U2start.com | Songs of Innocence: general album thread

ahn1991

I posted my thoughts about each individual song in their respective thread. Here, I'll talk about my thoughts about the album as a whole.

Before coming up with this, I listened to the album from start to finish, following the intended track order. Following that order, I felt that the album was very well balanced and had a nice flow from start to finish (aside from the fade-out of The Troubles). It's not quite as cohesive as Coldplay's "Ghost Stories" when it comes to telling a narrative, but that's not the point of this album. From a musical standpoint, the album is all over the place. In other words, this album has no "musical theme" or style that was clearly present in their other albums. This is by no means a bad thing. In fact, it enforces the album title, Songs of Innocence. When people are "innocent," they are not tainted by experience, so they are willing to try out everything because everything feels fresh and new. This is exactly the feeling I get from this album. It's as if the band decided to discard whatever preconceived notions they had about the various musical styles they implemented and created something new and uniquely them. From a lyrical standpoint, it's very clear that this album is personal and emotional to the band. Even the song that we had heard in part once before (Every Breaking Wave) became a ballad about personal personal relationships.

Everything about this album shows that U2's mindset has drastically changed since they released NLOTH. Back then, they felt like they needed to prove a point, that the best band in the world had to come back and meet everyone's expectations. The songs on this album, even the method they used to release the album, sends a very clear message; "This is our music and we want you to listen to it." To get to this point, the band had to stop thinking about relevance. They had to stop thinking about sales and profits and chart rankings. Even though this move ended up being a slingshot from oblivion to the spotlight, the band had to stop thinking about all that to make this album and this release.

Anyhow, here are my top 3 songs (in no particular order)
Song for Someone
Iris
California

Regarding a rank for this album, I would put it at the top of my list. Initially I was thinking about top 5, but after a couple listens, I found this to be the album that speaks to me the strongest out of all of U2's albums from both a lyrical and musical standpoint.

We were all waiting for this album for a very, very long time and I think the band delivered in a very big way. Now that the songs are out there, it's only a matter of time before the stage comes to fruition, then the tour. We said that 360 was a huge feat and that it would be impossible to overcome that mark, but with this album I think they might have the tracks to do just that.

PiM1975

10 years

Don't know if this is mentioned before, but I think the album logo is based on Larry tattoo

Alvin

10 years

After few listens, the album is great especially second half (from Volcano) Still can't get into tracks 3-5. Top songs so far: Miracle, Volcano, Wolves, Cedarwood and Troubles -followed by Sleep like baby and This is where... And I'm starting to get in new version of EBW.
8/10 so far for m

Alvin

10 years

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Alvin

10 years

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Alvin

10 years

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Alvin

10 years

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