Too set in our ways to try to rearrange

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

20/03/83 : War - U2

So, our second album from this week - this is totally going to throw all the stats for the year (and yes, I do keep stats as I go along for my end of year write-up).  But it's entirely my fault, so I'll just have to live with the consequences.  This is our fifth visit with U2 and it's is an album I really liked for some time after The Joshua Tree when I investigated all their back catalogue, but I've not listened to it in years - so I'm looking forward to revisiting it.  I seem to recall "rough and ready" is not an inappropriate description.

And yeah - I'd say that's pretty much where we are.  You can hear them being in the process of transitioning to the more polished sounds of The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree - for some this transition is a good thing whereas for others, not so much.  The singles are the obvious high points of the album for me, but I'm also a fan of "Like A Song...".  I like the album cover too - and yes, it's the same boy who's on Boy.  But, despite me knowing I liked the album, I've never actually owned a copy - I considered it a "possible" for Mrs Reed, but it was a no from her as well, so we drop to 11.5/42.

We're at #4 this week on their third week out of a 40 week run - bizarrely (and uniquely so far) they then managed another 18 runs on the charts, totalling another 108 weeks before finally disappearing in October '08.  How very peculiar.  And we can leave the chart there because I've already explained the rest of it to you because of my foolishness last time around.

Wikipedia has the expected large amount (228 milliPeppers) and there are some interesting snippets in there - "New Years Day" was written by Bono on his honeymoon and was supposed to be a love song for his new wife, but ended up being about the Polish Solidarity movement.  What a smoothy, eh?  And here's a couple of bizarre vocalist facts for you - The Edge sings on "Seconds" which is a very rare occurence, but that's nothing when compared with the fact that three of the tracks feature backing vocals by The Coconuts (as in Kid Creole and...).  You'd never have guessed that, would you?  And one last bit of bizarreness for you - the original cassette version had the entire album on each side.  WHY?!?  The album was well received critically, except in the UK where they didn't like it as much as Boy - but the public everywhere loved it with it selling 11 million copies globally, although strangely it only got to #16 in Ireland.

"Customers also listened to" Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Van Halen and The Clash - all of whom I suspect U2 have wanted to be at points in their career.  I do like this album, but because I first got into later U2 I don't really think of it as a "proper" U2 album - I think of this and earlier ones as them "finding their way".  And I totally appreciate that others will consider the later albums as them having "lost their way", but we'll just have to agree to disagree (although I suspect we can all agree that their much later albums are them totally losing their way).

13/03/83 - A musical curio
20/03/83 - A fortunate Brucie bonus