Anti-Climacus

Pretty much agree with this ranking of U2 albums, and with this explanation of how they can be enormously popular and such an easy target for ridicule. Somebody else pointed this out, so it's not original to me, but Bono is pretty clearly the worst musician of the band, and the fluctuations in quality almost all correlate to whether they're U2 or Bono and the Back-up Irishmen.

(And I don't particularly like any of their records past Pop, as they all seem to have given up on innovation in favor of curating the band's strengths in slightly different variations. Which is fine. But I'd be hard-pressed to name any band that so quickly sold itself out for nostalgia purposes. Even new Rolling Stones records will experiment or try new things, though most of the experiments fail.)

There's a perpetual conversation amongst music snobs about whether it's better to do one thing well or continually experiment, where R.E.M. is probably the signature example of doing one thing well and David Bowie of continual experimentation. I'm sort of agnostic on that question, because I think experiments can fail and slight wrinkles can pay tremendous dividends (e.g. it should have been obvious by about "Swan Swan H" that R.E.M. could pull off a more subdued folky sound, especially because it wouldn't require any fundamental change in the songwriting style). But the one thing that seems particularly inadequate is the attempt to revive past glories through meticulous repetition of the thing that made one famous in the first place: U2 after 2000 is one example, Weezer's another. At a certain point cultivation of one's sensibility is cowardice, not conservatism. See also that excellent Dwight MacDonald essay on Hemingway.