Boy

Sound DNA

• Alt/Indie
• Post-Punk

• brittle
• earnest
• art school

About

One of the greatest debut albums of the 1980s—which is saying <i>a lot</i>, given how bountiful that decade turned out to be—U2’s <i>Boy</i> is a burst of pent-up energy and ambition. Released at a moment in which punk, post-punk, and New Wave were swirling and collapsing into one another, <i>Boy</i> throws all of that noise all together in a mix of jagged guitars, jubilant rhythms, and good old-fashioned angry-young-man <i>ennui</i>. It’s not U2’s most hit-packed record, nor its most fully formed, but <i>Boy</i> may simply be the most <i>U2</i>-ish album U2 ever made: The sound of four musicians confused about where they’re going next, but supremely confident they’ll get there—a mindset that would come to define the band in the decades ahead. Back in 1980, the members of U2—vocalist Bono, guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.—were brash upstarts with a reputation for fiery gigs, but little in the way of in-studio experience. The group had made an inauspicious debut with 1979’s <i>Three</i>, a quickly recorded EP, and followed it up with a handful of singles, most notably “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” a gnarly post-punk rave-up so indebted to The Cure, it likely raised Robert Smith’s eyebrows (as well as his hairdo). <i>Boy</i> would be the group’s most grown-up effort yet. Produced by Steve Lillywhite—who’d caught the group during a late-1970s live show in Ireland, and who’d work with the group repeatedly in the coming decades—the album captures 20-year-old Bono’s anguished post-adolescent worldview. “Out of Control,” with its stomping drums and dreamy guitars, is a frenzied lament for the end of childhood, while “An Cat Dubh” is an appropriately throbbing tale of young lust. On later U2 albums, you can hear Bono laboring—sometimes painfully so—to make sure his words are pointed, and that his message rings clear. The lyrics on <i>Boy</i>, however, capture a frenzied state of mind, as though Bono was collecting his thoughts at the exact moment he stepped up to the mic. Nowhere is that urgency felt more strongly than on “I Will Follow,” the album’s opening track, and its most indelible. Built on the Edge’s scraping guitars and Mullen and Clayton’s vicious groove, ”I Will Follow” is part stirring rock-pop anthem, part mission statement—a delirious promise of loyalty that would become U2’s first undeniable hit song. “I was on the outside,” Bono sings as the song gets underway. Thanks to <i>Boy</i>, he wouldn’t be out there for long much longer—and neither would U2.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits