Achtung Baby and ZooTV needed each other to be able to succeed at any level. ZooTV was the perfect vehicle to re-image the band and unleash these new songs. ZooTV was a television station erected for one night at your local stadium or arena. Televisions everywhere. Images and words everywhere. The show was media overload and in the middle was a little rock and roll band tearing through the pomp with some of their most personal and affecting work yet.

Much had changed since The Joshua Tree. The band began recording in Berlin. They arrived in the city as the wall was coming down. This was to be the first steps for a Europe of the future - at least that was the idea. U2 set camp in Hansa Studios. The same room Brian Eno produced the critically successful Berlin Trilogy albums with David Bowie. Experimental and very European.

Nobody told U2 this new Germany would still be miserably cold and the band's studio run down. Internal band conflicts crept in as well with Bono and the Edge pushing for news sounds and at odds with Adam and Larry. The band went back to Dublin to finish recording, but Berlin - and all that came with it - is vital to Achtung Baby and much of the ZooTV imagery.

As much as Achtung Baby is music for the future, you can still see the cracks underneath. The past that remains. The music mirrors Bono's lyrics perfectly, or maybe it is the other way around. The album is about relationships, and how strained we can make them. The overarching theme is life in a marriage. The conflict of domesticity versus the life outside. The nightlife. The man is out while the woman is at home, waiting for him.

IN the same way The Joshua Tree was able to conjure cinematic views of America, Achtung Baby conjures the energy, the ebbs and flows, of a city night. Going out to a city of lights and coming home to a darkened house.

This was the first U2 album to have any swagger. That swing in a man's step when he has something besides saving the world on his mind. Early in the record, the protagonist is all swagger. Loosening up on "Even Better than the Real Thing."

Give me one more chance
and you'll be satisfied
Give me two more chances
You won't be denied

The tone changes late as he stumbles home in "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)".

There is no silence that comes to a house
Where no one can sleep
I guess it's the price of love
I know it's not cheap

U2 began to embrace electronic sounds. A new relationship that would overrun, but more often inflect their songs. This gave the songs an element of trashy disposability. A little extra shine over what were actually some heavy-duty topics. ZooTV took this over the top. Everything came together perfectly for U2 at this time. Achtung Baby was stellar, ZooTV was a monster we have not seen before or since and even the band's music videos were pushing in new directions. All of this started with Bono's sunglasses. The buggy frames created a character and an image for the album and tour - naturally, they called him the Fly. This gave the band an opportunity to be something else, and do things the old U2 would have frowned on.

The Fly made Bono seem more human. Still a rock star no doubt, but you would much rather have a drink with the Fly than the guy on the cover of The Joshua Tree. Who knew U2 had a sense of humor? The new embrace of the absurd and the artificial only magnified the depth of the Achtung Baby songs as well as the message behind ZooTV. Finally, U2 was having fun and it was easy to jump along for the ride. By then it was even easier to be hit by the weight of the songs.

The instant classic from the record is "One." Much like the best U2 songs, it sounds a little odd at first. Part of the hook is how different the song sounds - similar in method to "With or Without You." After the spinning superficiality of "Even Better than the Real Thing" it is almost jarring to move on to "One." The song is the universal call to action, a Bob Marley song for the 1990s. It is not the utopian picture of one love, but the realization that we are all in this together, and despite our problems, we are together. We get to carry each other. We 'get' to carry each other, not have to. There is a difference there. "One" is a miraculous song that has managed 15 years of misuse. The band plays it for everything and a lame duet with Mary J. Blige a few years back was unnecessary.

Achtung Baby is the first U2 album, since Boy, to have every track stand on its own as a great piece of music. There is no filler. The band released nearly half the record as singles and played nearly the whole album while on tour. Even late album tracks like "Acrobat" are essential to the album.

The Edge entered a new stratosphere of playing on this record. He left the copycats behind - those guys still trying to get the part to "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and not only served the songs well, but also unleashed some incendiary solo spots for himself. The solos in "The Fly" and "Love is Blindness" are spectacular. The live solo for "Love is Blindness" came alive. Those are the guitar moments that fans of the Edge have been missing the last few albums.