Imagine If You’d Never Heard The Joshua Tree…

the joshua treeNPR recently had one of its interns — a young guy, but they don’t say exactly how young — listen to The Joshua Tree for the first time.

Yep, for the first time. It sounds strange, but I have to confess that there are a lot of classic rock albums from the ’60s and ’70s that I’ve never heard in their entirety … albums by The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, etc. I wonder how I would’ve reviewed one of those albums as a U2/The Police/The Cars/Van Halen-loving young man in the 1980s?

Well, the NPR intern ends up with a pretty favorable feeling about The Joshua Tree, but he has some interesting things to say along the way: “Streets” sounds like The Arcade Fire; Bono doesn’t sound sincere; “With or Without You” is too “syrupy,” and so forth.

You can read the full review on NPR.org.

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6 Responses to “Imagine If You’d Never Heard The Joshua Tree…”

  1. zoofly 31 January 2010 at 10:22 am permalink

    What might be an even more relevant experiment would have someone who has never heard any of U2′s albums (even better if they’ve never heard of Bono in any celebrity capacity) and have them review the bands entire catalog.

    That may be one of the most honest points of view you may ever get. One without pretense.

  2. m2 31 January 2010 at 2:12 pm permalink

    Very true. Bono’s visibility no doubt colors a lot of people’s opinions, whether or not they’ve heard much of the music.

  3. Merliu2 31 January 2010 at 4:53 pm permalink

    U2 rocks!

  4. Johnno 31 January 2010 at 5:56 pm permalink

    I think this is telling. Joshua Tree made its original impact with fans and it colors their perceptions on everything else the band puts out…like it’s scripture or something. Thumbs up to this review

  5. BoNo FReaK 1 February 2010 at 6:21 am permalink

    “With or Without You” too syrupy….??? What ?

  6. crossinggo 1 February 2010 at 7:28 pm permalink

    zoofly: the situation you describe would have fit me to a T until the late 90s. I had no idea who U2 was, who Bono was, etc., and had no interest. I bought War on a whim basically around 1990 and then their entire catalog one by one. It was only with the lead up to Pop that I started to learn more about the band and (gasp!) actually started watching concert videos and so on. Really, it was just about the music for me and the other stuff was just superfluous. Oh, and U2 is and always will be my favorite band by far. (Even despite NLOTH…)