Product Description

'The Joshua Tree' is Irish rock giants U2's fifth studio album. This album finds U2 at their most personal, with Bono'sintrospective lyrics intertwining perfectly with the band'ssweeping, epic mix of blues and widescreen pop. Includes the singles 'Where The Streets Have No Name', 'I Still Haven'tFound What I'm Looking For' and 'With Or Without You'.

Track Listing

1. Where The Streets Have No Name
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
3. With Or Without You
4. Bullet The Blue Sky
5. Running To Stand Still
6. Red Hill Mining Town
7. In God's Country
8. Trip Through Your Wires
9. One Tree Hill
10. Exit
11. Mothers Of The Disappeared

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4619 in Music
• Released on: 1987-03-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Having nearly exhausted their capacity for pop-song politics on War and The Unforgettable Fire, U2 turned toward themes of personal identity and complex relationships on The Joshua Tree. Not that the group was willing to come down off the barricades entirely: "Mothers of the Disappeared" and "Bullet the Blue Sky" turned a jaundiced eye toward Central America and the United States's role there. But the predominant mood here is one of self-discovery and the hunger for something more on tracks like the pulsating "Where the Streets Have No Name" and the gospel-ish "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The album's masterstroke, however, is "With or Without You", a nasty love song dressed up as an ode of devotion and care. It ranks with the Police's "Every Breath You Take" as the most misread smash hit of the 1980s. --Daniel Durchholz

From Amazon.com
U2 have made a lot of grand music, but 1987's graceful, powerful Joshua Tree stands as their masterwork. It is by turns moving, inspiring, and exhilarating. Each member contributes his best work, and each song shines. Would that all rock records were made with the same care, the same passion and invention. The ubiquitous opening salvo of "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and the tense "With or Without You" may define this album to many, but its real strengths lie in the brilliant second half: "Red Hill Mining Town," "Trip Through Your Wires," and the surging "One Tree Hill" (the latter being one of rock's--hell, all music's--truly finest moments). --Michael Ruby

Customer Reviews

the Curse of the Colonies
There are two glaringly obvious affectations to blame for the artistic failure of U2's `the Joshua Tree'. One is the record company, who MUST for the sake of their shareholders, send young provincial bands to the colonies, and the huge rewards from the eager masses there. The other is the Clash.
`London Calling' sent U2, and any number of other groups from the UK and beyond, scuttling for their cowboy boots and neckerchiefs in the mistaken belief that `they-could-take-on-American-influences-and-still-be-interesting....not so.
If you give young people in their 20's, lots of cash and put them on a plane to the heart of consumerism, they're gonna imbibe...and how. Within weeks they're adopting that ridiculous gait all rock groups must adopt when they're `conquering' America, wearing leather vests, riding the subway, and plundering the not insubstantial culture to arrive at the (paid minions encouraged) conclusion that they are Guthrie, Kerouac and Dylan rolled into one.
This can only result in one thing - the recording of the `American' rock album.
In the case of a group like U2, the American Rock Album is a laughable betrayal. A suspicious dirge of such ropiness and lack of character that it becomes a danger to itself and others. A concept so crass and the results so boring that one must wonder if it's all part of the record companies (I suspect) anti-young agenda anyway. "We hate the young, let's go out of our way to not understand them, and pointedly send them off in the wrong direction."
So, Bono and Co, well stocked up on the cliché's, and even though they're from leafy avenue Dublin, don't find it at all embarrassing to sing about `red orange glows' and `fighters over mud-huts (!)
Well it is. Very.
Take `Bullet the Blue Sky', an AWFUL song in the worst sense. Bono thinks he's being all passionate and powerful, but in reality he's fallen head first into the ditch of tunelessness, the slurry-pit of hideous pretension. Lyrics with no substance accompany sour one-note feedback-guitar playing. Worse, he seems to be singing in a funny accent. He's not from Brooklyn (or Nashville for that matter!) he's from Ireland. To hear him drawl "into the arms of Amurca.." and reciting some of the worst poetry you'll hear, "rose on a thorn bush, like the colours of a Royal Flush, and he's peeling off those dollar bills, slappin' 'em down..100...200" and worse: "take the staircase to the first floor, turn the key and slowly unlock the door, a guy breathes into his saxophone, and through the walls you can hear the city groan...outside it's Amurca" it's so bad it can actually pull you up short. Sharp intake of breath and all that. To some-one who adored the likes of `Boy' and `October' (ie; Me!) it's quite hard to take.
Apart from the singles (too obvious, obviously) `Red Hill Mining Town' is passable, but spoiled by more rotten poetry and commonplace rising orchestra, and there is one good song(!)-`One Tree Hill`.
Here, U2 forego all the faux- rockism to a degree, and deliver an almost jaunty, calypso-led number. It's still has some of the (deliberate) dirge-style quality of the rest of the album, but it seems there is genuine soul at work, trying to break free of the creative constraints and narrowness. Up to a point it succeeds until it's effect is bludgeoned to a pulp by `Exit', a worthless ballad trying to invoke the spirit of `Combat Rock's - Death is a Star' but failing miserably.
I had to laugh at `Running to Stand Still' too, where Bono meaningfully intones "Halal, halal, halal ..today" (That'd be all we need, Bono in the Islam corner!) over a music operating at no level of competence above that of the worst 70's campus commando's, before letting rip with more yodelling and angst. Then, just to ram the whole farcical context home, a Dylan-style harmonica comes in, serving just one purpose only...further attempted authenticity. But by now it's not even consolation.
The rest of `The Joshua Tree' ploughs a pedestrian and unoriginal rock furrow. Very quickly the listener becomes bored with gospel backing singers (an abomination in rock terms) and long, purposeless passages of egotistical and neurotic verse and sludgy, murky geetar. Gets more and more irritated at Bono's `soulful' posturing and screaming. Becomes homicidal at yet more "faces frozen against the wind" and "red desert skies".(I didn't know there were deserts in Contae Bhaile Atha Cliath, Paul. You live and learn.)
`The Joshua Tree' isn't a surprise, and that's a major problem with it. It doesn't need a genius to predict that the US would have this kind of influence on U2 and that this was the only album that could result. People spend lifetimes making sense of this massive culture and only scratch the surface, U2 think they can do it after a couple albums and a tour. Dazed and daunted before their time is the inevitable result.
`The Joshua Tree' is the sound of rock eating it's young alive.

New listeners
I can understand if you were around at the time and part of the hype that surrounded this record, why you would like it. My advice to anyone who has seen this album in the list of best albums, and interested as to what it is really like, is to either not listen to this album, or put it into it's historical context. It's an awful album, with the worst singing ever possibly know to mankind.Howling.Screaming. If we didn;t think he was actually trying to sing in tune, it wouldn't be as bad.But this guy is actually trying his hardest. in 2008? Awful.

kept on hold for 20 years?
I have just watched one of the best U2 concerts that I have ever seen, and I have seen them all. If you buy the box set of the remastered U2 Joshua tree CD with the bonus DVD you will also treat yourself to one of the most raw and true to life U2 dvds you have ever seen and believe me I have them all. This is a film of the band up close without the camerman wanting to be the star.
It's the concert in the raw and U2 are showing you what they do best. They create good music and react with the audience. I can't believe that this has been in wraps for 20 years. I know that the money I have spent on this whole package had been well worth it,