Now that the dust has settled, what's the verdict?

>>74276507
The Joshua Tree is the band's best-selling album, and with 25 million copies sold worldwide,[152] it is among the best-selling albums of all time. It ranks as one of the best-selling albums in the US. In 1995, the RIAA certified it 10× platinum for shipping 10 million units, and the album subsequently received the Diamond Award for reaching this level.[103] Similarly, the Canadian Recording Industry Association certified the album diamond in Canada.[153] In the UK, The Joshua Tree ranks as the 36th-highest-selling record with 2.79 million copies sold,[154][155] having been certified 8× platinum, with an additional silver certification for the 20th anniversary edition.[156] In the Pacific, it is certified 5× platinum and 14× platinum in Australia and New Zealand, respectively.[157][158]

i love it desu

>>74276519
The Joshua Tree has been acclaimed by writers and music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time; according to Acclaimed Music, it is the 39th-highest-ranked record on critics' lists.[159] In 1997, The Guardian collated worldwide data from a range of renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, who placed the record at number 57 on the list of the "100 Best Albums Ever".[160] In 2006, Time named it as one of the magazine's 100 best albums,[161] while Hot Press ranked it 11th on a similar list.[162] Q named it one of the 40 greatest records from the 1980s,[163] while Entertainment Weekly included the album on its list of the 100 best records released between 1983 and 2008.[164] In 2010, the album appeared at number 62 on Spin's list of the 125 most influential albums in the 25 years since the magazine launched. The publication said, "The band's fifth album spit out hits like crazy, and they were unusually searching hits, each with a pointed political edge."[165] Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album at number 27 on their 2012 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", calling it "an album that turns spiritual quests and political struggles into uplifting stadium singalongs". It was U2's best position on the list.[166] That year, in Slant Magazine's list of the "Best Albums of the 1980s", the publication said that The Joshua Tree's opening trio of songs helped "the band became lords and emperors of anthemic '80s rock" and that "U2 no longer belonged to Dublin, but the world."[167] The Buffalo News said the record "made [U2] the first mainstream band since the Beatles to capture the spirit of the age in a manner that was both populist and artistically, politically and socially incisive". That same year, the album was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the US Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[170] It is the only Irish work to be so honoured.[171]

>>74276558
The band's penchant for addressing political and social issues, as well as their staid depiction in Corbijn's black-and-white sleeve photographs, contributed to the group's earnest and serious image as "stone-faced pilgrim[s]". This image became a target for derision after the band's critically maligned Rattle and Hum project in 1988.[31] Various critics called them "po-faced",[172] "pompous bores",[55] and "humourless".[173] The group's continued exploration of American music for the project was labelled "pretentious"[174] and "misguided and bombastic".[175] After Bono told fans on the 1989 Lovetown Tour that U2 would "dream it all up again", the band reinvented themselves in the 1990s. They incorporated alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music into their sound, and adopted a more ironic, flippant image by which they embraced the "rock star" identity they struggled with in the 1980s.[176] Bono referred to their 1991 album Achtung Baby as "the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree".[55] Author Bill Flanagan summarised the impact of The Joshua Tree on the group's career in his liner notes for the album's 20th anniversary release: "The Joshua Tree made U2 into international rock stars and established both a standard they would always have to live up to and an image they would forever try to live down."[177]

*deletes Bullet the Blue Sky*

>>74276507
I don't see the joshua tree anywhere in that pic tho, what did they mean by this?

>>74277456
its an /x/ meme. adam clayton is a timelord, shitposting into the mass media from across time.

>>74277456
the joshua tree is within u

It's a masterpiece. Giving the finger to synths in the 80s was a pretty gutsy move too honestly.

>>74276658
Fuck you. Best song on the album.