U2

In 1987 U2 joined the pantheon of World's Biggest Rock Bands with The Joshua Tree, an album that deserved its monster sales and "instant classic" status. U2 kick things off with a 1-2-3 knockout punch of great singles, while deep album cuts like "Running to Stand Still" are uniformly strong. This remastered anniversary edition features a disc's worth of bonus material. Such B-sides as "Spanish Eyes," "Walk to the Water" and (especially) "Sweetest Thing" would be considered worthy album cuts by just about any other rock band.

The Joshua Tree has been U2's most popular album since about ten minutes after it was
released. The 1987 smash was the culmination of their American phase, between their
florid, young-European phase and their grizzled, mature-European phase. The album's
huge commercial success whisked the lads from superstardom to megastardom, and they
spent the next decade trying to recover from it - Bono once described the muc... More >