U2 - U218 Singles (CD)

All Music Guide

U2's first two greatesthits 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 widelyaccepted masterpieces War, The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby provide the most songs here. No, out of all their albums the one that dominates U218 Singl...es 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 19902000.The other record they've released since then is How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which provides two songs here or, as many as there are from War and Achtung Baby. What this means is that this compilation skews very heavily toward latterday U2 eight out of 18 tracks, a full 44percent of the collection, are from 2000 on, which means that U218 Singles presents the classicist version of the band, featuring the anthems from the group at their peak, plus the highlights from when U2 were trying their best to sound like U2 at their peak. They did it quite well, of course, from both a commercial and artistic standpoint, sometimes writing songs that stood proudly alongside "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (as in "Beautiful Day") and sometimes not ("Elevation"). When it's all mixed together, it paints a portrait of a band that's a little slicker and streamlined than they often were, and it's hard not to miss the bighearted yet moody band that made "Bad," "Gloria," and "A Sort of Homecoming," not to mention the middleaged Euro experimentalists responsible for "Numb" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close)," two essential components of the band that has been forced aside by the arena rock pros on display here. Read more Less