Seeing staples like "All I Wanna Do", "Heart-Shaped Box", and "Mr. Jones" in the back half of the list...that's my sign that this might have been the strongest overall year of the exercise.
There's also the "victim of overplay" thesis I have where some of these songs were so novel when they came out that the grooves were played out of the record that they became like wallpaper, which unfairly harms them in my rankings.
As a big fan of U2, I somehow never considered Zooropa to be a "full" album, so I think that fits with your "Achtung Baby 1.5" notion. It's good! Just... not a standalone, IMO.
Bill Flanagan's very very good book ~U2 at the End of the World~ has some of those behind-the-scenes, in-the-moment anecdotes that helped me reach this conclusion.
Seeing staples like "All I Wanna Do", "Heart-Shaped Box", and "Mr. Jones" in the back half of the list...that's my sign that this might have been the strongest overall year of the exercise.
There's also the "victim of overplay" thesis I have where some of these songs were so novel when they came out that the grooves were played out of the record that they became like wallpaper, which unfairly harms them in my rankings.
As a big fan of U2, I somehow never considered Zooropa to be a "full" album, so I think that fits with your "Achtung Baby 1.5" notion. It's good! Just... not a standalone, IMO.
Bill Flanagan's very very good book ~U2 at the End of the World~ has some of those behind-the-scenes, in-the-moment anecdotes that helped me reach this conclusion.