was absolutely incredible.