U2 - The Best of 1980-1990

Compilation records don’t deserve the kind of welcome U2’s Best of 80 to 90 received and of course it’s not a qualitative thing, in our heads it was housekeeping, a bit of tidying up for the era conscious... you’d probably call it cleaning up which is eh... fair. I must say the success of the best of and Sweetest Thing has raised the game on our next studio album lest its original title, ‘U2, Love Your Early Stuff’ proved a pronouncement on our new material....’

from Bono’s diary of 1998, published in Q Magazine

One need hear only the first notes of this collection--the Edge's ringing guitar notes ushering in "Pride (In the Name of Love)"-to be taken back to 1984: Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher rule the Western world, the L.A. Olympics is the top sports story, and Ms. Pac-Man reigns at arcades. In rock & roll, there's U2 growing in stature with each new title. Even doubters of the Irish lads have to concede that together they formed the one '80s band with the skill and sense of scale to take over the airwaves and concert stages in a decade of diminished expectations. This 15-song '80s best-of assortment (stick around for the hidden track) spans the decade, reaching back to 1980's "I Will Follow," when Bono and company were peach-fuzzy and earnest as choirboys, and tracking their path through their most glaring misstep, 1988's overblown Rattle and Hum. --Steven Stolder